Today was the last day of the pool that started on Monday. We all love pools. Today they worked on learning in the pool with more energy than usual.

As you can see in the pictures, everyone was able to enjoy their swimming lessons. We will all be in the pool again next year. We're looking forward to next summer. Thank you very much to everyone at Tomioka School for lending us their pool.

[1st and 2nd grade life studies]
A certain insect is hidden in the photo below. Can you see where they're hiding?

The topic of today's 1st and 2nd grade class is "getting around with creatures everywhere". We took pictures of insects hiding and asked each other, "Where are they?" Even if an adult looked at the picture, it was not immediately clear where they were. I was impressed not only by the insects excellent ability to hide, but also by the children's amazing photography skills!

But not all bugs like to play hide and seek. What caught everyone's attention today was the longhorn beetle, which had a large presence in the middle of the road.

Children taking pictures with their iPads. If you take a picture with your iPad, you can enlarge it at your convenience. If you look at it from a distance, the beetle may look black and white, but when the children looked closer, they discovered that it's actually 'blue in colour'. In order to see the colour more closely, they carefully observed its belly. 

The blue colouring of the longhorn beetle reminds me of the opening sentence in "The blue of the longhorn beetle" written by Shinichi Fukuoka. In his work, it was said that the moment when he was fascinated by the beautiful colour of the blue-eyed beetle was the origin of the piece. I was happy to see today's encounter with the longhorn beetles, thinking that the children may be having an experience that is close as to that moment as possible. Finally, I will quote a sentence from a book that I feel is relevant to our schools statement.