The weeks are flying by with Christmas just around the corner now.
I have been really busy these past few weeks with a variety of activities.
Firstly, I have been working on getting the pictures completed for my next picture book, called Lily and the Moon, which I am co-authoring with the well-known text book author and educator, Mari Nakamura, and illustrating myself.
This time I have made my own Japanese washi paper as the background and the creatures appearing in the story from kami-nendo (light clay.)
This is a little preview. Page one will look something like this...
I enjoyed holding a Halloween event for children in Mitaka on 28th October. After some stories, songs and games in English, we all went off trick-or-treating around the local shops. The shopkeepers were really cooperative and gave the children some wonderful treats. Thank you to
Codomo no Kaisha in Mitaka for organizing this event.
Finally, I attended the ETJ (English Teachers in Japan) English Language Teaching Expo in Tokyo on Saturday 3rd November. I saw some wonderful presentations, including some English Rakugo performances by Tatsuya Sudo,
a workshop on using drama for children by the extremely dynamic and amazing Nena Nikolic-Hosonaka and an interesting acting out of the interaction between a home room teacher and the native English teacher when teaching English at elementary schools presented by Laura Blefgen-Togashi and Setsuko Terasaki.
Finally, I loved Eric Kane's presentation on designing a curriculum for children. It was the first time for Eric from
ELF Learning and I to meet even though ELF Learning will be publishing Lily and the Moon. As ELF Learning is in Shiga Prefecture all of our communication until now has been my e-mail, uploading files and photos of artwork on Google Drive and using Skype for teleconferencing. So it was really nice to finally meet face-to-face.
Here is a picture of Eric and I with one of my pictures: