ネイティブが教える英会話のジェムスクール☆Teachers☆

These are my students from last semester at Kanbai Preschool! I love teaching that class, because the larger class size means that I get to think of new and interesting ways to teach from the Gem books. The students from both this semester and last semester are energetic, smart, and creative. A real joy to teach! I was really touched when last semester's class made these pictures for me. The little portraits are so cute, and I will always have the memories! It made me very happy.  

Hello!

I'm going to give you a new history of an English word again today! I hope you enjoyed the one from last week “Phony”, and found lots of ways to use it!

This week, I'm going to talk about the word “Muscle”. We have muscles all over our body, they are used help us move, lift things, and we really could not live without them. In English, the word “Muscle” comes from a very very old Latin word meaning “Little Mouse”. It seems that the old Roman people though that the muscles under our skin looked like mice crawling around!
  

This is a picture of my mom in the middle of enjoying her latest hobby. She has recently taken to gardening and decorating her miniature gardens. I wonder what inspired her to get into the field. We always tried to grow various random crops over the summers. As you might know, Summers are a bit hot in California, so never before have we managed to grow any sustainable crops that would survive year in year out. What my mom is growing these days seems to be for simple self-fulfillment and entertainment, though she is growing some strawberries and tomatoes. It would be nice to be there with her to bring my own hand to her latest hobby of miniature gardens and decorations. I am a bit of an aesthete myself at times, especially lately. I’ve taken to, for example, fashion, spending way too much money on shirts on the weekends. I worry that my mom’s craft might come to an end once the Summer really starts to heat up and the famed California blaze comes on. Hopefully she’ll have started some indoors horticulture before then.

To see the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour.
- William Blake.