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A Look Back at Our Events

Moving on from our new programs as we recap the year, let’s recall the 2024 school year’s event highlights. In addition to our usual annual events, we added a few special ones this school year for a total of nine, including a homestay.

English Adventure Reunion

With 2024’s first event, we held a Reunion Party for students and families of our English Adventure at Fukkoudai program. This community program was held at Fukuoka Institute of Technology from 2005 until the pandemic in 2020, then it morphed into our Saturday online program that has continued through to the present.

Egg Coloring and Hanami

Once again our community came together to celebrate spring with traditional Easter egg coloring and then an egg hunt combined with a party under the cherry blossoms. The 2025 events are scheduled for March 29 and 30.

Summer Day Camps

Summer Day Camps returned to the Arae School this year for three days during August. We are also setting up a new webpage with a better description of how our child-centered approach makes learning fun during the day camps. Parents can watch the camp videos for a sense of the camp experience and the children’s accomplishments.

Halloween

This year’s Halloween classes included a cute paper pumpkin craft. And even though it was a rainy night, children and parents came out to the Arae School for the annual Trick-or-Treat event and visited houses and local businesses for treats.

Christmas

We celebrated the Christmas season with a real Christmas tree at the Arae School in addition to outside lights and other decorations. In lessons, the children made a paper present box with a cute ribbon and a top that could open and close. The youngest children made a Christmas card.

This year’s Christmas party was held at the school for the first time. Fewer parents attended than usual, so we did some impromptu Christmas-themed activities for all the children. After a rock-scissors-paper game in English, attendees got to pick a present of their choice.

Winter Camp

Just after New Year’s, we had a fun Winter Day Camp. We played a lot of games and had fun with imagination in English. We also went to the supermarket to get ingredients then made our lunch, American-style grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. Later, we played outside at the park.

Homestay

Although we have conducted overseas trips for students with Rainbow Bridges teachers before, we had our first homestay program this year. As with previous travel programs, we wanted to create a program that featured a trusted professional teacher as well as connections to other children and a fun and educational itinerary.

During winter vacation, one of our first-year high school students flew from Fukuoka to Chicago in the United States to reconnect with his former teacher, David, and stay at his home with his family for 14 days.

Highlights include braving the flight and passing through Immigration on his own, experiencing a real American family Christmas, attending a basketball game, shopping, trying new foods, meeting a lot of people, and traveling to the major cities of St. Louis and Chicago.

In 2025, we will offer homestay programs for the United States as well as Australia for all members of the Rainbow Community, including former students. Contact us early if this might be of interest to your family.

Kyushu English Language Teaching Convention

Rainbow Bridges students operated a real cafe in English at a convention for English teachers on February 23, 2025 at Seinan Gakuin Univeristy. With over 100 in attendance, this was the largest gathering of English-speaking people in Kyushu.

More information on the Convention is included in part 4 of the Year in Review: Special Projects.