Hanna's field trip to the National Science Museum

Hanna's Class outside the Museum

On Wednesday, February 16th, Hanna's preschool class at Yoyogi took a field trip to the National Science Museum at Ueno Park. We had never been, so I was excited to join the group and check out this museum. Hanna's class theme for the month of February was Dinosaur's, so that is the area of the museum that her class concentrated on. I have been to the Smithsonian and to the Museum of Natural History in NYC, and this Dinosaur area was as good as either of those! Hanna thought they were SO very interesting, took my camera and just snapped photo after photo....I took a look- not sure what half of them are of, exactly, but boy, did she have a good time.


Hanna in front of the TRex

The most annoying part of the day was this guy below. He would follow the group around, and before we even left the exhibit we were looking at, he would jump in and beautify (clean) the glass!! SO Japanese, and SO Frustrating!! This photo is actually of a guy that wasn't following our group- the guy following us realized I was trying to take a photo, so every time I would put the camera up, he would stand up straight and stop doing it!!



I have to say that this field trip was quite annoying to the mom's! The kids all had a ball, which I guess is what really counts. But out of a 6 hour day, only about 2 hours was actually enjoying the museum. Hanna's school is so structured and anal retentive- there are rules, rules and more rules. We were told exactly what exhibits we could look at (the teacher did not want us to look at anything the students hadn't been studying), what area we had to stay in (Floor B1, with our group, with the entire class,etc). The teacher would tell us where we could go, when we could move to another floor, what bathrooms we had to use- it was completely ridiculous. There was no fun, spontaneous touring- I think her teacher may have had a heart attack had we tried to veer off the "schedule". Now this structure would have been completely understandable if there were only a few volunteers, but each group had 2-3 moms with them (all but maybe 3 moms attended), so there were more adults(including teachers and staff) than there were kids. It even went so far as the teacher telling us we couldn't get off the bus and leave- that we had to actually walk up to the class room, so she could dismiss the kids from there (so the mom's had to walk up to the hallway and wait so she could check them off her list). I had a bit of a disagreement with Ms. Carr-Berry, and took Hanna with me right off the bus. Ughh...a few more months and both girls will be at ASIJ- normal schedule, normal procedures...just more normal!! Yoyogi has been great academically for Hanna- she is reading and learning at such an earlier pace than Maya did in the Public School in Michigan- but it is run more like a business and definitely has a lot of oddities that I just don't understand. Good thing the kids and the families are great- it makes such a difference!