未 来 を ひらく 思 い を つ た える

Cover photo: Craft "A Gathering of Koinobori"A large gathering of unique and colorful carp streamers!
The colorful patterns are eye-catching against the blue sky of May.
Some of the carps are so energetic, they bumped into their friends.

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May everyone's originality shine in the big wide world!

We look forward to
your ideas!
“Hiraku” provides useful informationand the latest news related toEnglish and childhood education.

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・New content etc etc…
If you have ideas to contribute,please share these with us!
“Hiraku” Editorial Department
TEL：06-6135-0150
Mail： hiraku@kinderkids.ed.jp★A Kinder Kids graduate wins the Grand Prize at the Childrenʼs English Contest!

Published in
May 2023 Vol.27
Next issue isplanned to comeat the end of July

Kinder Kids Inc.
TEL：06-6135-0150
Pulala Tenma 2F, 3-1 Ikeda-cho,
Kita-ku, Osaka-shi, Osaka. 530-0033★Eiken Class for Grade 1 starts ★Successful Examinee File 010 ★Grad Club Okinawa Camp★Inﬁnity Elementary School welcomes its second class of new ﬁrst-year students.

www.kinderkids.com

日本の心と、英語の力。Kinder Kids inc.

The 33rd Children s English Contest

First Prize in Speech Category, R.G. ［Title: Rwanda Rescue Team］

A Kinder Kids Graduate Wins

・School Graduated...Kyoto ・Grade at the time of winning the prize...G3

the Grand Prize & Three other Graduates

I want to improve my English at Grad Club and live abroad someday.

also Win Prizes!

I delivered a speech about “The Rwanda Rescue Team," a group that sends donated funds to

On March 12, The 33rd Childrenʼs English Contest, organized by KBS

limbs due to planted landmines during the Rwandan Civil War. I have been participating in

Kyoto Broadcasting, took place at KBS Hall in Kamigyo-ku, Kyoto City.

the Grad Club's speech contest every year since G1, so I could become more comfortable

Among the 462 applicants throughout Japan, 100 ﬁnalists in six

speaking in front of an audience. Once you enroll in elementary school, opportunities tocategories, who had passed the preliminary screening, competed in thisspeak English tend to decrease. However, by attending Grad Club, I was able to continue

Ms. Mami, a Japanese who provides prosthetic legs free of charge to people who lost theirhighly competitive contest. Four Kinder Kids graduates won remarkablespeaking English with my friends from Kinder Kids and communicate with the teachers inprizes, one of them winning the Grand Prize! We had the opportunity to

English-only settings. This has been extremely helpful in improving my English skills. My parents lived abroadinterview the graduates who achieved these outstanding results.

for many years, and I speak English, especially with my father who was born overseas. I am also studying otherlanguages such as Spanish, and I hope to live abroad like my parents someday. I'm really looking forward to theGrad Clubʼs Australia study tour, where I'll have the opportunity to attend a local primary school.

Grand Prize, L.I. ［Title: Best Friend］
・School Graduated...Kyoto
・Grade at the time of winning the prize...G2

Through the Grad Club speech contest,
I learned the joy of expressing my thoughts infront of others［Title: One Mistake Brought Me The Best Result.］

・School Graduated...Sakai

・Grade at the time of winning the prize...6th grade

I practiced my speech very hardSpecial Prize, M.I.

［Story Recitation Category, Title: I Went to the Market］

・Graduated School...Kyoto

・Grade at the time of winning the prize...K3

With the presentation skills and courage

while also preparing for

nurtured through "Show & Tell," M.I. won

the junior high school entrance exam,

the prize at the same time as his brother

Although I was able to win the Grand Prize in this year's contest, I didn't

and my next aim is to pass the Eiken Grade 1.

L.I., who won the grand prize.

make it past the preliminary round in the previous contest. I was shocked

I gave a speech about balancing junior

I chose "I Went to the

because I had won the Grad Clubʼs G1 speech contest that same year. I

high school entrance exams and clubMarket"participated in this year's contest with the determination to prove that

activities. I chose this topic because I

assigned writings for thewanted to share my experience ofEnglishachieving positive results that others

contestthought impossible. I wrote my speech

main character was just"effort will always lead to results" through my speech. I wanted to convey the importance of not giving up andto keep moving forward and that everyone has something special within them.
In my speech, I focused particularly on captivating the audience. I thought that no matter how native-like andclear the pronunciation was, without strong
expressive skills, it is not possible to deliver a compelling speech that will truly move people's hearts.

among

the

recitation
becausetheby speaking it out loud and selecting

like me and I thought I

phrases and words that best suited my voice, pronunciation,

could express myself well. I practiced reading

emotions, and overall speech ﬂow. For instance, I found it

every day thinking, "I want to be better than I

Giving a speech in front of an audience is tough, even in Japanese, but because of practicing and winning the

difﬁcult to say "Grade 6," so I chose the word "Year 6," which

was yesterday and better than my brother.

Grad Club's speech contest (G1 category), I improved my presentation skills andis commonly used in Australia. My experience with "Show &Through "show and tell" at Kinder Kids, I

gained the courage to go up on the stage. I learned how much fun it is to express

Tell" at Kinder Kids proved to be extremely helpful as it

developed the ability to explain things inyour opinions and thoughts in front of others. I am trying to think about things innaturally taught me how to capture the interest of the

English, got used to speaking in front ofaudience. I had to prepare for junior high school entrance

people, and improved my presentation skills. I

exams, so I had only a limited time available for my speech.

discovered

However, I practiced my speech every day while commuting

expressing myself, and I gained the conﬁdence

in the car. My future goals are to pass the Eiken Grade 1 test

to step onto the stage. In the future, I want toby the third year of junior high school, attend a foreign

become a pilot and make friends from aroundto be a person who can make people laugh, think, and move their hearts with myuniversity, and eventually become a politician who can

the world, so I want to try many new things

speeches.

negotiate on an equal footing with foreign countries.

and be able to talk with many more people.

English. I believe that having fun while studying is the key to continuous learning
even after you graduate from Kinder Kids!
In the future, I would like a job where I can be a bridge between countries, so I needto improve my English and also become a person whose words are powerful. I want

1

First Runner-Up in Speech Category, Z.G.

the

joy

and

excitementof2Eiken

The new classwill startat the requestof our students!!

Grade 1 Class

Opens!!

K2

S akai

Test date

Grade

Level 3My Study Methods

Interview
with Parents

At home, I mainly focused on solving past

I believe that was due to the support of theexam questions. It was very eﬀective in

How did he achieve a high scoreon the Interview test?

teachers at Kinder Kids and the curriculum they
provided. During the interview practice, they gavequestions. Also, I wrote down a lot of English

us excellent responses that allowed us to learn how

words, which I like doing, and I found it helpful

to answer the questions. The reason he was able towhen memorizing many new words. I believe

achieve a high score was simply because the

We are pleased to be starting this class at the request of our students whothat spelling words correctly is very importantcurriculum at Kinder Kids was perfect.

have already passed Eiken Grade Pre-1. The lessons will be taught into achieve a passing score.

English only and will focus on all elements of the Eiken Grade 1 test.

Students joining the course will need to apply themselves even more than when

What I like about Kinder Kids!

they did to pass Eiken Grade Pre-1. During the lessons, we will be studying a

I learned the most from writing journals atlarge number of new vocabulary and we will discuss the meaning of these words,

Kinder Kids. My writing skills improved, by

writing section of the test, students will learn to write about a wide variety of
topics centered around social, professional and educational situations. Students

will learn to structure their writing in order to give a clear representation of their views on each topic
and learn how to add supporting evidence to help the reader clearly understand their point of view.
We anticipate that this course will be very challenging for our students, but we will do our best to

regularly writing English sentences. Taking
spelling tests was also very beneﬁcial for me. At
ﬁrst, I found it challenging when encountering
unfamiliar words in the Grade 3 past exams, but
as I increased my vocabulary through writing
journals and taking spelling tests, I graduallybecame able to understand those words better.

support them and help them take their English learning to the highest level. If you are interested,

As a result of my eﬀort, I am very happy to haveplease contact Grad Club and take a new step forward in your English learning.

passed the Grade 3 exam!

● P l a c e ：Temma Grad Classroom ( Pulala Temma, 2nd ﬂoor)● S c h e d u l e ：Second half of JHS/HS Saturday Class, 5:30-7:00 p.m.
（According to the Saturday Class calendar）● L e s s o n ：Face-to-face all-English lessons● Grade Level ：G5 and above（Only those who have passed Grade Pre-1）● Monthly Fees ：￥27,500（tax included）*Except August and December

For more information about
Eiken Classes, please contact us at3

Schoolくん

getting used to the test format and the diﬃcult

and give example sentences to show how to use these words in context. For the
Andy Asher

S.O.

Grade at exam

J a nua r y 2023

If you are interested in taking the Eiken Grade 1 test,
please consider joining the class!!

Grad Club Manager

E xamine e(The Third exam in the 2022 school year)

Grad Club is proud to announce
the start of our Eiken Grade 1 class

Messagefromthe Eiken
Teacher

Fi l e0 1 0

Successful
Examinee

TEL：06-6135-0140（Tue.〜Sat. 9:00-18:00）

Inter view
with Parents

Interview
with Parents

I think some of the questions are
diﬃcult for young children.

It is true that some of the questions in the Eiken
test require knowledge of world events and oursociety, which are diﬃcult for young children tounderstand, but I believe it is important forchildren to experience the joy of discovering
new things through the Eiken test. The qualityof the Eiken questions is always very good, so even
if you don't understand the meaning perfectly theﬁrst time, it would be good to start with "I kind ofunderstand" and then change to "I understandperfectly" after solving the questions many times.
Inte r v ie w
with Pa r e nts

Please give some advice
to other parents.

What made you tr y theG r a d e 3 t e s t d u r i n g K 2?

Even if parents are not very good at English, it isBased on the experiences of his older brotherimportant for them to think positively and enjoy

and sister, who are also graduates of Kinder

learning together with their children. Initially, I

Kids, I thought it would be more eﬃcient and in

could only understand basic phrases like “Goodline with the school curriculum to take the Eiken

morning” and “See you,” but before I knew it, I wastest in K2. Since writing the journal starts in K1

able

and the spelling test starts in K2, myconversations. The children's English levels will

recommended plan would be to take the Gradedeﬁnitely improve, not only during their K2 and K3

5 to Grade 3 test in K2, then work on Grade 2 inyears but also after graduation, so please stayK3, and Grade 2 in G1 to G4. I believe that Kinder

positive and try your best!

Kids students will be able to handle this plan.

(Message from S.) Let's study hard together!!

tocomprehend

most

of

the

English4

Inﬁnity Global
Elementary School
welcomes its second classof new ﬁrst-year students.

2023.3/27▶29

Okinawa Camp Report

The entrance ceremony for the 27 new ﬁrst-year students was held on April 9th at Inﬁnity
Global Elementary School, Tennoji Yuhigaoka. We had the honor of having Ms. Mitsuyo
Tamai, the founder of "Tamai-method Mathematics," which is used in our school's
mathematics classes, and Mr. Einosuke Sumitani, CEO of KCJ GROUP INC. which

Grad Club held its ﬁrst Okinawa Camp during spring break. The children

operates "KidZania", in attendance. Mr. Sumiya kindly delivered a congratulatoryfrom the Kanto, Kansai, and Nagoya regions enjoyed a lunch of

speech and gave a message to encourage the new students. The

Taco-rice and then went on to their ﬁrst activity! On the ﬁrst day, we

representative of the current students gave a welcome speech in both

embarked on a trip to ﬁnd whales. the children were overjoyed as

English and Japanese. It was a wonderful speech that showed thewe set sail! The sea was a bit rough that day, but luckily, we wereinternationality of Inﬁnity School and the abilities of our students. The

able to see wild whales! On the second day, we had a thrilling

new students presented their future dreams using the video-based

experience on a Sabani traditional boat, enjoyed two types ofcrafts, went sea ﬁshing, and participated in a dolphin encounter. It

learning tool "Flipgrid" as part of their spring break assignment.
We experienced
the traditional fishingboat "Sabani," usedby fishermen in
the old days to fish
as far away
as Southeast Asia!

We are excited to see these new students as they take each step toward
their dreams!
We have just begun our second year of operation and have expanded ourfacilities to include three colour coded homerooms linked by a fantastic new
library space ﬁlled with books written in three languages (English, Japaneseand Mandarin). Our children will make good use of these spaces along with our

We learned
about the ecology
and role of coraland experienced coraltransplanting.

deck area adjacent to the classrooms and the spacious school gym. It is a very
exciting period for our school as we continue to create a new educational
experience for children growing up in Japan. Our mission is to be ʻa school

was a day full of exciting activities.At the dolphin encounter, we enjoyeddolphin training and interaction, and for many children, this became thebest memory of the trip. On the last day, we enjoyed the beach and thebeauty of Kouri Island. The children learned about coral cultivation,
fed sea turtles, and had hands-on experiences with various sea
creatures such as starﬁsh and sea cucumbers. It was a uniqueexperience that they would not usually have. Our ﬁrst Okinawa
camp was an exciting experience for everyone who
participated. We hope many more Grad Club students will
participate in this wonderful experience the next time too.

We are planning to hold manysummer events!!

Please visit
5

for more details!

Ian Mackenzie

the Principal,
Inﬁnity Global
Elementary School

where everyone is happyʼ. A place where childrenʼs true potential can berealised and they can be the best that they can be as a result of their effort.
Each person has their own talents and preferences so we aim to provide a wide
variety of experiences to help our students discover their new interests andpassions. We encourage children to focus on their processes more than on their results. It is very
important to remove the fear of experimentation or unknown outcomes. The world is changing very
quickly and children growing up today need to be problem solvers, critical thinkers, project managers andcollaborators. We use computer technology across our curriculum areas and children learn to research,evaluate and create through a variety of methods. They
also have a lot of fun doing it! I am very proud of the kind,considerate and forward thinking approach that ourchildren will adopt as part of their education. We will beworld wise, curious and embrace challenges we face. We
will be entrepreneurs, entertainers and enthusiasts.
The possibilities are endless!
6