Tag: children

Making a JOEE Promotional Video

On June 13th in Higashi Kurume, we were able to hold a sample JOEE lesson and shoot footage for a promotional video for JOEE.  Ruth Ingulsrud recruited children from Christian Academy in Japan, Honeybee English School, and local kindergartens to participate in the video.  Also, myself, Raku Dishner, was recruited as a fellow teacher for the JOEE organization, and (as I later discovered), a volunteer assistant for the video.

Shin Theodore Lewis, a recent graduate of Christian Academy in Japan, and talented cinematographer, volunteered his talent and camera to be director and also to film the lesson.

It was a sweltering start-of-summer day, but the children were excited and eager to dance, laugh and play with Ruth and Mehh-gumi the Lamb puppet!  Moms were also there and had a great time assisting and participating with their children. Each family signed a waiver allowing us to use their faces in the video.

The theme of the lesson was “ball.”  Ruth read the story “A Ball for Daisy” by Chris Raschka, followed by Mo Willems’ well-loved “Elephant and Piggy” book, “Can I Play Too?”  I was surprised and nervous as Ruth called me up to manage a large snake puppet and participate in the story! She also passed around various sized balls and played the game “pass the ball”.  The children counted and passed and tossed and caught the ball while saying “Throw!” and “Catch!” 

 Many picture books were available at the lesson’s end for the children to read with a helpful grown-up.  They were all rather sad when the lesson ended. Ruth, the kind moms, Hiroko, Shin and I were sweaty, but satisfied with our hard work and the resulting happy, happy kids!

Having video footage of a JOEE lesson will help us to raise funds, introduce our program to prospective orphanages, as well as recruit volunteers and teachers.  We are grateful to all who participated in the sample lesson and to Shin Theodore Lewis for his grace and talent to help us with this project.

Blessings everyone!

Raku