Hoshino Gakuen Visit to Elm Park

This week, it was time for the annual visit by students from Hoshino Gakuen - a primary school in Japan.  This was the third time the students have visited our school and we were looking forward to meeting some new friends from another country.

The Hoshino students were welcomed to Elm Park School with a pōwhiri at the beginning of the day.  They performed the Japanese version of "It's a Small World" and our Elm Park students performed Underneath the Orange Tree - a traditional Japanese song.  We sang most of it in English, but we learned one of the verses in Japanese.  It was tricky but it sounded amazing.

After the pōwhiri, the Japanese students helped us to learn some Japanese games, calligraphy skills, origami and language.  We were all able to take away a small souvenir of Japanese culture.  After some morning tea, it was their turn to learn about our culture.

We brought the students back to our classrooms and helped them to make a kiwiana artpiece.  One of the Japanese students, Kensuke, was amazed to discover that our current class novel is Kensuke's Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo.  He thought that was awesome!


We finished off our session by teaching the students a simple song with rakau sticks.  They picked it up so quickly.

It was a flying visit - nowhere near long enough in our opinion!  The Hoshino students only flew into NZ the night before and they were gone again by lunchtime.  After leaving our school, they drove down to Rotorua for a 3-day farmstay, and then flew back to Japan.

We hope they enjoyed their time with us.  We are looking forward to writing to our buddies and learning more about their culture.