明日締め切りの、娘のサイエンス・レポートがやっとこさ出来上がり！冬眠するか、あるいは季節ごとに移住する動物を選んでいろいろ調べるのが課題。娘が選んだのは皇帝ペンギン。全13ページの力作！図書館から本を8冊借りてきて、毎日読みました。This is a science report our daughter has been working on for past weeks. Due tomorrow and now it's done! Students are supposed to pick an animal that hibernates or migrates and do the research on its life. She picked emperor penguins. It's a big report for a second grader, with 13 pages! We borrowed 8 books from library and have been reading them every day.
ペンギンは飛べない鳥。でも、水泳はうまいよ。寒いところにいるから脂肪がたくさん。Penguin is a bird that cannot fly and is professional at swimming. It has lots of fat since it lives in an extreme cold.
最後の難関は、選択した動物についての小話を作るというもの。何をテーマにしていもいいけど、６センテンス以上書くことが条件。最後までやりたがらなかった娘。紙を前に「考えて書きなさい」といってもダメだったので、その夜寝るときベットのなかでふたりでお話をつくることに。もともと動物好きの娘。私が出だしを口にするなり、どんどん話は展開していった。次の日、「昨日のお話を書いたら？」と紙を与えたら、書き出すなり止まらない。なんと２ページぎっしり書いたよ。皇帝ペンギンの天敵はトドなのだけど、これはやさしいトドがペンギンを食べないで逃がしてあげるというお話でした。The last section to finish was a little story about the animal. Anything goes, but kids are supposed to write more than 6 sentences. She just fret about it and has been avoiding it until the last moment. I gave her a sheet of paper to start, but nothing came out. So one night, instead of reading time, we had a story making time in bed. I gave her the setting on the story, then she, who loves animals and plays with many animal figures on a daily basis, took off from there and kept going forever. The next day, I gave her a sheet of paper and told her to write down whatever she remembers from the previous night. She kept on writing until the end of the second page as if she was taken over by a penguin spirit! It was a heart-warming story of a very nice lion seal (predator to penguins) nicely giving up eating a penguin and becoming his friend.
