Last week was a really busy week for me. My class was required to do an assembly and Miss Mitchell thought is would be really great to do our assembly on the "Flat Stanley" project that I've been heading up. This brought a lot of responsibility and planning, but it was very rewarding to see what the kids were capable of. We ended up doing our assembly for years 3,4, and 5. The kids did really good for only going through it once the whole way through before performing it. I thought is was BRILLIANT!!! I've included the script that the kids used because in the video it is hard to understand exactly what the kids are saying...
" Our Flat Stanley project is a world-wide activity based on the book by Jeff Brown. In this book, Stanley is flattened by his bulletin board that hung over his bed. This resulted in him being able to have amazing adventures because he was able to be mailed through the post! We have made our own flattened version of ourselves and we posted them all over the world to five different continents! The people that Miss Unruh knows took our flat people around and have sent them back with stories of the adventures we went on.
Six of us went to each country. We went to the bottom of Africa to the country of South Africa. There we visited Kristen who is 21 and is going to school for photography.
While we were there, Kristen took us on a safari where we got to see lots of animals. We saw lions, rhinoceroses, zebras, and giraffes.
"Drive" around with the jeep.
Can you spot all the giraffes? There should be 6 of them around the hall…
Point to the giraffes around the hall
Some other interesting facts we learned about South Africa while we were there:
There are 45 million people living in South Africa
The currency is the South African Rand
There are 11 official languages there
There are more than 2000 shipwrecks off the coasts
South Africa produces the most gold in the world
While in China, We visited Nate. He helped us learn how to count in ten in Chinese. Do you want learn how too? ***pause*** Ok, well repeat after us… someone do the flashcards...
While we were in China we realized that there were a lot of people there and many of the buildings were really tall so that they could hold more people. We made some good friends there.
We learned thatThe Great Wall of China was started over two and a half thousand years ago and is more than 5,000 km long.
*One-fifth of the world's population lives in China.
*Chinese people live in modern buildings in the towns, farmhouses in rural areas. So live in houses made of bamboo and even caves in the
mountains and houseboats on the rivers and in harbours.
*Bamboo is a very fast growing plant which can grow up to one metre a day. Its eaten by Pandas.
* It was the first to invent gunpowder which was used for fireworks.
*Crops include rice, wheat, maize, soya beans, sesame, sugar, along with %20 of the world's supply in tea.
In Germany we stayed with Melita. She thought that it was important to be able to speak a little German. “Guten Tag! Wie Gehts?”
***translator*** (Hello! How are you?)
“Sehr gut, danke.”
***translator*** (Very good, thank you.)
“Wie heisst du?”
***translator*** (What’s your name?)
“Ich heisse ___________, und du?”
***translator***(My name is _________, and yours?”
“Ich heisse _______________.
***translator*** (My name is ___________.)
In Germany, which is also called Deutchland we ate a ton of chocolate! Melita sent enough that all of you get to try some after our assembly!
We crossed into the Southern Hemisphere to go to New Zealand to visit Karla. Karla teaches Spanish to kids in New Zealand. People who where born in New Zealand are called Kiwis, like the fruit. Some of us are now going to perform the Haka. The Haka is the traditional war dance of the Maori people who are native to New Zealand.
Years ago when two tribes would fight each other, both would do the haka to intimidate the other tribe. Nowadays, the haka is just performed by men to show Maori culture.
Those of you who think we look silly---Remember, the New Zealand All Blacks, the rugby team do it before each game and they’ve held the top ranking in the world for longer than all other countries combined!
Perform Haka!!!
Some things that we learned about New Zealand while we were visiting were:- • New Zealand was the first country to let men AND women vote
- • There are 9 sheep for every human that live there
- • Sir Edmund Hillary, who was from New Zealand was the first person to reach the peak of Mount Everest and now has his face on the 5 dollar bill.
- • Bungee jumping was invented in New Zealand
- • New Zealand is the home of the largest flightless parrot, the oldest reptile, the biggest earthworms, the smallest bats, the heaviest insects, some of the oldest trees, and many rare species of animals.
The last place that we went to was to Florida in America. There we visited Miss Finnegan’s mom, Jane. She is a teacher there and students in most schools are required to say the pledge of allegiance EVERY morning at the start of school…
(someone stands up on something holding a flag and another student recites the pledge of allegiance.)
“I pledge allegiance to the flag, of the United States of America and to the republic for which is stands, once nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.”
We saw a lot of flags in America. Did you know that there are 50 stars on the American flag that represent that there are 50 states. There are also 13 stripes on the flag that represent the original 13 colonies.
We also noticed that the Americans were speaking English but they sounded really funny. A lot of the words that we used we didn't understand. We made a list and here are a few:
We say----trainers
They say----sneakers
We say---football
They say---soccer
We say-----shopping center
They say----mall
We say---chips
They say---french fries
We say---crisps
They say----chips
We say ---rubbish
They say---trash
We say---rubber
They say---eraser
We looked out for movie stars, but unfortunately didn't see any. We did have an "awesome" time at Disney World in Orlando.
I'm really so proud of all of my kids. They were so cute and did absolutely amazing. I loved the effort they put into the haka and all of their lines. The Germany skip was ACE, and they really made me smile. It was really neat to be able to share something like traveling and learning new cultures with these kids. It was well worth all of the extra time and effort!
No comments:
Post a Comment