In Grade 2 we had a whole raft of activities planned as well as two interesting field trips. Unfortunately, the weather had other plans so we had a very short week and as you are aware, all field trips have been postponed. We hope that our trips will happen during the week we return after the February break. For the days we were here at school, the students looked at Arabic calligraphy and the special historical signatures that have been created; then, they wrote their names in Arabic and decorated their name with patterns or other designs. Yesterday, the girls were able to have have henna designs painted on their hands and the boys were able to in the ghutra and kanjar. We also had a look at the traditional handicrafts set up in the Mazoon.
Yesterday, morning we looked at henna designs and made our own hands from clay, then decorated these. They clay is drying now and once fired in the kiln, the students will get to paint them and bring them home.
We have done a bit of maths, counting on and back by 1s and 10s, solving riddles about place value finding numbers within a 1000 square. This can be followed up at home by practising counting on or back by 1s and 10s from any number up to a 1000. Having a solid foundation of place value up to 1000 will support students in adding and subtracting fluently, both on paper and mentally.
This morning we were so fortunate to have Luna Wetzel, a Grade 10 student, come to our learning space to talk with us about her personal project. She wrote a story in two languages, English and Japanese, which focused on multi-culturism featuring animals as characters. Luna read the story to us and we had a chance to ask her questions about her writing process, as well as, discussing the challenges the main character had in the book and how he overcame them. Many of us made connections to the story as we have ‘migrated’ to new countries or new schools and needed to become risk-takers and be open-minded in order to build a community of friends.
On the 21st February it will be World Mother Tongue Day. You can read more about it here: https://www.un.org/en/observances/mother-language-day
We would love to have anyone interested come into school and share a story with us while reading it in their mother tongue. We heard Luna read in Japanese today, Ms Ays will read to us in Turkish and we will also share an Arabic story. So it would be wonderful if we were able to hear Portuguese, Spanish, Italian or Dutch…please let me know via email if you would be interested and we can set up a time for you to visit. It can be for anytime next week, not just on the 21st.
Please see photos here.