Our Special Mexican Visitor

Last week we were very lucky to have had a visit from Paulina, who runs the Mexican Society at King's College University. She came to tell us all about life in Mexico and we learnt more in one afternoon than we could have possibly imagined!

Paulina has been a teacher for some years and kept us all interested and excited, with her Powerpoint presentation, props, food and her beautiful singing.

We tried some real Mexican salsa (which was green and spicy!) and some fantastic chilli sugar candy!

 We looked at some beautiful craft objects from different regions of Mexico:

We were all very excited to see these objects, which are used as part of the 'Day of the Dead' celebrations that we have been learning about:

 Thank you, Paulina!

Cakes Cakes Cakes!!

Here are some of the delicious cakes that we will be selling tomorrow at the SUMMER FAIR! We each made two cakes- one with a Mexican theme and one with any design we liked. Here we are in action decorating the cakes....

See you tomorrow at St. Anthony's Summer Fair from 12-3pm. Come and taste our scrumptious cakes!

Art in St. George's This Week

This week we have already created some lovely artwork. Today Mrs Cook and I put the beautiful Michelangelo masterpieces on the ceiling.

Why do you think we chose to display them on the ceiling?

Last week we started our Mexican God's Eyes. God's Eyes are traditionally made for a celebration or a blessing and can be given as a gift to a newborn baby. We learned about them at the Horniman Museum on Thursday, then began to make our own on Friday. This week we finished them- here are the wonderful final products:

A Fun Day at The Horniman Museum

On Thursday we had a fantastic day! We went to the Horniman Museum, where we had a fun workshop all about Mexico, then visited the farm and the aquarium. On our return to school, we had our first ever Mystery Skype lesson (there will be a post about this soon!).

It was a lovely day to walk to the museum and on our arrival we met Christine, who led our 'Fiesta Mexicana' session.

We were shown some interesting objects from Mexico and heard some fabulous stories about their origins.

There were lots of masks- we even got to try some on!

One of the masks is used for a famous Mexican dance called 'The Dance of the Old Man'. Here is a video of the dance- Mrs Cook found it to show you- thank you!

We also got to play some instruments which often feature in Mexican celebrations and parties.

These objects are from a celebration called 'The Day of the Dead'- we will be learning about this festival in the next few weeks!

A Look Around Our Classroom This Week

Here are some pictures of how our classroom is looking this week. As each week passes, our classroom is becoming more and more Mexican! We'll add some more pictures to the blog soon to show how our Mexican paradise is developing...

A Lesson in German with Miss Jordis!

Source: HMH Books for Young Readers

Last week, we started our new book 'La Mariposa'. We heard the story of Francisco, who moved with his family from Mexico to California. He struggled to settle into school, because he didn't speak any English and his teacher, Miss Scalapino, stopped him from speaking any Spanish. He felt lost and confused.

To get an idea of how Francisco felt in his lessons, we decided to try it for ourselves! Miss Jordis taught us a whole lesson in German and we were banned from speaking any English at all. It was very tricky!

 Miss Jordis gave us instructions to make and decorate a paper aeroplane- the colours and shapes were difficult to work out, but we all made a plane by the end of the lesson. Thank you Miss Jordis!

Following the lesson, we discussed (in English!) what made the lesson easier for us. We decided that some words were easier to guess if they sounded similar to the English words and that Miss Jordis' gestures and looking to see what the other children were doing were helpful tactics.

The lesson was lots of fun and gave us a taste of what the experience might have been like for Francisco. This week, we're going to write letters to Miss Scalapino to give her some advice on how she might help Francisco to settle in to school in a new country where he doesn't understand the language being spoken.

Thank you for a fun and fascinating lesson Miss Jordis!