Welcome to the International Children's Group Kapiti blog!!

Tuesday, 7 April 2015

March Meeting

Happy Easter!

Feliz Pascoa! Frohe Ostern! ¡Felices Pascuas!
イースターおめでとう！Joyeuses Pâques!

Our March meeting was filled with fun. We had a very special visit from one of our member's family from Japan! Aki's sister and nephews talked about their life in Tokyo, specially how they spend their day at school. It was great to see pictures of the beautiful art of Japanese calligraphy using a brush and black ink. Also, very interesting to learn that many characters in the Japanese writing were adopted Chinese characters. So many amazing facts I didn't know about Japan! We will definitely have a full presentation about this fascinating country next month!

With Easter as our theme for this month I continued the meeting with a presentation about my adventures when backpacking through Austria. One of many things I remembered about Austria was the gorgeous decorated Easter Eggs beautifully displayed on the windows of the shops in the streets of Vienna and Salzburg. I thought it would be a good idea to replicate these eggs in our meeting and the children would have some fun decorating them. Check out the pictures below!

Other highlights of Austria were the famous composers of course, the Waltz, the Danube River and the beautiful country side surroundings of Salzburg which provided gorgeous scenery for the locations of "The Sound of Music" movie.

No Easter party would be complete without an Egg Hunt, and although the weather wasn't great we still had loads of fun outside for our hunt. The kids were very good sharing all the eggs with everyone and in the end, as usual, we had our communal lunch, this time we laid blankets and had a picnic in the hall!

Enjoy the pictures:

Japanese presentation

Traditional Japanese toys
Japanese Calligraphy

Let's find the countries on the map

Daniel showing pictures of Austria

Dancing the Waltz listening to Mozart and Schubert

Kids decorating Easter Eggs

Time for Egg Hunt!!

Easter Picnic!!

Friday, 13 March 2015

February Meeting

This month we come back from holidays and let the children choose to talk about a country they went on holidays before. We talked about Dubai and Vanuatu. Two very different destinations, each with its own culture, food, and beautiful places to see and things to do.

My boys really enjoyed their time in Dubai last year. We stopped over from our flight when we were coming back from a long holiday in Brazil to meet Daddy in Dubai and then follow all together back to New Zealand. It was all fun and as you can imagine, a very emotional time as we hadn't seen Dad for nearly 2 months!

The country is booming with new skyscrapers, amazing shopping centres and lots of entertaining activities for children. I guess it will be still growing like this for a long time. It is an amazing city built in the middle of the desert! In our meeting we talked about Dubai and the Emirates all being part of the UAE (United Arab Emirates). As usual, we located it on the map, talked about Continents, language, capital city and flags. Language was a bit of a challenge as I couldn't really pronounce all the Arabic names! Who has ever read "The Arabian Nights"? or seen the film "Alladin"? Ben and Daniel have seen the movie and remembered really well when we went to the markets around Dubai and saw lots of nice lamps for sale looking exactly like the one in the film! So we brought one lamp to the meeting to show around and they talked about Genie and the lamp. Genie actually popped by to ask some questions to the children!

Oli and Alex talked about their holiday in Vanuatu and showed some amazing sea shells we all enjoyed seeing and passing them around. We certainly learned a lot of Vanuatu and other Pacific Islands that I didn't even know existed!

Our communal lunch was served based on some of the food we experienced in Dubai - hummus, pitta bread, olives, and a variety of nuts and dried fruits. Yum!

Have a look at some photos of the day below:

Dubai and Emirates presentation

Genie asking questions about Dubai

Children locating countries on the map

Vanuatu presentation

Amazing and colourful Sea Shells!!

Yum! Nice lunch!!

Monday, 9 February 2015

Happy 2015!!

Happy New Year to you all!

Our group started the year with an awesome meeting themed "Bush Camping in New Zealand" - to celebrate the holidays, the Summer and the country that we all love and chose to live in - our beloved Aotearoa.

And what better than show New Zealand through its beautiful nature and a day camping in the bush? The weather was also on our side and we all had fun in a sunny hot summer's day! The day started with a picnic for lunch and followed with a walk through the bush where Aki guided the children through different types of Ferns and other native trees. My son Ben still remembers and found very useful the information about the "bushman's friend" scientifically known as: Brachyglottis repanda (rangiora or bushman's friend) - "a small, bushy tree or tall shrub endemic to New Zealand. It grows to a height of 5 to 7 metres. The large leaves with a soft furry underside have been referred to as "bushman's toilet paper". Other common names in Māori include kōuaha, pukapuka, pukariao, puke-rangiora, raurākau, raurēkau, whārangi, or whārangi-tawhito. Māori used the plant for a number of medicinal uses. The leaves were used for wounds and old ulcerated sores, and the gum was chewed for foul breath but was poisonous if swallowed.^[1] It can also be used as note paper."

Among all nature around us the kids found themselves immersed in the bush climbing trees, sucking leaves, searching for bugs and even playing Tarzan with the trees branches (And some adults too!!). Check out the photos below.

Thank you Aki and Ivor for having us at the camping site.

Cheers,

Renata

Great fun at the stream!

Families relaxing at picnic

Our walk through the bush

Ben and his silver fern shirt.
And we found a real one in our walk too!

Yiupieeeeeeeeeee!!!

A cricket game!!

Can you spot the Eel?

Fun in the pond!

Great day for relaxing too....

Friday, 19 December 2014

December Meeting – Argentina

I can’t believe we are in the end of the year and next week will be Christmas!!! These last months certainly flew by! We had a great last meeting of the year this Saturday with our guest speaker from Argentina – Laura. Thank you so much for coming and sharing a bit of your country with us. Laura talked about the language, culture and traditions in Argentina. I really enjoyed the pictures of the Gauchos - what you may have know as the “cowboys of South America”. We also have gauchos in Brazil, so it was great to see some similarities in their costumes and the way that they deal with the cattle and horses. They also have this very traditional drink – mate, that I knew very well from Brazil. The presentation ended with a beautiful video of a couple dancing Tango! Absolutely amazing! How do they move their feet so fast? Beautiful traditional dance of the capital city - Buenos Aires.

Laura made these delicious empanadas for our lunch that was a great success among the group. Children and adults all enjoyed the baked pastry filled with mince beef. Yum!

After our lunch we headed to the Carter Observatory for our end of the year celebration where the families could have some fun together and the children could discuss the “Big Bang Theory”. It was great to see the children interested in finding out how everything started… the birth of the Universe! Carter has a great exhibition about the subject with videos and interactive experiences for the visitors. We all had a great time!

Before saying goodbye I would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas. May this new year bring you and your family much joy and laughter. To be happy is the greatest wish in life.

Feliz Navidad!!!

Renata

Find below pictures of the day