Our Japan Meeting!

Wow! Japan! An amazing extraordinary country!

Following our introduction to Japan presentation from last month, I though it would be a good idea to have a full presentation about this fascinating country. Thank you Aki and family for talking about it.

 
Aki is from Japan and lived there with her children, Enzo and Myako, and kiwi husband Ivor before moving to New Zealand. It was great to see her children talking about their experience at school. It made me realise how lucky we are to have local schools near us where we are able to walk a short distance or drive for a few minutes and get there! In Japan, is not unusual for children to walk an average of half hour and sometimes up to an hour to get to school! You can imagine this happening in the winter, with snow all around and very cold days?! Yes, we are lucky in New Zealand. This is what I love about the International Group. Children are able to learn and talk about life in a different culture. How does the weather, location, climate and customs impact in their daily lives? 

We of course learned a bit of Japanese and how some words in our English vocabulary are actually from Japanese origin! For example - Do you like singing in a Karaoke? Or, do you like playing Origami? And a word that I don't really like.... tsunami!

On the Tsunami subject, we also did a bit of talking about the "Ring of Fire" and how Japan (and New Zealand!) are placed in relation to it and the consequences of it - the possibility of earthquakes, tsunamis etc. It was a great opportunity to practice the "Drop, Cover Hold" with the children! 

Following the presentation, we had our usual fun with lots of games and after that we had our communal lunch -  sushi that we all made together at the Sushi Workshop! We also played a traditional japanese game called the "Noodles Game" where you pour noodles on one side of a sort of slide and the children need to try and get them with the chopsticks. Ah! and of course eat them! And why not add a bit of soy sauce! Yummie fun! 

Thank you to everyone who came and helped made this day so special!

Check the pictures below: 

                                                   Aki talking about Japan                                                                                                              

                        

The noodles game!!

Our sushi workshop and lunch!

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!!

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!!