An amazing year of friendship, laughter and lots of learning in MP!

Welcome to Middle Primary’s final post for the 2023-2024 school year! These past months have been a burst of excitement, fun, laughter, and of course… lots of learning!

This last term, we had three very insightful IPC projects! Our first one was “Time and Place, Earth and Space”. During this Unit, the children experienced how real geographers work and conduct research. The children worked collaboratively on various group projects, equipped with scientific books, educational articles, and access to specific NASA and National Geographic sites, to find answers to all their questions. During this project, the students were challenged to better understand the relationship between the Moon and the Earth, read coordinates using longitude and latitude, and compare this knowledge with what people in the past believed about the Sun and the Moon. They also learned how Day and Night occur by reading myths and folktales.

After that, we became scientists and biologists with the IPC Unit “The Nature of Life”. The kids learned in greater detail about the life cycles of plants and animals, how to scientifically identify if something is living or nonliving, the importance of safeguarding our environment, how we can make a difference in protecting endangered animals, and how to establish a growth mindset with the 17 Global Goals and the urgent need for collective action in mind. To bring our education outside of the classroom, we enjoyed many activities in our school’s forest and also had a Natural Scavenger Hunt at Citadel Park.  

Our final IPC project was “ART: Lifelike Drawing” where all the students had the opportunity to work on and improve their drawing skills by discovering how real artists work. The kids learned about shading and value, drew houses using perspective, made paper animals through Origami, painted with coffee, created their own full-body portraits with various 2d and 3d materials, and even had the chance to become models and fashion designers! To get inspiration from important artists, we had a fantastic tour and workshop at MSK (Museum of Fine Arts Ghent).  

Because I am personally a big fan of seeing the kids teach their teacher about their culture and home languages, this term MP celebrated our “Home Language” sessions by learning Tamil from India with Saisanth, Chinese from China with Kezhen, Spanish from Mexico and Dutch from The Netherlands with Isabella, Odiya from India with Rayaan, and Spanish from Ecuador with Alek!

For Fun Fridays we had an amazing time with “Inside Out Day”, “One Colour Only Day” and “Toy Day”!

Every Thursday, we continued hosting our Show and Tell routine.  On these occasions, we had Alek bringing in his Football team’s stickers collection, Saisanth with his toy helicopter, Siya with her school stationery, Yan with his Gameboy Tetris, Kezhen with her wonderful drawings, Mina with her lovely notebook about Kuu, Ryo with his Remote control car, Adam with his digital microscope, and finally, Nirvan with his family tree. 

Needless to say, we also had an amazing time celebrating our friends’ birthdays! This term, our birthday students were Paul, Yan, Mina, Saisanth, Izzy, Marc and Igor!

During our very last days of school, we had a nonstop series of fun and engaging activities like celebrating International Yoga Day, becoming great athletes during the Wacky Olympics, having a swim at the Blaarmeersen, experiencing our “Moving up” moment where my amazing Year 4 students visited the teacher they’ll have next year, and welcoming the Year 2 students who will be joining Middle Primary next year, and so much more!

Last but not least, we celebrated the International Festival, a wonderful moment to feel proud of where we come from, our languages, culture, food, traditional clothes, and more. Middle Primary shone with their “Santé” dance from the Belgian artist Stromae, inviting all parents to join in during the dance!

I am very thankful, happy and proud to have had my awesome Middle Primary students, and I can only wish the best for them! I can’t wait to see you all back in September! Have a wonderful summer vacation!

Ms. Cristi