Friday evening, last week, the second group of ISG parents and pupils went to the Observatory in Ghent and learned more about space. The first group went there two weeks ago. We say a big thank you to the volunteers working there, they taught us so many things! What a nice evening it was, we all gasped when we saw beautiful stars and planets and when we realized how huge the universe is. We used the big telescope, but it was very cloudy this Friday, so we did not see any stars, but only the golden dragon on top of the Belfort in the city centre. That was interesting as well.
This week we continued reading and discussing poems and lyrics and we added lots of autumn and winter words to our vocabulary. We have, of course, written our own winter poems – acrostic poems, rhyming poems and poems with repetition or metaphors – that we now proudly share with you in the hallway.
We walked to the Public Library in Ghent Monday afternoon, where we could only return books, not borrow any new ones, since there was a nationwide strike and many workplaces were affected. The library was one of them… We will go back and borrow new books in January instead!
On Tuesday we listened to the book “How the Grinch stole Christmas” and then we watched the movie. The pupils in both Lower and Upper Primary liked the story and they laughed a lot! We then shared our learning from our IPC-unit. This was our Exit point. Upper Primary pupils taught Lower Primary about volume, decibel and high and low pitch. Lower Primary pupils taught us more about ear size and explained why some animals have big ears and some have small ears. Interesting!
On Wednesday we continued our Exit point with a nice jamming session. Upper Primary pupils used their knowledge about orchestras and made sure that all the instruments were placed in the right way in front of the conductor. After the concert it was time for games, games, games. The pupils had brought games from home and shared them with their classmates. Dart, spelling games, spinning tops and lots and lots of fun – the pupils almost didn’t have time for their snack!!
On Thursday we had a chance to finish off our literacy assignments and continue working on the decorations for the Christmas Fair on Friday. The head of school, Miss Sonja, also came up to our classroom and gave us our Swimming certificates. At the end of the day we got our Mid-year reports. It was exciting to see how much we have learned since we started here in September. We are amazing pupils!
On Friday we went swimming in the morning. It was raining cats and dogs! We were absolutely soaking wet!! All the radiators in our classrooms were full with socks and gloves!
After lunch we made sure we were ready for the Christmas Fair! We were excited and maybe a bit nervous... The big room looked different with all the decorations and with all our guests – family members, volunteers and other guests. We sang, danced, read poems and did our best to make our parents feel happy and proud. English, German, Tamil, French, Dutch and Hebrew were part of the show. It was interesting - some of us recognised some languages, others had never heard them before. We talked a bit about International Mindedness, something we have discussed here in our Upper Primary classroom before. It is really interesting to share languages, cultures and traditions. Some of the pupils in Upper Primary have realized that in some of the mother tongues in the class you write and read texts from right to left and in others you write and read from left to right.
Then it was time to wish each other a happy holiday – and to say goodbye to the people that now leave ISG. We had prepared goodbye-cards and we all felt a bit sad when writing them, but we know:
Goodbyes are not forever.
Goodbyes are not the end.
They simply mean “I’ll miss you,
Until we meet again.”
Happy holidays! See you again in 2015!