fairy tales ✒

Two weeks ago we started a new project with the school. It's via e-twinning again and becasue I don't have any permanent bigger group of pupils, I decided to do this with more classes at the same time.

We're going to work with a Slovak school. It's a secondary school in the heart of Slovakia in a beautiful nature. The mean topic of the project are fairy tales. Because Germany and Slovakia are both rich in their folk tales and we both had some famous collectors in our history, we decided to make OUR OWN BOOK.

We've already started with getting to know each other. The first part is so to present ourselves. I'm going to make a presentation about the school on Friday with Linda's 5th graders. Kathrin's 6th graders have already written a little about themselves. I'm going to post these presentations onto e-twinnnig this weekend.

Second part will be to teach our partners something what we are proud of. The Germans are going to present their famous collectors - the Grimm brothers, and Slovak group will present Dobsinsky. At least I guess so, I'll let it be a surprise.

After that, each group is going to look for fairy tales that are "the most..." We'll look for the shortest, the funniest, the scariest... and some more. And this will be the basis of our book. The Slovak group are German learners, so it's a great practise for them to translate these tales into German. As far as the Germans are concerned, I will use this to teach them some more interesting words in Slovak and some new things about my culture. We will also try to illustrate the given fairy tales. Illustrations will be used in our book too. We can make a cover too, but that will be decided rather spontaniously.

At last we're going to write one short fairy tale together. We'll take turns and let our creativity flourish...
I'm sooo looking forward to it :)
I just hope we'll manage till the end of the term. Of course we will!!!

:)

I'll post some more info as said, later. For now, traditionally, our label.

...so how's photoclub doing?

It's great. Photo club was the best idea. There are not many pupils who would visit this club regularily. Rather the oposite (no wonder-we meet on Friday afternnoons). However I try to bring some usefunl techniques to my girls since they love to make pictures and for them it seems like quantity was more than quality. So I'm happy about every good composition, light and idea. Well, they have enough ideas. They are always full of hearts, jumping and having fun. I'm glad when my girls can learn a little.

We also took part in a competition for European youth in action, called German youth photo prize. We don't know the results yet. We'll see, just cross your fingers for us :)

Here are some latest pictures:

...so how's Slovak doing? ✌

I meet a small group of students once a week. We're supposed to learn Slovak language and culture. We play games, we have fun...

So far we've learnt to count to 20, some family members and a family tree, some pronouns. We can greet you and introduce our family members. As a proof, you can watch this short video about Dana's family.

:)

Slovak Easter

For those who know how Easter in Slovakia and Czech Rep. is celebrated, it will be easy to understand why an interactive presentaion about Easter was really interesting for the children. It will also be easy to understand that the boys decidet to visit our countries on Easter Monday :)

I prepared some powerpoint presentation, pictures and poems. Children also played Slovak games with our national heritage pictures. They learned about the bee Maja, Jánošík, Bathory, Maťko a Kubko and many Slovak castles. Unfortunatelly I was so into the action, that I forgot to take pictures.... So I only have some:

If everything goes well, my mum will come to visit me and bring a real korbáč with her... Well, I'm quite curious to see how the children will react :)

Fairy tell me~Reading and thinking ♘

In the last 3 months I've done some reading connected to the environment with four classes. All the books I used are available for free download at the EU Bookshop.



The first one was a story about Blossom and her friends, who live in a little town. Everything is great until Blossom comes to visit her friends and is hit by a car on a busy and dirty road. The kids manage to change the road into a beautiful clean and safe place. You can download the book here. We read this book in German.

Based on our reading, I asked the kids a few questions about the content and the environment - they had to write their opinions and find the correct answers in the text. Moreover, I gave the children a chance to draw an unhealthy street with a lot of cars and pollution (more popular part for drawing) and then a clean one, with trees and no pollution. I'll post here some pictures later.

This story inspired us to play a little theatre. We split the class in two groups and they chose parts in the story to perform. Again, a very popular activity with a great feedback from the children...



The second reading was about Mathias and Amadou. One boy from Europe and the other one from Africa. The main topic is to help those who need it and motivate children to support those in need. We read this story in English with a group of 6th graders. With a little help and seeing the illustrations, they were able to fully understand the story.



Our last reading was called Benny's a champion. A story about a boy who wanted to buy a new bicycle, supported by his father that consuming is important, and his cousin and a fox, who show him, that recycling is much more important and cheaper. At the same time the boys helped an old man to gain the meaning of life again. We read this story in German and I prepared some questions for the kids too. They as well drew some nice pictures connected to this story. I hope to post them too.