1. A trip to the Bieszczady National Park Nature Museum in Ustrzyki Dolne
3. Polish Flora and Fauna multimedia presentation
4. We learn about French traditions
7. A trip to the Magurski National Park Museum in Krępna
1. A trip to the Bieszczady National Park Nature Museum in Ustrzyki Dolne
The members of the touring circle supervised by Ms Krystyna Pelczar went on a trip to the Bieszczady National Park Nature Museum in Ustrzyki Dolne.
Here is a report from the trip:
On 1st December 2007 we went on a trip to the Bieszczady National Park Nature Museum in Ustrzyki Dolne. The guide was waiting for us . He told us about the systematic division of animals, organisms structure, systematic groups’ origin and their evolution. He talked about protozoans, invertabrates, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, and extinct organisms. He acquainted us with the Carpatians and the Bieszczady structure, their climate and hydrology. We learnt about the Bieszczady National Park protection plan with the relation to natural resources and human activity. Next, we got acquainted with the Bieszczady flora and fauna.
We had a great time and the weather was good as well. There was a lot of sun and snow. We went on a sightseeing tour of Ustrzyki Dolne. We visited the Orthodox church, some statues and the beautifully restored old town. We came home very impressed.
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We were invited to our Comenius partner school in Evecquemont. It is a small town near Paris. The school is also small. It has a kindergarten group for children aged 3-5 and a school group for children aged 6-10. Nursery education in France has a long tradition and although it is not compulsory, almost all children go to nursery schools. Our partner school is a public one where education is free. The school works five days a week. Wednesday is free from school and it is the time for individual activities like art or sport which are organized by parents. The children stay at school from 8.30 till 4.30 pm or even longer. They also have classes on Saturday mornings. They have 26 hours a week and each class lasts 60 minutes. For those pupils who have some learning problems or some backlog, there are 3 extra hours a week to complete the backlog.
Primary education lasts 5 years and is divided into two stages: a three-year long one and a two- year long one, but the first year of nursery education as well as two first years of primary education are the so-called basic education and the remaining years are consolidating education. Throughout each stage of education there is one teacher but there can be other professional teachers for subjects like Music and a foreign language.
The French children prepared a nice welcome for our representatives, they showed us around the school, presented some colourful posters, told us about their country and the region in English and encouraged to take part in their classes. In the afternoon we were invited to the mayor site where we saw a picturesque performance entitled ‘The four seasons of the year for Europe - France’.The hosts showed us the most beautiful places of their well-known capital. We visited the artists’ district in Paris Montrmartre overlooking the city. We went to the second floor of the Eiffel Tower, we visited some museums and we had a chance to see the Versailles Castle and the Versailles parks. Unfortunately, we did not have time for more sightseeing. A nice point of the visit was a meeting with the Poles who have been living in France for years. One of them works at school and the other one is the Evecquemont pupil’s mother.
3. Polish Flora and Fauna multimedia presentation
4th and 5th class pupils prepared a computer presentation about Polish flora and fauna. They used their abilities to find photos on the Internet, put them on the slides and made animations.
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4. We learn about French traditions.
4th and 5th class pupils were looking for the information about some French traditions related to The Three Kings festival that is called Epiphanie. They did that on their Information Technology Circle. On the basis of the collected materials they wrote short texts about the festival.
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On 5th January 2008 there was a carnival ball in our school. It was slightly different from the previous ones because we celebrated the festivals of the two partner countries’ – Greece and France.
We started from presenting the information about the Greek festival and Monday of Lent and we told the audience about the way the Greek pupils celebrate these traditions. Then, 3rd class pupils presented a traditional Greek dance ’gaitanaki’. “Gaitanaki” is a wooden pole with colourful ribbons tied to it. By doing specific steps the dancers aim to wrap the ribbons around the pole and then unwrap them again. The audience liked the dance so much that the dancers eagerly gave an encore.
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Next, 6th class pupils told everybody about the French festival of the Three Kings – Epiphanie. All of us learnt about the tradition of baking a cake with a surprise inside (gallete). After that two representatives from each class were treated to the cake with a bean inside. Gallete with a surprise was won by Mateusz Nycz and Kinga Habrat who became the king and the queen of the ball. The “royal couple” sat on the prepared thrones.
An important point of the evening was a disco. Everybody was enjoying themselves in a beautifully decorated gym .
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On 28th February there was The Kalevala Day celebrated. Class 4 pupils supervised by their class teachers (Ms Samborska and Ms Niepokój) prepared an interesting performance about the fabulous country of Finland. There was a computer presentation shown including the most important information about the country as well as the photographs depicting beautiful landscapes, characteristic animals, nature symbols of Finland, the seat of Santa Claus in Rovaniemi and an ice and snow palace in Kemi.
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The pupils and the teachers heard about the Kalevala and saw a computer presentation with its summary and the illustrations to different editions of the Kalevala.
The school choir under the supervision of Ms Wysocka sang a song in a very difficult Finnish language to the melody recorded by the Finnish pupils and played the kantele - the Finnish folk instrument.
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We also heard the Finnish national anthem. Also, there was a short lesson of Finnish. Michał Frączek performed a famous ski jumper Janne Ahonen and was interviewed by Michał Delimata. Another attraction was Santa Claus’ visit whose part was acted by Jakub Gałuszka.
There was an exhibition related to the Kalevala and Finland prepared at our school with the connection of the Kalevala Day where you could see the illustrations to the Kalevala drawn and painted by the Finnish pupils from the partner school Jäälin koulu. Also, we organised a contest about Finland for 1-3 and 4-6 class volunteers.
7. A trip to the Magurski National Park Museum in Krępna.
A report from the trip by Dagmara and Jędrek.
On 9th March we went on a trip to the Magurski National Park Museum in Krępna which was a part of our Touring Circle activities. We set off at 10 a.m. First we saw The I World War cemetery. Then, we watched a film about the world creation in the museum and the exhibition presenting the four seasons of the year. There were tectile computers in one of the rooms and we did some ecology quizzes and read the news on them. In the other room we admired animals’ horns. In the end we saw the tree trunks with their name labels in Polish and in Latin and even in the Braille alphabet.
We liked that trip very much. We learnt a lot of interesting things, for example how to tell animals age. All of us bought some souvenirs like leaflets, postcards, etc. We hope our next trips will be as enjoyable as this one.
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