We opened our Christmas Cards from Seville!
Category Archives: Erasmus
Erasmus comes to Birmingham
Welcome to our visitors from Italy, Turkey and Greece!
Day 1 – Arrivals
Day 2 – Stratford Upon Avon and the Barbecue
Day 3 – A Trip to London
Day 4 Carnival Day at St Vincent’s
It’s party time. St Vincent’s parents were out in force cooking their national dishes. We ate and sang and danced! But it was time to say to goodbye to our Turkish friends with presents…
Welcome to St Vincent’s
Some English dancing
Year 3 dance the Labada
Year 4 dance to a playground song
The choir entertained us.
A tricky one from Year 5
Reception and Year 1 sang Jump Jim Joe
Year 2 sang John Knackaknacka
Year 6 led the Bungalo
Farewell and safe journey
Greek Day
On Friday we celebrated Greek Day at St Vincent’s. We wore blue and white, the colours of the Greek flag. We found out lots of information, especially about Heraklion in Crete where our friends live. We watched some Greek dancing and had a go ourselves. In class we wrote stories in the style of a Greek myth. Some of us painted pictures of the characters or buildings we had read about. Others made clay pots and tiles or jewelery.
St Vincent’s Abroad
Day 1 of our trip to Heraklion.
All packed and ready to go. A quick drive down and lunch at Luton Airport .Then off we flew. Arrived in Crete about 10.15pm local time and the girls went off to meet their host families. Sleep well everyone!
Day 2
A day of dancing and music. The girls performed their English Square Dance wonderfully. Beautiful weather and food ….mmmm.
Day 3
A visit to the Bronze Age archaeological site at Knossos this morning. Then we worked with our friends to make memory books about our project. Off for some free time this afternoon. 2 of the girls are playing Monopoly …. in Greek!
Day 4
We started the day at the Aquarium – sharks, jellyfish and enormous lobsters. Then off around the island to see Elounda – the home of the rich! then Spinalonga and finally lunch at the beautiful sea lake at St Nikolaos city.
Day 5
Finally, it was time to say goodbye. Thank you so much to our hosts for making us so welcome. We hope to see you very soon in Birmingham.
Polish Day
We found out lots about Polish traditional tales. Some children made leaflets about Turon where our friends live.
Italy Day
What a brilliant day! The children learned all about Italian art and culture. They are experts in the ‘pasta twist’ and know all about opera singing. We hope you enjoy their pizza suppers.
St Vincent’s in Poland
On our way
Day Two – Making friends
Turkey Day
We’ve had a fantastic day learning all about life in Turkey; the food, the clothes, the dancing and the crafts. The children learned how to play Korobe; they cooked ekmek and baklava; they learned to dance the Halay; they made amulets called Hamsas and beautiful Turkish tiles. They did some great research too – see if you can remember the answers to these questions:
What is the capital city of Turkey?
What is the currency of Turkey?
What is the highest mountain in Turkey?
Erasmus Visit Day 4
It was the last day of the visit and off we went to the Black Country Museum to see what life in Britain was like in the 19th century when the first industrial towns and villages were emerging.
We wandered through the village and chatted to residents charismatic residents. There were trams to ride, games to play, things being made, stories to hear. We visited the mines and rode on the fairground, ate lunch in the pub and explored the tiny back-to-back houses and shops.
It was time to say goodbye as the Polish and Turkish teams headed off to the airport. …and finally the Italian team set off back to the hotel for their last evening in Birmingham.
Erasmus Visit Day 3
On Friday we started the day with a ‘Talk for Writing’ presentation from each class. We heard everything from traditional stories, persuasive letters, reports and even a speech by William Shakespeare.Then we took our visitors on a tour of the school while our children presented them with hand-made flowers.
Meanwhile the teachers had a meeting to plan the next steps for the project. It took a lot of discussion to decide on the dates for our next visits,but we got there in the end.
In the afternoon, the children had a gymnastics lesson with a specialist coach, while the their teachers went shopping.
Later there was much secret practice for the evening performance – a night of song and dance with contributions from each country. It was a fabulous show – have a look at the films on the next page. Halfway through we stopped for some fish ‘n’ chips – traditional English meal.
Thank yous