Do WE ever rest?

Not this teacher nor Dr. S. Gersh, who has been instrumental in helping us complete our school's very first Technology Showcase, to be shown on June 9th at the Samsung Experience in Manhattan. We have been tirelessly seeking out people to help classes get responses from their countries. Yesterday and today I was in contact with a friend of mine from Nigeria. He lives in Abeokuta in Ondo State. He is a Doctor of Library Services at the University of Agriculture and he has agreed to answer questions sent to him by Ms. Egbuchulam's kindergarten class. He is, as the map shows of the Yoruba tribe and the teacher he is helping is from Anambra I believe which, if you look on the map is considered to be part of the Igbo tribal lands. There are many m tribes in Nigeria, if you look on the map above you can see how the land is divided by tribes. Dr. Oduwole has agreed to help in any way possible and I am thankful to Dr. Gersh for her never ending support and to him for agreeing to help out. Thank you both from the bottom of this teachers humble heart!!

We went and saw!!

This is late in coming but on Thursday, May 22, 2008, the 3 students I selected and myself got to go to The Samsung Experience with Mrs. Mohamad, Ms. Anfossi, Mr. Angell and the students they have participating in the showcase too. We got a quick tour by one of the hostesses that work there. When they were done showing us most of the different items there and explaining how it would be set up for our showcase the students, teachers and administrator got to "play" with all the different things at Samsung. It was a wonderful experience. My group took a photo post card as did most of the students to remember the trip. We had only one of ours who didn't and that was because he was playing the games and when we called him to join us, he said he did not want to lose his place. Oh well, so much for unity, hee hee hee. When we were done at Samsung we tried to have lunch in Central Park but God had other ideas, it had been slightly drizzling, but it began to downpour and got very windy as we sat around a statue in the entrance to the park. We hurriedly packed up, got to the train and had our lunch while riding. Even though we had to eat and run, I think for all it was a good experience, especially because they got to see where they will be displaying their hard work on June 9th. Thank you all who made this trip possible for me and them!! :-)

The Quest gets interesting...

Today, I was able to share my knowledge and help get a new blog going for the school. It feels wonderful when we share in this community, especially with people we have come to know and love. Thanks for allowing me to share and to watch the growth as each new person learns how to use this technology. :-)

Once again we continued our quest. When we met with Dr. Gersh last week we were asked to switch our focus and stick to music. Now we are focusing on composers dance and folk music of Ireland. We remain undaunted and our QUEST continues. Look at our site for further updates.

The Quest Continues...

Today, 2 students from 3-219 and 1 from 3-253, got together and really began to gather up information for the quest. Dr. Gersh will be working with these select students so that they can present at the Samsung Exhibit on June 9th. They needed information and they worked hard all morning to find out information about specific Irish cultural items. They found out about the foods that are eaten, the clothes they wear, how they celebrate holidays and the languages of Ireland. They also found out about Irish dancing and music.

Today we found out that yahoo for kids has a lot of good information on many things. Now we will be starting our webpage, be on the lookout for a collaboration of classes 3-219 and 3-253 as they discover Ireland and post it to their very own webpage!! :-)
Ireland Web Page

BOOK FAIR!!!

ATTENTION ALL TEACHERS!!!!

We are having our annual book fair on May 19th thru the 23rd, 2008.

You can be a HUGE part of this by having your students PRE~ORDER BOOKS.

AND guess what??? If you do and you can get more than half your class to pre-order, Mrs. Kaufman will be gifting you with your very own flash drive, ABSOLUTELY FREE!!!!

So now is the time to start thinking about getting your students motivated, thanks all.

The Beginnings of a Culture Quest

My students and I have been very busy. We have been learning about Ireland and about the difference between culture and religion.

Did you know that a religion is simply the way a group of people choose to worship God? We found out that many people, us included, confuse religion and culture. Now we know. We learned about Israel at this website: http://www.israelemb.org/kids/ . We found out that Jewish is both a culture and a religion. This site helped us understand that.

We know a culture is the way a group of people celebrate traditions, dress, and speak. We know that cultures have their own foods and ways to dress and many have their very own languages. Ms. Dooley is having some of us write e-pals in Ireland and we are going to be writing soon. Some of us all ready wrote letters waiting for the e-pals to begin. We are very excited and cannot wait to write to people. Tomorrow I will post some of the students letters which will soon be e-paled to students waiting in Ireland to answer the questions the children came up with.