Drawing wildlife with Mukambi Primary School students

In January NGO Mondo volunteer Olle Kaidro and WEFOCO school coordinator Sophia Malaha visited different schools in Uganda and Kenya, among them Mukambi Primary School. During their visit, students drew pictures of various plants and animals that could be found near their school.

Students were given drawings made by the students of Pärnu Rääma Basic School. They were fascinated to see some Estonian animals and learn their Estonian names.

After seeing the drawings students were eager to draw their own.

Students were inspired by the surroundings

Everyone were excited and had lots of fun. Especially commenting on each other’s pictures.

They wrote down the name of the animal in English and in their language, suahili.

All of the drawings were gathered to send them to their partner school, Pärnu Rääma Basic School.

Every one were active and really enjoyed the day. Hopefully the pictures will be as well received as the pictures from Estonia!

European Sustainable development week

The celebration of  European Sustainable Development Week in Estonia lasted  from May 1st until June 6th 2017. It was a cooperation project between AIESEC in Estonia and NGO Mondo, Estonian National Coordination of UNESCO Associated Schools Project Network (supported by UNESCO National Commision and Estonian Ministry of Education and Research).

The two AIESEC volunteers, Amy Corcoran and Wentao Pu both came to Estonia from Canada. In cooperation with Mondo’s experts we developed the following workshops:

1) Multuculturalilty in Canada

2) Orienteering game on SDGs

3) Comics on SDGs

4) Sustainable consumption

 

Project was devided in five stages:

2-5 May – Cultural preparation and introduction to #globalgoals

• Arrival
• Introducing SDGs
• Global Education seminar day

8-12 May – School related preparation

• NGO Mondo’s school workshops
• Planning and preparing ESD workshops for schools
• Call for visits for the schools

15-19 May – School visits

• Finalizing ESD workshops
• 05 Multuculturalilty in Canada at Paldiski Ühisgümnaasium – Grades 9-11, 35 students, 2 academic hours, contact teacher Riina Talvik

22-26 May – School visits

• 05 Multuculturalilty in Canada at Ülenurme Gümnaasium – Grades 9-11, 110 students, 2 academic hours, contact teacher Milvi Tisler
• 05 Orienteering game on SDGs* at Nissi Põhikool – Grades 5-9, 100 students, 3 academic hours, contact teaher Day-Lee Holm
• 05 Orienteering game on SDGs at Narva Soldino Gümnasium – Grade 8, around 100 students, 4 academic hours, teacher Tatjana Okuneva. Overnight stay in Narva.

 Mondo koomiksite töötuba ÜG 6.-7.klassidele from Ülenurme Gümnaasium on Vimeo.

29 May -6 June – School visits

• 05 Orienteering game on SDGs at Pala Põhikool – Grades 4-8, 80 students, 3 academic hours, contact teacher Grete Stina Haaristo
• 05 22.05 Comics on SDGs at Ülenurme Gümnaasium – Grade 7, 70 students, 3 academic hours, contact teacher Milvi Tisler

• 06 Comics on SDGs at Jüri Gümnaasium – Grade 8, 40 students, 3 academic hours, contact teacher Kristi Mänd
• 06 Sum up meeting between AIESEC and Mondo

Altogether the ESD week activities reached over 550 students in differenet parts of Estonia adding up to 21 academic hours of workshops, exchanges and positive thinking!

 

 

Zopeliga Primary School: story “Hawk and Hen”

With class 4 of Zopeliga Primary School we were telling folklore tales about different animals. Children knew a lot of stories and we had a good time listening to them. Then the students chose one story which we translated to English.

The story that we decided on is called “Hawk and Hen” and it’s about two friends: the hawk and the hen. They live together and both of them like to play drums. But the hen is a little bit lazy and doesn’t want to work or bring food to the house, she only wants to play drums. So because she is always lying about being sick to not do any work, the hawk gets angry with her and almost kills her one day. To save her own life hen promises to give one of her chick to hen every time she hatches a new set of baby hens. This is why hawk has been taking hen’s chicks ever since.

After doing the translation we divided the story into sections and each student participated in designing some part of our storybook. Some of us were drawing the illustrations, some were writing and some were making the page decorations.

The book turned out very nice and we’ll send it to our friends in Estonia to read.

Field trip with Zua Primary and Zua Junior High School.

On 19^th of October 2016 the students from Zua Primary and Zua Junior High School embarked on a field trip to a nearby hill called Amuhizupelig. We were accompanied by teachers from both schools and by a member of our community who knows the area very well. His name is Baga’ant.

Before starting the trip we gathered together, said a prayer, sang a song and listened to instructions by our teachers.

While taking the trip, we collected different edible or otherwise useful plants and made short videos about them. The typical landscape around our school is quite flat, there are no big mountains or valleys. Because of that people can grow a lot of crops here. We saw fields of maize, millet, okra and other plants all around us. Also there are many useful trees such as shea trees or dawadawas. On the way we saw a lot of animals but only domesticated animals like cows, sheep and goats. No lions or elephants or crocodiles 🙂 As we got farther from the villages there were more grasslands, bushes and wild trees.

During the rainy season the trail we took is very hard to pass through but because by now the dry season is starting and there are no more heavy rains, it was easy enough to reach our destination. To reach the hilltop we had to make our own path through the high grass.

The view from the top of the hill was very beautiful, it’s possible to see all of the surrounding area from up there. We spent some time on the hill relaxing and playing games and then returned back to school. The trip itself was not so long: alltogether we walked for about two hours, but because of the hot weather and the sun we felt a little bit tired afterwards.

Back at the school we watched some videos of the field trips taken by our friends from Kolga school and wrote letters to them.

Wild animals of Ghana by 5th grade of Gorug School

5th class of Kong-Gorug Primary School made an art project about wild animals in Ghana. We made sculptures of native animals of Africa (elephants, crocodiles, zebras, lions). We collected clay  from the field near our school and each student made their own animal. When all the animals were finished we placed them on the classroom floor and drew a water hole on the ground for them to drink from. Then we sang a song about the same animals. Our friends from 4th grade made drawings of our sculptures.

Animals at the water hole

5th grade students with their work

5th grade students with their work

We are going to collect the clay

Ghanaian food event in Viimsi

Ghanaian food event in Viimsi

At the beginning of June, just before the summer break, we held a Ghanaian food event. Pupils were really excited about the lesson. It wasn’t just about food. They actually felt connected. They have penfriends in Ghana. They had written letters to each other, and they had heard about Ghanaian everyday life and education system.
They already knew many things about Ghana so different from what we are used to in Estonia. Just to mention some, which made our pupils see new perspectives: not every child in Ghana can go to school, going to school can be seen as a privilege; extremely big classrooms, meaning up to 80 pupils in a class; pupils help to make their school lunches; very different hygiene opportunities; very different school buildings; many male teachers at schools. All this made our pupils think and discuss. One topic which was always very interesting was food. Food in Ghana seemed to be so different from ours. So, the pupils were very much looking forward to the Ghanaian food lesson.
First, we talked about food safety and discussed about how differently food can be seen and experienced in different places of the world. Then we played a fun Ghanaian-Estonian food game, where we learned about different foods. We learned about okra, and we found out that apples are not as usual in Ghana as they are in Estonia. We learned that blueberries are being seen as something very strange for Ghanaians, and they don’t know what is rye. However, they grow cacao and mangoes and bananas.
Then it was time to try to make something Ghanaian ourselves. We made Zoomkoom – a traditional Ghanaian welcome drink. First, we watched a video about locals in Kongo village making it, and then it was our turn. It was new and fun, even a bit funny. Well, we are not used to add chilli pepper to our drinks. Ginger and chilli pepper got everyone excited. Preparing the drink was a very unusual experience.
When Zoomkoom was finally ready, it was time to taste it and express opinions. We had learned that the first one to taste the food had to be the eldest lady in the house. Our pupils thought that the drink was sweet and strange and hot, but something that one could easily get used to.
The food lesson was a perfect ending for this year’s penfriend project. All pupils involved have learned and experienced so many new things, and they are looking forward to continuing with the project in autumn when they return from their summer break.

Read all the posts by Viimsi School.
Read all the post by students from Estonia.