Jólakveðjur - Merry Christmas from Iceland

Hér eru kátir strákar á jólaballinu. Merry lads at the Christmas ball (6.Á.)

And girls from 3.I. making their Yuletide lad, Window Peeper.

Dear partners,

This morning we had a "parents´hour" - we had invited the parents to come and see what we have been doing this autumn term. It was only a short program, since the parents´oft have to hurry to their work. However, we felt that the parents do care about the school and want to see and hear what is going on, since our auditorium was quite full.

First the children sang Holy night (Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht) in Icelandic, Hungarian, Finnish and Italian - alas, we have not got the Portuguese version, but hopefully it can me amended for the next year. Then we showed bits of the Christmas videos. At the occasion the Parents´Club gave us a fine digital camera, Canon EOS. It is very precious to have such a strong bond with the parents.

Dear partners, we here in Iceland send you our warmest greetings for Christmas and thank for good co-operation this year.

(Icelandic:)

Í morgun vorum við hér í skólanum með stutta dagskrá fyrir foreldra Comeniusbekkjanna þar sem við kynntum hvað hefur helst verið á döfinni. Börnin sungu Heims um ból á fjórum tungumálum, nemendur 2. bekkjar spiluðu á blokkflautu og svo var sýndir bútar af myndböndunum sem gerð voru í haust í kringum jólamöppuna. Við þetta tækifæri færðu fulltrúar Foreldrafélags Digranesskóla okkur verðmæta gjöf, Canon EOS myndavél sem mun án efa nýtast vel. Nú er skólinn orðinn mjög vel tækjum búinn og getur leyst jafnvel flóknustu verkefnin.

Comeniusverkefnið hefur verið okkur mjög dýrmætt, bæði vegna samvinnu kennaranna og áhuga sem það hefur vakið hjá nemendunum. Tilgangur verkefnisins er að kynna sér menningu annarra landa og uppgötva um leið sinn eigin bakgrunn og menningu og skynja hvað er svo sérstætt hjá okkur. Ég held að þetta hafi tekist prýðilega. Hér má nefna frábæra landkynningu sem nemendur 6.Á. gerðu í fyrra (þá 5.Á.) og settu í Power Point og þau leikrit sem byggð voru á íslenskum þjóðsögum og sett voru uppí fyrra og álfaverkefni nemenda annars bekkjar. Í jólamöppunni sem var verkefni liðins hausts rifjuðu nemendur okkar upp sögurnar um jólasveinana og lærðu um jólahaldið í vinalöndunum. Einnig æfðu þeir sönglög frá öðrum löndum og tengdust á þennan hátt menningu annarra. Nú er margt fram undan og vonum við að tónlistarlífið mun eflast enn meir undir stjórn Þórdísar.

Við í Comeniusteymi Digranesskóla óskum ykkur öllum gleðilegra jóla og farsælt komandi ár. Takk fyrir samstarfið í ár. Hlökkum til nýrra verkefna.

F.h. Marjatta

GREETINGS from ITALY & MORE

NICE MEMORIES...



While reorganizing files on my personal computer, I hit on a nice picture sent from Maria, entitled "The very beginning" taken on a very pleasant Christmas party, in December 2005. I believe our group is a a very friendly and creative team and it has been and it is really nice working together.

I 've told my children we've some friends quite far away from Cordenons .... we made this special drawing to wish you, once again , a BUON NATALE , to the older and the younger , this means 4 years old, all over Europe !

During this period I've been working on the tale sent from Iceland with my pupils. Today I e mailed the new story to Portugal. Children enjoyed this story a lot , actually they were really attracted by monsters, giants, goblins...They like to be scared, while listening, by frightening stories , it's a sort of strategy for them to remove fears .

In the picture below they represented three bad creatures on the top of the white mountain, one of them is griping a man, they imagined he wanted to SWALLOW him!

Their last tought was that if they will never travel to Iceland, they won't go up to the mountains neither to volcanos, while the full moon is shining in the sky, it could be too dangerous....

Greetings from Sabina

The Republic of Finland 90 years - Hakarinne Celibrates

The republic of Finland celibrates its 90th year on the 6th of December. It was during the first world war (1917) that the Finnish senate declared independancy from Russia and decided that the country should be a republic. Since the 6th of December is a holiday and the school is closed, the pupils and the staff of Hakarinteen koulu had their celibration the day before. Here we have some photos of the event. There are pupils of many nationality in Hakarinteen koulu and they played a role of ambassidors, each representing their country, like it is done at presidential invitations. On the other photo we see pupils and teachers in the Finnish national costume.

Lýðveldið Finnland heldur uppá 90. ára afmælið sitt í dag, 6.desember. Þar sem 6. des. er almenn frídagur í Finnlandi héldu nemendur vinaskólans okkar, Hakarinteen koulu, uppá afmælið hátíðlega daginn áður. Okkur bárust þessar og fleiri myndir í dag ásamt lýsingu á hátiðinni.

Á efri myndinni sjáum við nemendur skólans af ólíkum þjóðernum leika "sendiherra" upprunaþjóða sinnar og á efri myndinni eru nemendur og kennarar í þjóðbúningi. Konan til hægri er Anneli Piirainen sem heimsótti okkur hér í Digranesskóla í júní s.l.

Tales of Europe kynning / presentation

Tales of Europe verkefnið var kynnt í sérstökum bás í tengslum við ráðstefnuna um nýja menntaáætlun EBS og EEC landanna sem haldin var í Kennaraháskóla Íslands 4. des.

Tales of Europe and its products were presented at a conference which was arranged on the 4th of December by the National Agency of Iceland. On the wall there were drawings by the pupils (cf. the photo) and on the table in front of it we had cd and dvd discs, books and the activity report with the goals.

Many of the visitors showed interest to our project and asked for more information.

Folk Melody for Yuletide Lads - Jólasveinasöngur

Tales Products at an Exhibition

The Icelandic National Agency will have a conference at the University of Education in Reykjavik next week, 4th December. They have asked Digranesskóli to have a stall there and show samples of products that the pupils have made within the Tales of Europe project. Especially they liked the books that we here in Digranesskóli made out of the tales that the partners produced last year. - Remember the laminated, colourful books that catch the eye? Such as The Seal's Skin (Iceland), The Story of Saint Encrácia (Portugal), Little Spiteful Riding-Hoods (Italy).

The coordinator will be there to answer the questions of the conference guests - and hopefully try to get more people interested in this kind of projects.

I hope this empowers you all - What we do seems to draw attention and admiration. I wish you all, both pupils and staff members of all partner schools a very good continuing Comenius and Tales year! The next step is to make the best of our Christmas portfolios visible!

Marjatta

Kópavogspósturinn - Local media in Kópavogur

Kópavogspósturinn hefur fylgt jólaballsfréttinni eftir og birti þessa mynd í tölublaði sínu 1.nóvember. Annars var blaðið aðallega helgað íþróttum. Gaman samt að blaðið veitir einnig okkur athygli þó að blöðin eins og Kópavogspósturinn hafa nóg efni frá auglýsendum.

This photo and some lines about how the project is going was published in our local paper the Kópavogspósturinn, on the first of November. It is nice that the local media remembers us, even if they need to give a lot of space to their sponsors.