The musical performance and the banquet that follows are the big celebration of the end of their China unit. Since January, the grade has been studying China — they’ve made kites, learned calligraphy, seen the Chinese acrobats, gone to Chinatown in Philly, seen the exhibits at PAFA, read novels about china, and so on. Generally, they’ve been immersed in China for over two months!

There were 17 groups and each prepared a dish for the banquet. Owen’s group made Sweet and Sour Chicken. They had to research their recipe, assign responsibilities and do all the preparation and cooking themselves. For a few photos of the banquet, click here.

See more photos here.

(Fiona was Cleopatra and Owen was Perseus, holding Medusa’s head)

See photos from the game here.

(This is posted late, because Molly, Spartan and I had a long nap to celebrate no one else being in the house.)

In the first session, the asked if anyone already knew how to swim, and of course Fiona said yes. That made her a “deep-ender.” The deep-enders (at first there were only two, but by the end of the six weeks, there were four or five) would do their warm-ups with the rest of the class on the platform in the shallow end, and then go down to the deep end for their lessons with Coach Crippen in the water and Coach Shoulberg watching from the pool deck.

The deep-enders worked on crawl and backstroke and did laps across the width of the pool. Sometimes they did races (Fiona claims to have ALWAYS won. That hasn’t been independently confirmed.) Sometimes they used kickboards or floats and they seemed to really like that, but Fiona’s favorite part was toward the end of class when they got to jump off the diving board.

I helped out a couple of times in the shallow end with the less experienced swimmers, so I didn’t get to see too much of what Fiona was doing. One day, Coach Shoulberg came down to the shallow end and asked if I was Fiona’s mother. When I said yes, he said something along the lines of, “I don’t care what sport Fiona wants to do, but she’s going to be swimming with me.” (I’m not sure, but I think Fiona just got recruited.)

The big news this week from swimming was that Coach Shoulberg told Fiona to do a flip off the diving board. She did.

When I got there today, to take photos of the last day of swimming, at least five children and three adults made it a point to tell me about Fiona’s flip off the board. Since today was the last day of class, they got extra free swim, so Fiona got to do many flips off the board. For the first time, they were also allowed to use the ropes. A couple of the deep enders were a bit hesitant and elected to just jump off the blocks into pool, but wild girl Fiona grab the rope, swung high in the air and flung herself into the pool over and over.

And to top off a great day of swimming, they got popsicles from Coach Shoulberg to celebrate the end of the session.

CLICK HERE for more photos of fishy Fiona

Maasai Schoolchildren in their Outdoor "Classroom"

I think that some of the times we’ll most remember is when we visited schools. We spent a short time at a Maasai school near Lake Ayashi and spent a lot of time at the Haydesh Primary School near Karatu.

The Maasai school we visited was just for the youngest children. It was held outdoors, under a shade tree with one teacher. They were in the process of building a classroom so that they could continue lessons when it rains. The children go to school in the mornings and then help around the boma (family community) in the afternoons.

Haydesh Primary School is VERY isolated. It took us almost two hours from Karatu to get there on winding, dirt roads. We could see that during the rainy season the roads would definitely be washed out.

The area has been hit hard by the drought over the past few years. Although the rains late last year and into this year have improved things very much, we could tell that the area was still struggling. Most of the residents of the area are from the Iraqw tribe. Their mother tongue is a Cushtic language (related to Ethiopian), so that means Kiswahili (the “official” language of Tanzania) is the second language for students and English is the third.

Children of the Haydesh Primary School

The parents of the community are responsible for building the school, and once that is done the government provides a corrugated tin roof and teachers. This school had three classrooms complete — for seven grades — and three teachers. Another classroom was almost complete. They combined classes when they can — for example, the third through sixth graders were together — otherwise, the children wait outside until a teacher and classroom is available. The school has no electricity or running water.

The oldest children could speak English as well as Kiswahili and all introduced themselves to us. Their lessons are mostly in Swahili, but they do a lot of work in English as well. The very youngest children, the five-, six- and seven-year-olds were working on learning Kiswahili so they had classes in their mother tongue as well.

The classrooms all had “Little House on the Prairie”-style desks, with two or three students per desks. The students shared textbooks AND they shared notebooks/paper. The school obviously desperately needs supplies. One of my favorite moments was when we’d been there about 10 minutes and Jack whispered to me, “I think I should suggest a CSO (the Germantown Academy student-run Community Service Organization) project to help this school. They need notebook paper and pencils.”

More photos from our school visits are here.

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ETA: Here’s a photo of Fiona and her class in their costumes. Too cute!!

PKW, Stars of the Mother Goose Play

“Good Dancing Restores The Community To Wholeness”

The third grade at Germantown Academy has been studying Africa since they returned from Christmas vacation.  Among the topics they’ve studied are masks, stories, food, culture, geography, music; but, mostly importantly, they studied DANCE.

The students have  been working each week this year with Jeannie Osayande, director of the Dunya Performing Arts Company, and drummers from company.

Yesterday, just before early dismissal for yet another (!) snow storm, the third grade presented their dance performance  to a full house  of parents, friends and all the Lower School students in the arts center. It was a fabulous show.

There was even a surprise appearance yesterday by a Chakaba, a masked stilt dancer. The Chakaba brings blessings to festivities. There was also a demonstration of the Afro-Brazilian martial art of Capoeira. And the show ended with a rousing dance by the entire Lower School faculty!!

Owen’s class did a dance from the West African countries of Mali, Guinea and Senegal called the “Mandiani.”   It is performed traditionally in the celebration of ‘Coming of Age’ ceremonies. Mandiani is also performed at weddings and other social events and is also one of the fastest, most energetic and exciting dances of West Africa.

Then it was back to the Lower School and the third graders read aloud their original African fables. Owen’s was titled “How the Leopard Got Its Spots,” and was a beautifully illustrated and bound book that he had made. (He hasn’t brought his book home yet, but I’ll scan the pages and post when he does.)

Photos from the day are here.