Sri Lankan dancing

We are very fortunate to have people in our school community who are willing to share their culture with us in a variety of ways. We really enjoyed this beautiful Sri Lankan dancing.

Indian potato curry

Kirit and Madhu came to school to show us how to make potato curry as part of our cultural cooking day.

Kirit is holding the wok whilst Madhu is mixing up the potato cubes and spices. There is some freshly chopped coriander on the top which he is also mixing into the potato curry.

Madhu cooked us a yummy butter chicken dish too. Everyone in our school loved eating the butter chicken.

Madhu is wearing an apron and a hat on his head as part of his chef uniform. Madhu cooks in an Indian restaurant and cooks delicious food.

Learning from each other

We share many things together in our conversation group. We enjoy learning from each other about different cultures.

We celebrated Korean New Year together and James taught us how to play Yut (Ute). This is a game often played at New Year by Korean families when they are together. It is great fun and we had many laughs learning how to play this game.

James is holding the Ute sticks and is preparing to throw them and Zul, Rajendra, Rashmin and Madhu are waiting to see what he will score.

New learners of English

When children are new learners of English, we provide them with one to one language support until they feel more secure and able to "manage" in the mainstream with their peers. They spend most of their school day with their peers who provide them with an age appropriate model of English language.

Farewell to friends

We have had a few changes in our school recently. Some of our school friends have returned to their home countries and we had to say "Farewell". We look forward to keeping in touch with our friends around the world. It is sad to say goodbye, but it is exciting to hear from them when they get time to contact us. We love to know how they are getting on.

Alif, Amiru and Arif left our school and returned to Malaysia with their parents Zul and Ani. Everyone in our school misses them very much. We keep in touch via email. Zul came to our conversation classes once and week and he made many new friends there. Zul and Ani often helped us with things at school including helping cook delicious Malaysian food with Nik for our cultural day. All the boys made some wonderful duality maps which we displayed at school. They taught us a lot about life in Malaysia - we discovered things that were different to New Zealand as well as some things that were the same .

Yiyi and her Dad, Dawai returned to China where they joined Hong (Mum) who returned to China earlier than them. Yiyi also made a very large duality map and taught us a lot about China. Yiyi also helped us to learn about Chinese New Year and Dawai made some delicious Chinese dumplings for us to eat. Yiyi had some lovely new clothes for Chinese New Year - she looked beautiful in her bright red and lovely coloured clothes.

Braden returned with his family to United States of America. His class (Room 10) have written on their blog about the lovely farewell party they had together before he left.

Dhoti kurta

Madhu wore his dhoti kurta for us to see. A dhoti is the traditional dress in rural Rajasthan which is in north west India. A dhoti is worn each day by men. Dhoti is the name for the pants/trouser part of this clothing. The top part or shirt is called a kurta.

Madhu looks very handsome in his dhoti but he does not wear it every day in Dunedin. He wears it for special occasions. We were lucky that Madhu wore it to show us what it looks like.

Sri Lankan sari and cooking

We learned how to make Sri Lankan cutlets. They are small balls made with potato, tuna and some spices. They were really delicious. Mrs Navaratne and her frien

ds helped us to make some cutlets in our classroom and we ate them for lunch with lots of other wonderful food cooked by other classes on our cultural day. We took turns to do different things in preparing the cutlets.

We helped to mash the potatoes and it was hard work. Mrs Navaratne and her friends showed us exactly what to do. We wrote down the recipe and the ingredients so that we could cook the cutlets at home or again at school one day. We had not eaten cutlets before but they were fun to make.

Mrs Navaratne ( lady on the right) is wearing a beautiful sari. She and Mrs de Silva showed the children at school how to put on a Sri Lankan Sari. The sari is made up of a long piece of silk or cotton material which is carefully wound around the lady and worn over a jacket .

The Sri Lankan sari is put on in a different way to an Indian sari. They are made with lovely materials and they both look very beautiful and graceful on ladies.