We had a somewhat quiet week because this was the week of “Obon”. However, we learned many things about four countries.
On Tuesday, we learned about Comoros. In the morning, the students cooked “sambussa”. (Sambussa are more common in Comoros, Somali and Ethiopian cuisine, while ‘samosas’ originated in India.) The children put the filling in spring roll wrappers and then they tried to fold it into a triangle shape. They all did a great job! They ate a lot of sambussa. One boy said “I’ll teach my mom to cook this at home, too!” In the afternoon we learned about the fish called ‘coelacanth’. They were amazed that it grows to more than two meters long!
On Wednesday, we cooked again – couscous this time – because we wanted to experience Tunisian culture. They (AGAIN!) cut onions and eggplant, and cooked those with tomato sauce and mushrooms. Unfortunately, some students don’t like eggplant and/or mushrooms so they didn’t try it. Later, everyone wrote their name using the Arabic script. They enjoyed writing from right to left! We also tried making a ‘kilim’, but weaving seemed to be a bit too hard.
On Thursday we learned about Pakistan. They tried using hexagons to make mosaic tile art. When they arranged the hexagons, they found they had made the “Mitsubishi” logo! (We teachers couldn’t see it until they pointed it out to us…) During our STEAM class, the students tried to perform a very famous experiment with an egg called the “Egg Drop Challenge”. First they tried doing it individually, and later on we let them talk with each other to figure out how to make the best container for protecting an egg.
On Friday, we learned about India and they tried doing yoga with Ms. Ellie. We put down yoga mats and tried doing many different yoga poses. They were very focused on properly doing each pose. We teachers were so amazed to see them doing all the poses! After that, we did the Naatu Naatu dance from RRR. They enjoyed that a lot and were laughing the whole time! In the afternoon they drew “rangoli” art with chalk. They really enjoyed drawing on the floor!
