Happy New Year

In an approaching New Year 2010 many occasions for smiling and laughing, many successes at work and no misunderstandings with anyone.
Polish teachers, students and staff of our school.

New years puppet theatre

Every year in our school teachers and younger students organize the traditional performance called "New Year's Puppet Theatre". This year the tradition was also fulfilled. Children played the roles of Mary, mother of Jesus, of saint Joseph, angels, shepards, the magi. Our students sang carrols to newborn child Jesus introducing the other students and teachers to the christmas atmosphere.

Happy New Year and Merry Christmas

Dear All,

Happy New Year and Merry Christmas

Have a nice holiday..

Greetings from Turkey

Sevgili Arkadaşlar;

Hepinizin yeni yılını kutlar; yeni yılın sağlık, mutluluk, huzur, başarı getirmesini ve dileklerinizin gerçekleşmesi için fırsatlar sunmasını dilerim,

Celal

Cooperation with the libraries

2 public town libraries in Będzin, appreciating cooperation with our school, have asked our theatre group “The Black Cat” and our choir “The Adventure” for preparing an artistic programme on the occasion of The International Competition of the Knowledge about Astronomy and on the occasion of the Appointment of the Reader. Thanks to such meetings our youth not only develop their interests and creativity but they also participate in cultural life of our town.

Competitions

Our students willingly take part in many competitions of different range. They achieve many successes:

• the second position in The Competition among Schools titled: “One of the Best Ones”
• four the third positions and two so called “distinguished positions” in The Country Competition in Literature titled: “Creativity of the School Bench”.

Some Photos about Nursery Students' Works, Titled Green World

Pupil's Logo Works

In 2010, in the World, we whish more Peace and less Pollution !

We hope that the new year down there a world with less pollution and more Peace!

Please, check lists if they are correct

The list of the Turkey teachers who voted

Akdeniz Celal
Ahmet Balci
Ahmet Borcek
Ahmet Kocabey
Arif
Ya§ar
Yusuf
Zeynep Neptun
Aysun Özsanağ
Şükran

The list of the hungary teachers who voted

Diana Juni
Andras Varga
Judit Kupás
Tunde

The list of the portuguese teachers who voted

Anabela Oliveira
Camila
Conceição Coelho
Conceição Fernandes
Conceição Marques
Joana Viana
Margarida
Mercês
Teresa Henriques
Vítor Ângelo

Please Pay Attention!

we have a problem with the couting of votes!
The problem is the one that was identified by Celal.

-------------
Dear Hungarian School's Coordinator; Hello,

I hope all you are fine.

I would like to know, which comment is real, the first one which posted at 13.04 or second one which posted at 14.45

Because they're different..

Thank you for your consideration,

My regards,
Celal
-------------

Please, we ask to the Hungarian Colleagues the answer as soon as possible, to publish the logo and the slogan winners.

We remember too that anonymous votes are not counted.

São Coelho e Joana Viana

Christmas in Hungary

The holiday season starts with Advent in Hungary, too. Advent wreaths can be seen in stores, schools, offices, and in almost every home. This time of year is the preparation for Christmas. Candles are decorated with red and gold ribbons symbolizing life and brightness. Most children get Advent calendars with a small gift or candy for every day before Christmas. Lights and decoration however stay inside the houses - streets and houses are not as spectacular there as they are in the US. Also, we never decorate a tree before the Holy night. Christmas trees can be seen during advent only in stores symbolizing holiday shopping. We decorate trees on the holy night in immediate families. Christmas is a private, family holiday in Hungary, we don't go to parties. Most families decorate the tree together, but some families keep the older tradition that tree should be a surprise for children who even believe it was brought by angels. Children enter the room only when the small tree bells ring and music arises. Gifts lay around the tree with small labels saying the name of someone in the family. Family-members sing Christmas songs together, then open their gifts and spend the night together. The menu for Christmas night is usually fish or cabbage with the special poppy-bread called "beigli." Christmas is a 2-day holiday here. In the 2 days of Christmas big families meet, often travelling to another town, or maybe very close friends visit each other. But these days are private days of our rush lives. We stop for 2 days and turn to people we love the most. Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ and the holiday of love and heart.

Folk traditions around Christmas in Hungary

There are a lot of folk traditions around Christmas - some of them originate from the pre-Christian years, before 1000. The holiday seasons starts with advent which means for us to wait for Jesus. The other traditions of these days are either religious or folk customs related to the near future, the harvest of the next year.
In the last decades most of the folk traditions has been disappeared from real life, but we can meet them only in small villages. However more and more artist, cultural and folk groups have work on making these traditions known in their performances, videos or books.
December 13th, the name day of Luca has several folk traditions. The day of Luca people start to make a chair from nature wood, which will be done on the day before Christmas. If someone steps on this chair on the in the church during the mass of Holy Night, he can see who is the witch. There are some poems and songs about this tradition.The day of Luca is the day of "love predictions," too. In the evening girls used to cast lead in the backyard. The shape of the lead tells the occupations of their future love.
The largest Christmas-tradition is the "Betlehem play," which has a great written literature as well. Some days before Christmas groups of boys go house-to-house with a model of the holy family. They perform a short play about the child Jesus with songs and poems usually in costumes. The first written document about the "Betlehemes" groups was dated in 1600's.
In our school we also do the Betlehem-play but in a Christian way. We retell the story about the birth of Jesus, sing songs and act the happenings.

Christmas Cooking - Hungary

Christmas cooking
Christmas cooking is an important part of the celebration. In the old villages kitchen table was always the centre of the houses, which was covered and decorated only for holidays. The Christmas table-cloth had a magic meaning of power: health and abundance. People put straw under the table remembering to the manger in Betlehem. Main dishes were: turkey and brioche with walnut and poppy-seed, which is called 'beigli.' Almost all Christmas food had magic meaning: poppy-seed and pear brought abundance, honey made life sweet, garlic brought health, and apple meant beauty and love. Another common dish of today's Christmas-dinner is fried fish, which is a tradition mostly in towns. The scale of fish means money, wealth.Most of these traditions originate in the pre-Christian history, since Christmas is about the shortest day of the year, which was the end of the year for long. Ginger-bread has been an important part of Christmas baking usually made weeks before the holiday. Gingerbread figurines are used to decorate house or the tree.

Santa in Hungary

The Hungarian Santa, called Mikulás, (Me-ku-lash) visits children on December 6th, St. Nicholas' Day, which is the name day of "Miklós." Children put boots in the windows, like stockings hang by the fireplace on Christmas Eve all over the USA. If the child has been good, Mikulás leaves the boot filled with goodies - traditionally with candies, tangerines, walnuts, apples and chocolate Mikulás figurines. Also, most children get small toys and books. If the child has been bad, the boot will contain just a switch usually with a devil-figure attached, indicating a beating is in order.
Usually Mikulás-day is celebrated in schools and in work-places for the workers' children. Children sing Mikulás-songs or tell rhymes about him and when he comes in bravest children go to him, sit to his lap and tell a poem or sing a song. Then Mikulás calls them one by one, praising them for the good things they did and mentions bad things as well.
These personal messages - of course - based on previous parents' notes. Usually Mikulás plays with them for a while or they watch a movie together.There is no Mrs. Santa in Hungary, but Mikulás often comes with one or two small evil boys, called "krampusz (kromm-puhs)."

CHRISTMAS AT THE PORTUGUESE SCHOOL!

Nowadays, at school, children and adults prepare the arrival of Christmas Season!

They rehearse the show they will present at Christmas school party, on Thursday morning.

Their last school day in this year will be on Friday.

They are excited and happy with the antecipation of the gifts they will receive in this season!

At the same time they fix christmas cards to send to the partner schools as well as they share and collect gifts (books, clothes, didactic material, games, toys, etc. )which they will send to our friends from a school in Guiné Bissau - África.

These activities belong to our project Nós com Africa "Knots with Africa". Our blog: http://noscomafrica.blogspot.com/

It´s a good time for talk in classroom about ethical and moral values like solidarity, peace, share, harmony, FRIENDSHIP ...

Christmas in Guiné Bissau (our partner school ...)

PORTUGUESE TRADITIONS - CHRISTMAS!

Christmas is a Christian religious holiday, the second most important Christian festival after Easter. Observed throughout the Western world on 25 December, it is traditionally marked by feasting and gift-giving. In the Christian church, it is the day on which the birth of Jesus is celebrated .The children believe in Santa Claus (called "Pai Natal" - which means: Father Christmas) and the parents tell them that is the baby Jesus who helps Santa with the presents,
The children receive the presents at midnight of 24/25 December or early in 25 th December morning. When we were children we put the shoes near the fireplace as a receptacle for the presents, but nowadays only few childrens do that.

The most part of family set up a Nativity scene (called Presépio), with Mary, Joseph, the cow and the donkey, the three wise men, and lots of other figures The figure of the Christ Child is added to the scene after the family attends Midnight Mass or after midnight....

But everybody have a Christmas tree too; the typical colours are the gold, red and green. The consoada is the reunion of the family, until they wait for the coming of Father Christmas at midnight and takes place on the dinner of 24 th December/Christmas Eve, not in the morning of 25.

During the consoada we dinner (boiled codfish and Portuguese sprouts (in pure olive oil) normally). And then everybody puts lots of desserts in the table and typical plates (rice pudding with cinamon, "rabandas"-seems like french toast, "filhoses"-fried desserts, "broas de mel" (pastries made with honey) “Sonhos” -pumpkin fritters ) Another very traditional desert is the "Bolo Rei" (King's cake) "which is a wreath-like very rich fruit cake laced with crystallized fruits and pine nuts." There is a little present inside the cake and a broadbean-who find the broadbean in one slice, must pay the next “King Cake”. At midnight, there are also families who attend to the church for a special Midnight Mass, called "Missa do galo"-"Rooster’s Mass", but it happens more in the interior, who are more religious.

During the Christmas day Portuguese people visit the friends and family and have a big lunch normally with roast chicken, lamb or turkey. They sing a Christmas songs and they say:

Merry Christmas!

Traduction by Alda Moreira

Aysun says: Oh sweet hours...

May you recover soon, Fritz

Fritz, The Austrian partner had been ill for two weeks.. We would like to say him "may you recover soon, friend. We want to see you among us, asap"..

-

I hope Austrian partner association will take its place between us to competition..

-

We're looking forward to see all logos and slogans to voting.. I'd seen Portuguesan and Hungarian partners' materials and I can say that, rivals are seen very strong, I was afraid of them :)

-

Nonetheless, I know we will win the gold medal :)

-

Thank you all of you, its very nice and its a honour to me that we are together..