Sharing ideas!

As you may have seen before our Year 8 students are doing a project based around zodiac signs in different cultures. They have learnt about themselves based on information related to the time, day, date and year of their birth. We are now sharing this information with Estelle so she can run the project with some of her Burmese students.

I am sending Estelle some of the worksheets we made to help the students develop their ideas:


 They used these to either copy from or trace over the animals that represented them in Burmese and Chinese zodiacs. We also looked at Native American Indian astrology as well.





This is the Burmese garuda - turns out I am a garuda! I am also a pig and a raven - all of these creatures have various traits which I am supposed to possess. The students really enjoyed finding out about their animals and their character traits.


I produced some designs ideas to help students consider what was important layout issues in a poster. I also loaded information up on our http://sundorneart.blogspot.com/ blog which we discussed.


We made some fact sheets so students could collect all their information.




And here are some examples, they are not yet finished but they are still striking pieces of work!
We spent time looking at colour theory and painting techniques to help the students achieve a strong visual piece.






Hopefully this will help Estelle teach this project with her Burmese students.

Burma Bake Off!


          Year 8 students spent their art lesson yesterday making chocolate cup cakes and 
     rice crispie cakes to sell to the rest of the school and staff. The money raised will
    be used to send chocolate for easter to the students in Mae La Oo.


These rice crispie cakes are so easy to make and we sold out very quickly
 They were almost as popular with the staff as they were with  the students!



  Cup cakes are always easy to sell, everybody loves chocolate, and anything with icing on is a winner with the students.


    This was the temptation for all true chocoholics!
A large chocolate cake was the raffel prize up for grabs at the cake sale.

                                    
    Selling was fast and furious once the bell went for morning break, we only has 20
 mins to sell our cakes, staff and students did not let us down, by the end of break
all that was left were the crumbs on the plates.

Making cakes!

8.3 made cakes this morning ready to sell in our Burma Bake Off! We are hoping to make money to send chocolate for Easter as they celebrate Easter aswell!




Let's hope sales go well!

Karen New Year in Mae La Oon refugee camp

Karen new Year in Mae La Oon Camp


Yaung Nii Oo school dance group


Shorthly before Christmas, Karen new year festival took place. As we mentioned 
in a previous post, there are many new years, as many as there are ethnic peoples. 
The dates vary and they are usually based on the lunar calendar. Here in Thailand 
were 3 weeks away from Songkran, the theravada boudhist new year, celebrated 
in Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Sri Lanka. But i'm getting carried away...!

To celebrate Karen New year, dance groups rehearse and perform the 
Dawn Dance. The "Dawn Dance" (nothing to do with dawn, it means New Year) 
are performed by boys and grils, men and women. Actually the dancers sing and 
dance at the same time, while drummers play. One must be pretty fit to finish a 
complete song because the dances are fairly energetic. The songs are happy and 
very catching, the dancers dress up in traditional clothing, proud to continue their 
cultural heritage.

Rehearsals
                                       
                                                                      

Practicing the Karen Dawn dance for Karen New year









Click here to watch the video

Rehearsal
 



The new year festival

Sunrirse students dance in front of the whole of Mae La Oon refugee camp

 






On the day, people gathered from all around the camp. Some people have to walk for an
hours to reach the festival grounds. The drum and the buffalo horns you can see on the gate 
are the emblems of Karen people, the sunrising is part of the Karen flag.
 
After much waiting, we're ready to dance!




It means a lot for Sunrise school students to perform for the New Year festival because they can be shuned by other schools for learning in a schools that uses Burmese as the teaching language. By performing the Dawn dance, they show their love of Karen culture and assert thier identity as Karen youth.






 Yaung Nii Oo student did a wonderful performance that night, demonstrating that the new generations will continue to care fro Karen traditions and arts.




Christmas in Yaung Nii Oo (Sunrise) school

Here is all the information on the Xmas festival at Sunrise School. Thank you everybody for your fund raising and support, as you will see it was much appreaciated and well spent!


raining misty weather for christmas
The Xmas festival for Sunrise students was full of fun activities. The first day started by the sport tournament with 5 teams taking part. It was a misty winter morning.


After playing football, badminton, Chin Lone and Htoh See Toh, the players took a rest for the next day's event: Fundraising food fair to donate to the elderly in the refugee camp and a dance and music show in the evening.Christmas mass was celebrated at the school too.
Yellow team
Opening ceremony for Christmas sport
competion
-Nyunt Baun team (mixed team)
Green team
Blue Team
Supporters
Supporters
Football tournament
Girls football team- Half time
Girls back in the field
Boy's turn
Chin Lone (Takraw) played with feet and head only, the ball is made woven cane
Badminton
HToh See Toh
Htoh See Toh

Second Day: Food fair for fundraising
Elder people are very much respected and the younger generation takes care of them.
In the refugee camp, there are very little ways to earn money and this is even harder for older people, so students decided to fund raise and donate to the elders at Christmas.
Food fair area set up on the sports field 
Mixed salad stand (rice salad, noodle salad, papaya salad, pennyworth salad)
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 Token/ food coupon (no refund!)

Giving Thanks- Yakhine Mon Thee (rice noodle and fish soup Rakhine style) - Thanks for coming and buying food


Costumers starting to arrive

Papaya salad




Dancing and music stage with Karaoke


School Christmas dinner
Back in the school kitchen, cooking chicken curry for Xmas dinner
Cooking for the school Christmas dinner take a lot of man power!

And a lot of garlic for tasty salads and curries!

Mixing the ingredients




One needs a lot of garlic for tasty salads and curries!


A way of cooking rice
Meanwhile outside, more cooking for fund raising

Frying snacks
Frying up all the garlic to serve with the salads

Garlic is golden and ready to add to the curry

Is it ready yet?
Not coffee! fish soup...
Fried chicken


Sport competition prizes  
Xmas sport tournament prizes

Htoh See Toh winner

Badminton winner

Evening concert and dance show
Children dances
By now, many people have come to watch the show
Watching a video
The church band came and helped for the evening
Live singing



An all time favorite
"Special" fried gourd stand
Cooking fried gourd in batter, a favorite snack

The fund raising is going well

And the fried gourd is delicious

Thanks to Sundorne for this wonderful Christmas!