On the first of March in Bulgaria we traditionally celebrate Baba Marta. On that day we exchange with our loved ones the so called Martenitsas.

They are small pieces of adornment, made of red and white yarn, symbolizing health and purity and the coming of spring. The name of the holiday, in Bulgarian folklore, is associated with the name of a grumpy old woman called Grandmother Martha (Baba Marta) whose mood swings rapidly, like the weather usually shifts rapidly in March. Martenitsas are worn during the month of March until you spot a stork or a blossoming tree. After that, you have to tie your martenitsa on a branch of a fruit tree or put it under a stone.

On that day the Bulgarian team wishes to all of our Ethno Treasure friends lots of health and happiness and a very fruitful year!

HAPPY BABA MARTA!

Easter menus in Europe

Today I held an open lesson, where I had invited my colleagues, to share with them my experienc in teaching.
The objective of this lesson was the evaluation of my 6 grade students' mini school projects. The project is entitles "Easter menus in Europe". For some years, I have organized such projects with my students to involve them actively and to motivate them to learn English. I want to make them learn how to organize a research and make a project working as a team and negotiate all aspects of the project.
After studying the chapters about foods, quantifiers, verbs used with processing food, countable and uncountable nouns, etc., we decided to make this project. After discussing in class how the project should look like and what it should contain, the students  organized their groups according to their experience in working as a team in previous projects, and started the research. They used their families, cook books, the internet as resources for information. Each student from the group has certain responsibilities within the group. And the end products are very nice. They had 3-4 weeks for research and on February 21 they had to show me their drafts, so that I could give them more advice on how the project must look. I gave them the format for the title page, which had to contain certain elements. The next pages have to contain: the menu with prices, and the recipes for each item on the menu, all of them bilingual: in English and Romanian.
And today, on February 28, we had the evaluation of the project. The students had to present their projects in front of an audience made of their peers and guest teachers. They had to select 2 spokes people to present their projects in English and Romanian.
All people present got some evaluation grids which they had to fill in with the marks they gave for all evaluation criteria. So we had teacher evaluation, but also peer evaluation.
We also had a sponsor for the activity: two of the students' mothers cooked us delicious doughnuts. All kids tasted the sweet prizes.
Besides this, Marcela Zaplac offered each student an origami daffodil and a surpprise the kids enjoyed.
Our guest teachers considered the activity a great success and congratulated my students for their efforts and results.
If you are interested in reading those menus, I will upload some on the project website in Resources.
Here are some photos from the activity;

Daniela Buda

Celebrating 100 days of school from the school year 2011-2012

Today we celebrated 100 days of school in the school year 2011-2012. Marcela Zaplac, Mariana Blavenstein and I organized an activity to celebrate it.
We organized an art exhibition in Marcela's class and invited some students from different classes to attend the activity. In the exhibition there have been hundreds of items, 100 pieces of each type of items, from paper napkins, photos, stamps, wishes (see the Wishes' tree on the blakboard), amd many objects the students made at the Origami optional class that Marcela holds at school: daffodils, butterflies, windmills cranes, etc. The students who were asked what school means for them gave various answers. For them, school is a family away from home; a place where they can learn new things; a friend; a place where they have many friends, etc. The students who attend the theatre optional class coordinated by Elena Calincan and Corina Cordea presented 2 sketches written by Ion Luca Caragiale, a famous Romanian playwright. This year we celebrate 100 years since his birth. We also had 100 copies of our Traditional costumes from Europe drawing book. The students present had the opportunity to make each an object in origami style before leaving the class.
The activity was a great success both for the students and their teachers. We had great fun together.
You can see the photo album here: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3386990323503.152977.1531904688&type=1

Daniela buda