Valentine's Day

Valentine’s Day!

By: Student Blogger Maddie

On Thursday, February 14th Team Gibbas celebrated Valentine's Day.

Everybody came to school excited to receive valentines from their friends.

Many students came with specially decorated valentine boxes.

When everybody got to school most people asked, "When are we going to get our valentines?"

Mrs. Gibbas said, “At 1:30 we will all get our valentines.”

The class waited the whole day until finally it was time.

Mrs. Gibbas went over the rules and then people were on their way passing out their valentines.

Once everybody was done passing their valentines out everybody started to do the best part, looking through their valentines!

Some valentines that people in Team Gibbas got were candy, fun shaped straws, and fun activities such as tic-tac-toe or word searches.

Everybody was having a fun time. Some people brought an extra snack to school to eat during our time for looking at our valentines.

Sadly soon the day was over and it was almost time to go home so we had to stop and put all our valentines back into our boxes and go home.

But Team Gibbas had an awesome time on Valentine’s Day.

A couple weeks later Team Gibbas received a special valentine from our penpals in Finland.

Holiday Traditions

From America to Finland, to other parts of the world, people celebrate holidays with special rituals and festivities.  To learn how America's holiday traditions are similar and different from Finland's students created cartoon images depicting one of their holiday traditions.

Spreading cheer both far and near

Last Friday Team Gibbas students crafted a surprise for their Finnish friends.  Each student was paired with a student in our partner class at the Ojanpera School in Liminka, Finland.  Then, students created a holiday greeting card for each Finnish friend as a holiday surprise.  We mailed our cards on Monday and we can't wait to hear from our friends in Finland when our package arrives!

How do you teach someone from a different country about your culture?

Team Gibbas students are so fortunate to have the opportunity to learn from and learn with a classroom of fourth graders in Finland!  We have been given an amazing opportunity through JDO Foundation to collaborate with a classroom from a different country for an entire school year! Our class has been partnered with a school in Liminka, Finland at the Ojanperan Koulu School.

Ojanperan Koulu School website

In September we exchanged slideshows introducing ourselves to one another.  Our next task was to try to teach each other about our culture.  Team Gibbas students decided to create a slideshow about the things we like to do in the fall as a way of introducing our culture to Finland.  Embedded in the slideshow you will see videos with anecdotal stories about the things we love about fall in Massachusetts.  We are looking forward to receiving our slideshow from Finland and learning about the things that are Finland friends do in the fall!