Food

At Steven Tito Academy (STA) we are given porridge to drink in the morning to help us stay focused. We are also given a free hot meal at lunch time. It is really important to eat well to keep your mind and body healthy. If we didn't eat we would be very tired and would not learn very much.

At 10:30 we all go to the kitchen to get our porridge. We each have our own cup. Jamila, our great cook, pours the porridge into the cup.

Drinking porridge

At lunch time we return to the kitchen. Jamila is there waiting for us. She puts our food onto metal plates. We have something different every day. Our favourite day is when we have chips and egg. We have to line up outside the kitchen and wait for our food. We always say thank you to Jamila for preparing our food.

Waiting to be served by Jamila.

We want to show you the food we eat here in Tanzania. On Monday, we had spaghetti with a tomato sauce. We always wash our hands before eating. It is very important to do this especially because we eat with our hands.

Ally and his spaghetti.

We eat everything with our hands.

On Tuesday, we had rice and chicken with a vegetable sauce. We call this meal wali kuku. The chicken is fried and cooked with salt. It tastes good.

Some of the girls enjoying their wali kuku.

On Wednesday, we had ugali with spinach, sauce and fish. Ugali is a dish of maize flour (cornmeal) cooked with water to make a polenta-like doughy side dish. It is very common to eat ugali in Tanzania. We roll the ugali into a ball and then dip it in the sauce.

We sit on the floor to eat. We take it in turns to sweep up afterwards.

We hope you enjoyed reading about what we eat at break and lunch. We are very happy to have this food provided to us at school.

Questions:
1. What is our favourite food?
2. What is wali kuku?
3. Why is it important to wash your hands before you eat?
4. What do you have for break and lunch? Do you get hot food given to you at school as well?
5. Have you tried ugali before?
6. What are some of the similarities and differences between food in your country and Tanzania?

All About Animals

This month we have been busy learning all about animals. We have learned that animals belong to different groups. For example, a jaguar is a mammal but a salamander is an amphibian.

We read a book called 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar'. We learnt some new words like salami and pickle.

Some of the students enjoying 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar'.

We learnt that a caterpillar turns into a butterfly. Actually it starts as an egg, then becomes a caterpillar and then turns into a butterfly. In Art we made butterflies. We painted one wing and then we put the two sides of the paper together to make a whole butterfly. We hung our butterflies on the wall for every one to see.

We had a question from Wilmot Road Primary School in Australia asking whether we do Art. As you can see, we do. This week, as we are learning about animals, we made mice out of paper.

Cutting a circle to make the mouse's body.

The early finishers playing with their mice.

We had to follow a lot of instructions to finish making our mice. We used lots of equipment including glue, paper, scissors, wool and coloured pencils. It took a long time to pack up! Teacher Lauren let us sing the afternoon song in a mouse voice. It was fun!

Questions:
This week we thought you could do a bit of research and find out information about an animal. We would love to hear about what you learn. Here are some questions to help you get started.

• Where does the animal live?
• What does it eat?
• What group does it belong to? (Eg. Insects, mammals, birds)
• What does it look like?

You can post your animal information below and we will read it in class.

Continents Song and Rhythmic Gymnastics

Asha and Maimuna arrived early to school and decided to share a song they knew about the continents. Listen carefully, then you can try and sing along.

In sport we do lots of different activities. Here is a video of us praticising rhythmic gymnastics. We'll be ready for the Olympics in no time!

Working Together

At STA there are always lots of jobs to do. We work together to get the jobs done. We have a roster so that we all know what our job is. When we work together we achieve more.

This is our job roster. We change it every term.

  Husna and Adam are responsible for collecting water. At the moment, the taps aren't working so we have to collect water to use to flush the toilet and clean the bathrooms. We also collect drinking water so that we don't get thirsty.

Salama is responsible for cleaning the chalkboard at the end of each lesson. She does her best to reach up high and clean the whole board but sometimes she has to use a chair.

Maimuna and Sabra are responsible for sweeping. They sweep the classroom every morning and every afternoon. The floor gets very sandy so it's a big job!

Salim is our flag bearer. He carries the flag to Assembly and helps raise it when we sing the Tanzanian national anthem.

Asha is the pencil sharpener. She makes sure all the pencils are sharpened in the morning and ready to be used. 

Justis is our bell ringer. He uses a metal rod and bangs it against a metal bar to make a loud sound. When we hear the bell ring we know it's play time!

Ally handing out rulers to the Standard 2 and 3 students.

Ally and Salama are responsible for helping the teachers to hand out books and equipment. It's a big job. They have to remember where everything is and they usually start their work last.. They still manage to get their work done in time though so we think they do a pretty good job.

We keep our school and our classroom neat and tidy because we all work together to get the jobs done. We are looking forward to changing jobs next term.

Questions

Who is responsible for:

• sharpening pencils?
• sweeping the floor?
• raising the flag?

Why is collecting water an important job?
Why are Salama and Ally usually the last ones to start their work?
Which job do you think takes the longest?
Do you have jobs in your school? How are they different to the jobs that we have? Which job do you do?

Make sure you post your answers below so we can read them.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

In Tanzania, we can't always find everything we need for our school. Sometimes, we get stuff sent to us from our friends in other countries. Sometimes, if we can't find something we make it ourselves. We also want to protect our environment. So, instead of throwing everything away we reuse what we can and make new things out of old things.

Recently we made bookboxes for all of our readers.

These are the bookboxes we made out of cardboard boxes.

We had a big donation from a company called DHL (a company that sends packages all over the world). They sent lots of things in big cardboard boxes. We decided to use the boxes to make something, rather than throwing them away. We cut up the boxes and made them into holders for our readers. We used strong tape and nails to hold them together. Then we painted our new bookboxes red, yellow, blue and green.

George putting paint onto the bookbox.

Mariam painting her bookbox blue.

We had a lot of fun making the bookboxes. We think they look great! Now, we can find the right book easily.

George and Maimuna were very quick and they painted two bookboxes each.

Maybe you should try making something new out of something old.

Our finished bookboxes on display in the classroom. Each morning we choose a book that is just right for us from the correct bookbox.

Questions

What colours did we paint our bookboxes?
How did we make the bookboxes?
Why did we make the bookboxes?
Why is it a good idea to reuse things rather than just throwing them out?
Have you ever made something new out of something old? If yes, what was it? We would love to hear about the things you have made.