The Philippines is fabulous
Today we went to the Philippines and learnt so many wonderful things from Jen and Carmen. We know how to say hello in Tagalog; it is “mabuhay” and we also know thank you which is “salamat poh”. Liezel taught us how to count but we haven’t memorised the words yet. You can see on the wall the programme that Jen and Carmen arranged for the morning:
- Learn a Filippino song
- Cook Filippino food
- Play a Filippino game
The morning started off with a presentation of a song that we actually know in English. Jen used the projector so we could watch it on the wall, sing with the music and do the actions. The song was called “Kung Ikaw ay Masaya” which is the same as “If you’re happy and you know it” in English. There were three actions that we did; tumawa –laugh, pumalakpak – clap and pumadyak – stamp. We practiced going “hahahaha” for laughing and the other two actions we knew how to do. We sang it and did the actions a few times. We noticed that Sofie was wearing a shirt with specific shapes and colours. These were the colours of the Philippines flag and on the left side, in a yellow gold colour, there was a map of the Philippines. The colours
of her shirt were white, red and navy blue.
Then we went to sit at the tables and some of us made “turon” which is a fried banana. In the Philippines people use “saging” which is a kind of banana, for making “turon”. It is a banana that is best eaten when cooked. We put the banana in the middle of a spring roll wrapper, sprinkled some brown sugar on it, and then Jen cooked it in a pan. We heard a sizzling sound as it cooked and couldn’t wait to eat it. Our classroom smelled of something delicious. We played a game before snack time so that the “turon” could cool down. The game was called “Pabitin”.
John and Liezel made a frame using bamboo sticks that are tied together after designing them like net. They made the joins really strong with string and the glue gun and then they attached coloured yarn. They attached a toy to each piece of
yarn and when you play the game, you have to jump up to try to reach one of the toys and pull it down. We all were so excited to have our turn and pull one of the toys down. Most of us didn’t look at the toys carefully; we just wanted to pull one down. We had bubbles, necklaces, snacks, fishing games and more. It was so much fun because Carmen and Jen stood on chairs and tried to lift the “pabitin” high, so we had to jump a lot to reach the toys.
We couldn’t believe but there was still something else planned for us; stories in Tagalog. The one story was about a fly that ate many different traditional Filipino dishes; however in the end he was way too full and needed to go to sleep and the second one was about a boy who was scared in the night, when he heard a noise. It was his sister playing tricks on him.
We want to say a huge thank you to Carmen and Jen, for preparing such a fabulous presentation on the Philippines. We look forward
to visiting the Philippines one day.
See you tomorrow for the last day of the first week in March this year.
Love always the children in Petals Class.