This year we have followed a project about Genoa. We have been walking all around their marvellous old city and we have been taking some pictures. Every corner was full of history and art. We have searched pieces of information about Genoa dialect and some old legends. We wanted to awaken some curiosities about our city and its history. Great pEople iN an Old Art centre! Don't forget Columbus, Paganini, Montale, Luzzati, De André, Pertini and other great personalities came from Genoa! And remember, run to Genoa, we wait for you!MONTESIGNANO AND ANDERSEN SCHOOLS CHILDREN

Ecological Portugal

Portugal will invest, in the next years, on the construction of more Wind Power Parks, which are big areas with several wind turbines, that using the wind, produces energy, without freeing carbon dioxide (CO2). These parks will produce a renewable, alternative and no-pollutant energy.
In 2007, the 3rd phase of this project started, with the construction of 13 parks spread around the country. These parks will be located in several towns that can be seen in the map below and they will allow the production of electricity from the wind.
In the 1st and 2nd phases some parks with an investment of 2.285 million euros were built, and it’s foreseen that this value will rise to 4.350 million.
With these measures, Portugal expects to help the environment, not only through the production of electricity from the wind energy, but also betting on other alternative energies like solar energy, tidal energy, energy of the waves and other no-pollutant forms of energy.

Fundraising at the American School of Warsaw

The fundraising at ASW took place in March. During that month all the students from Pre-K to Fifth raised money in many different ways. The money is given to the Warsaw Children’s Hospice. Warsaw Children Hospice is an organization who helps children who are very sick stay at home with their families. They give the families medicine, wheelchairs, special medical equipment and they build ramps for the wheelchairs. If a child has a wish to go somewhere or do something, the hospice gives the family the money and makes all the arrangements. Once a child wanted to fly in a plane and his wish came true and he even got to ride in the cockpit. To learn more about Warsaw Children’s Hospice, you can go to their website, www.hospicjum.waw.pl.

Some of the fundraising activities were selling cotton candy, selling popcorn, having a bake sale, selling books at the Book Swap, selling Spring ‘0 Grams and a Jump-A-Thon. Our second grade fundraiser was collecting money in little pigs called, Coinky. We made 5 little Coinkies and posters. We went to different classes and described our fundraiser. When people would give money, they would receive a postcard of Coinky, that we all made and decorated. The whole school raised 7,748 euros for the hospice.

Here is a photo of Coinky!

What a Week!!

This was a week full of activities for the 3^rd grade. It started with the recording of our school Hymn, to post in this blog. With the precious help of Pedro (Music Teacher), the pupils were able to sing very well. But, to post the Hymn in the blog, it was necessary to make a film with photos taken by pupils and teacher. These photos show some parts and details of our school and help people know it better.

After the conclusion of the works on Astronomy proposed by the pupils, on the previous week, there was an Astronomy Fair in the entrance of the school. The works were seen and appreciated by all and the younger visitors wanted to touch all of them. It was a success!

This week, Sofia (who will replace our English Teacher Olga) started to work. She’ll be teaching English while Olga is on her maternity leave. The pupils liked her, they found her very pleasant and they hope to learn lots of things with her.

This was another fantastic week in Colégio Monte Flor.

The heat has come

For the 4^th consecutive year, the beach summer season at Cascais started a month before it was supposed to start. This happens because the heat is already here and the beaches need to have life-guards to help the tourists in every situation. This year Cascais has 20 life-guards to maintain the safety in our beaches.
To guarantee transportation of all the tourists, from the next Sunday on, the Urban Service of Railways of Cascais Line will have more trains on weekends and holidays. Everyday 71 more train travels are expected to satisfy the needs of all the people who want to have a good time at the beach.

Adapt From Destak (Portuguese Free Newspaper)

Portugal is a country full of sandy beaches, where people from all over the world come on vacations. We have nearly 13 million tourists every year, and many of them come to enjoy the sun and the sea. We leave you some pictures of our beaches that the students from the 3^rd grade took from Google Earth. Most of them are where our pupils go on vacations.

News from Portugal and Monte Flor - Revolution and Astronomy

This week was different from the others. Friday was a national holiday, because on the 25^th of April we celebrate the day of the Revolution. This revolution happened because the people, since the rising to the power of António de Oliveira Salazar, in the year of 1932, lived without freedom, under a repressive regime. The media had to pass for the censorship and the people who were against the government were imprisoned and were tortured by the PIDE (Policy of Intervention and Defense of the State). However, when Salazar died, Marcelo Caetano, who was his right-arm, went up to the power and he had the same ideas as his predecessor. But, using this change as an advantage, the people started planning a revolution. It was on the 25th of April of 1974 that everything went forward. Despite the many weapons and heavy artillery on the streets, few people died and due to an image of one lady placing a carnation (flower) in the pipe of a soldier’s rifle, we call this event the Portuguese Carnation Revolution.

During last week, we also initiated the study of Astronomy. First, we saw a presentation in PowerPoint about this subject (which is available as a film, below this article). We also made some experiences with the globe and lights, to re-create the movements of rotation (day and night) and earth orbiting the sun (seasons). Finally, the pupils spoke with the teacher requesting to make some works on this subject, and after his approval, they were very enthusiastic. This week we also want to use Google Earth to see some images of the space, captured by space telescopes, and to study a little bit more about the rotation of our planet.
As you can see, this week we’ve been with our head in the stars…and planets!

Monte Flor News - A Busy Week

This was a very exciting and busy week.
Last month we prepared a project/contest called “Cuido de Mim” (“I take care of myself”), sponsored by Pierre Fabre Dermo-Cosmétique and promoted by the Ministry of Education. In this project/contest children were encouraged to use art and creativity to exploit the subject of Hygiene and Skin Protection. Children chose to work in small groups of 4 students each. The main subjects were divided in 5 topics, and each group worked one topic. Each group decided to make a role-play and then we made a film with their performance, which was sent to the jury of the contest on the 14^th of April.
After that, on Tuesday we went on a school trip. We went to the Theatre to see an Opera, composed by Rossini and adapted to children, entitled “Barber of Seville”. It was very funny and told us the story of a big love between Rosina, a beautiful lady, and Count Almaviva, who with Figaro, the Barber’s help were able to get married and live happily ever after.
On Friday, to conclude the week with a great activity, nothing better than listen, in English, to a passage from the Bible. For that, we invited a teacher from the Secondary School of Marvila, Prof. Teresa Fernandes, who’s the Coordinator of the eTwinning Project “Across The Bible – Portugal”, and told us the story of Isaac and Abraham. We also made some drawings about the text we heard and we spoke a little about this eTwinning Project, which involves schools from 11 different countries, and is well known in all Europe.
There’s no doubt this was a week full of activities, but also full of emotions.

Lisbon News - Town Hall Recovers Gardens

Several Lisbon gardens are destined to be forsaken, as they have been turned into a place for sleep, for the many homeless people. Luckily, the Town Hall is very interested in recovering such places before June 2009. For now, trees are being re-planted in spaces where they had been cut off or had died; and small cafés are being created in the same gardens in order to bring more people to these places, as well as to make money for its maintenance and conservation. The Botanic Garden is another space which should be recovered. However, up to 5 million euros is what will take to do so. Efforts to improve this space are being taken, as we are looking at a place soon to be 130 years old (next 11 November) and a place where around 1300 different tree types from the four corners of the world are planted. We also made this film, showing several gardens in Lisbon.

Presenting our Town and our School

Hello again. We included a photo of our class. We are all dressed up for UN Day. We celebrate this special day every year in the autumn.

In our school we have 900 students. Our students come from 49 different countries. Our school started in 1953 at the American Embassy. There were only 12 students. We moved to a new building in Konstancin in 2001.

Our school starts at Pre-K and ends at 12th grade. Students in Pre-K are 4 years old. Students in 12^th grade are 18 years old.

In our school we have, 109 teachers. They come from, America, Canada, Poland, England, the Philippines and New Zealand.

We have a swimming pool. It is 1.25 meters at the shallow end and 1.80 meters at the deep end. There are two teachers and three lifeguards.

In our school our special classes are: Art, Music, Technology, P.E., Swimming, Library and Language Classes. We go to these classes 2 times a week.

We have after school activities and they are: Tennis, Beads, Gymnastics, Chess Club, Swimming, Outdoor Games, Computer Games, Violin, and ASW Delivers.

Students can choose from a different activity 3 times a year.

Our cafeteria is big and is located in the middle of the school. Children from Kindergarten up to 2^nd grade get their lunch prepared at the tables.

From 3^rd grade up to high school kids are able to get their lunch by themselves.

Our school is in the south east of Warsaw. It is 7 km from the center of Warsaw, in Konstancin. Konstancin is in Piaseczno County and has 23,000 people.

We look forward to hearing from you again.

Presenting our Town and our School

We are students of Monte Flor Primary School, and we want to introduce ourselves and our school.
Our school is in Portugal and it’s located in a city called Carnaxide – a small town near Lisbon (our capital city).
Carnaxide has 22 thousand people and it has many buildings, some for living and others for work. It’s a developed town; there is a hospital near our school and there’s a tv station “SIC”, which was the first private tv broadcasting station in our country.
There are also, some important monuments as St. Romão Church, Nossa Senhora da Rocha Sanctuary and Serra de Carnaxide Water pipes, which is just behind our school.
Our school was founded in 1973, it has now 35 years of existence and it has nearly 200 students, from 3 to 10 years of age.
There are 8 teachers for these students, and apart from these, there are the Gym teacher, Music teacher, English teacher, Judo teacher and Ballet/Dancing teacher.
In terms of our projects, this year the main topic is Food; however, for the last 3 years our school has been awarded the Eco-Schools Green Flag, within the Eco-Schools Programme- which is a European programme of Environmental Education.
In what concerns E-Twinning, this is the second year we participate in this project and we hope to work with your school until the end of this year.


Students from Colégio Monte Flor

Welcome Blog !

This blog is for our school & country eTwinning project. We are very excited to begin this cool project and to use technology to communicate between our schools.

Let's start by having our kids introduce themselves, their age, something about their countries and why they want to eTwin.

Thanks again for signing up to share !