Hi Boys and Girls!

 

We are having a great time here in Turkey.

 

The weather is warm and sunny.  We are staying in a beautiful town called Foca.  It reminds us of Malahide a little bit, because it is beside the sea and has lots of lovely restaurants.

                    

 

Yesterday we visited our partner school in Foca for the first time.  We were welcomed by lots of children waving flags and by some great dancing.  Then we were brought on a tour of the school. We started in the kindergarten which is the class for the youngest children.  They are aged four years old. We joined in some songs and dances. Then we went to the older classes. We saw lots of children working with iPads.

The children were mostly using coding apps.  We had seen some of these before (Bee Bot and Scratch Junior) but we also saw some new ones to give us some ideas for when we come back home.  We also saw the children using apps to teach them about patterns in maths.

 

In this school every child has an iPad and they bring it to school to use for iPad time once a week.  The children really enjoy this time and couldn’t wait to show us their favourite apps.

This boy taught us all about Lego Robotics and a drawing app called Quiver.

We really enjoyed looking around the beautiful school.  We liked the Oku sign which means “Read” and is a mini-library.  We also enjoyed seeing the Erasmus+ corner. Can you spot the Ireland flag?

In the afternoon we were brought on a beautiful boat trip.  

We saw beautiful rocks that were formed by lava many many years ago to create small islands.  Some legends say that mermaids live in the sea beside these islands.

We ate a delicious dinner of barbeque fish on the boat.  Then we watched the sunset. It was really beautiful.

Today we had a busy day.  We went to meet the District Governors and Mayor.  They are the people in charge of schools in Foca. We had our photos taken a lot of times with all the people we met!

Later we went back to the school to take part in an art class.  We learned about the traditional art form of Turkish marbling.

We went to dinner in the evening and ate lots of traditional Turkish food.  We were so full afterwards!

Tomorrow we are getting up very early to visit an ancient city called Ephesus.  We will be travelling there while you are still asleep in your beds! There are many stories about Ephesus and some are mentioned in the Bible.  We are also visiting a holy church named after Mary because it is believed she lived in this area for a while. We are really looking forward to it.

 

See you all soon,

Mrs Dunne, Mrs Averill and Ms Mullaney.

xxx