United Nations Day!

Definition of United Nations Day from dictionary.com (of course!): "the anniversary of the United Nations on October 24, marking its founding in 1945."

Unfortunately we didn't have school on October 24th this year (it was a Sunday) so ISB chose to celebrate the founding of the United Nations on Friday October 29th, 2010 instead. Each year ISB celebrates United Nations Day, which in the Early Childhood Center is represented in the form of a parade into the cafeteria (the kids all dress in their nations colors) followed by an assembly led by the Kindergartners. On Fridays I'm in Sara Bellin's PreK room so we decided that for UN Day we would also have our students make a flag of their country out of torn paper that they could carry into the cafeteria with them. Unfortunately I wasn't their for the making of the flags since we never had time to fit it in on a Friday but the kids did a great job! They were all SO excited to show me their flags they had made, it was adorable to say the least. Some of the kids even put the country that their mom was from on one side and then the country that their dad was from to represent themselves; what clever 4-year-olds! Here are pictures of most of the kids and their flags:

LouLou from the Netherlands

Bas from Norway and...

the Netherlands!

Kennedy from America

Larissa from Brazil

Hanna from Germany

Julia from Spain

Andrew from Canada

Emile from Canada (the French speaking part)

Noah from England

Lucia from Australia

Lisa is from Belgium and Poland

Izzy from America

 Also, did I mention that on UN Day (well actually pretty much the whole week for me) we also got to sample food from all over the world? How could I have forgotten about the food?! Pretty sure I didn't bring lunch all week! Each grade/class did this part differently but at some point every day that week I was invited to one of my different classes celebration and to sample all the different foods. Everything was homemade by the students and their families and included things like sushi, pizza, cookies, tacos, maple syrup, Belgian waffles, egg rolls, Brazilian chocolate fudge balls, etc. It was absolutely amazing to see all of the different foods and to learn about how they are important in each culture. Plus sampling them all wasn't so bad either, haha! The second graders also all used empty boxes that they decorated to showcase different facts and historical information about their countries. Then throughout the week they presented what they had learned about their country to the whole class. Some of them were really detailed and quite phenomenal really. Did you know that Fiskars scissors are made in Finland? I sure didn't!! All in all it was a really interesting week and something that I feel lucky to be a part of.