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This first week has been full of new faces for me, cultural clashes (also in terms of the education system), presentations and, of course, the excitement and energy that characterises schools. During the first few days, Santiago and I introduced ourselves with the help of drawings that represented what we like to do, and then we asked the children to do the same so we could learn a little more about them, trying to break down the language barrier through images. Of course, we also told the different classes about our countries of origin (in my case Spain and in Santiago's case Argentina), with photos, videos and conversations that showed them our landscapes, traditions and unique characteristics.

In addition, in the świetlica we worked together on the bond that unites our nationalities through the symbol of a flag that would bring us together: we asked them to create a flag by mixing the Polish, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Spanish and Argentine flags (which corresponded to the nationalities present among all of us in the classroom) and then we made a mural with the phrase ‘one world, many flags’. We felt it was important to begin this shared experience with a message of unity as well as cultural exchange.

Of course, we also played a lot: on the sunniest days, we played football together, charades or games that the children taught me, and when it was colder we also played jangle or building games.

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The second week of volunteering was not spent at the school, but rather doing the training required by the ESC programme in Warsaw.

The highlight of this week has undoubtedly been all the people I have met and how much I have learned from talking to them. The training mentors did a great job of facilitating activities and creating spaces that made this deep connection between us possible. We had many opportunities to share our own experiences, which both unite and differentiate us depending on where we come from; we had spaces to explain our volunteering projects and exchange ideas, we were able to explore questions we were interested in about Poland, and we were introduced to the Polish language...

I believe this break has been very useful for me to better organise in my mind what I want to offer and what I want to improve during this experience. I am also very grateful to the ESC programme and my school coordinator for making this opportunity possible.

See you back at school!

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Last week I had volunteer training in Warsaw, so this has been my second week at school.

I am very happy to have started to draw up a more concrete plan for a project that will keep us busy over the coming months in świetlica: we will create a multicultural mural, exploring a different country each week through music, games, creative activities, photos, etc. The nature of this project will, of course, always be presented as voluntary to the children, as playfulness and freedom are important factors at świetlica.

To get started, we have created passports with our names on them, in which we will mark our travels. In fact, we have already started the first one! The first country to explore was Argentina, the home of Santiago (my volunteer partner). We created puzzles of their flag, we drew, we played, we saw beautiful landscapes and we related them to the map of Argentina.

Afterwards, in the classes we teach once a week with teachers who are interested in introducing this cultural exchange into their classrooms, we also started an activity in which they had to reflect on how to travel in a sustainable way that respects the environment and people.

See you next week:)

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This week has also been eventful!

On the one hand, in the groups with which we have a weekly session, we have been reviewing what Santiago and I like to call "the magic words": these are words that you could use to meet someone from another country and make them smile by showing them that you have made the effort to learn the basics in order to be polite. So, with games like bingo and "Simon Says," the children have learned to say "hola", "buenos días", "gracias", "perdona", "por favor", "adiós"...

On the other hand, at świetlica, we went to Spain, my country. We played a memory game with words in Polish and Spanish, we danced to music I wanted to show them, and we did creative activities such as making colourful tiles, like those that adorn so many cities in the south.

See you next week!🌼

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We are now in the fifth week, and with it come new activities.

In świetlica, we have travelled to Italy, a country that is particularly dear to me because I lived there for a year. So, to do justice to the joy of this place, we have recreated the Venice Carnival by making our own masks and turning the classroom into a restaurant, creating our own dishes and our "świetlica menu". We also recreated some of the most important monuments with Lego or building blocks and, as we always do, we enjoyed their music.

Afterwards, in the classes we have with different groups once a week, we have continued teaching basic Spanish, with the aim of showing each other a little of our languages so that we can greet each other in the corridor, ask how the other person is, thank each other or be able to ask "what is that in Spanish?". As in previous sessions, we have done this through games and group dynamics.

That's all for now, see you soon :)

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Good morning,

This week I am particularly excited because we have started a wonderful project that will take us through the whole of November: with 12 different groups from the school, ranging in age from 7 to 12, we are going to organise a letter exchange between the school in Wasilkow and some schools in Spain, specifically in my city, Valencia. We are collaborating with four teachers from there to make this possible.

Almost all the children have welcomed our idea with enthusiasm and a proactive attitude, for which I am very grateful. These days we have started with the introductions: the youngest children have explained basic information about themselves, such as their name, age and nationality; they have also drawn a self-portrait to share a little more information about their appearance through creativity. On the other hand, the older children have written elaborate texts in which they also explained their tastes, their daily life in Poland, and their ‘favourites’ (such as films, music, food, and books).

As for swietlica, this week we travelled to Egypt, where they deciphered messages written in hieroglyphics, created images, and learned how agriculture worked around the Nile and the advances in mathematics that this entailed through a simple story.

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Hi!

This week we have continued working intensively on the letters. Last week there were only three days of school and I took them off, because I wanted to travel around Poland, so Santiago was the one who continued with the texts about Christmas.

This week we have made up for lost time with those groups that were on holiday, writing about Christmas traditions in Poland, and we have also started to copy out the texts or decorate them in other groups. We have also been singing Christmas carols, and thanks to a QR code, this will be a lovely gift for our friends in Spain.

I am excited about this project because I can see that the children are very enthusiastic about it, and I am very happy to have found so much collaboration from the team of teachers both here and those with whom we are going to correspond in Spain.

Between this week and next week, I need to put all my energy into this so that everything is ready and arrives on time, as there are many subtasks to take care of (correcting all the texts, organising their creations into individual cards, creating guidelines card by card for the little ones, planning well with the teachers in Spain, creating presentations to give them clear instructions, making sure that no absent child is left without a part of their letter...). And there are 12 groups in total. For this reason, these are weeks of overtime and not being able to devote the same intensity to świetlica.

That is why we have decided that this week and next week we will visit the same destination in Świetlica: Scandinavia (compensated by the fact that it covers five countries). Likewise, at the end of next week, I will tell you how the trip to Scandinavia went.

See you! 💓

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Good morning,

This week has been very intense in terms of the letter project. We have been finishing all the letters, with the decoration and final details so that they can be sent. I am really pleased with how the process has gone, as the children have generally enjoyed having this opportunity, and that was the most important thing for me. On the other hand, the organisation has worked well, although it is true that this week and last week I have worked a lot, due to many subtasks that I had not anticipated. So, as a learning experience, next time I might give myself an extra week's margin. I have also been thinking about self-criticism with regard to the project and aspects that I have been able to learn from in order to improve as a teacher in the future. For example, I realised that I did not take sufficient advantage of the letter exchange to explore the textual genre of letters (perhaps I approached it too informally) or in the intermediate grades, I think I wanted to give them more autonomy than was perhaps appropriate, and these are the courses where I had the most problems. Of course, any learning process has mistakes and it is very nice to be able to see them in order to evolve personally.

So, although the plan was to send them on Friday, I have been suffering from gastroenteritis and they will be sent next Monday.

On the other hand, at Świetlica we have been to Scandinavia, and although we have had very little time, we have done an activity unlocking the different flags and relating them to the map. We have also been making a landscape with the typical fauna of these northern countries and finally we have reviewed their origins by making Viking helmets.

Next week we will start December with new ideas. See you then!

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Good morning!

This week we returned to Świetlica, this time travelling to Japan. We started with a creative activity called 'This is not a Japanese flag', in which the children had to imagine a design based on the red circle that characterises the Japanese flag. Then, Japan is a country full of beautiful and meaningful traditions, which we took advantage of, of course. One day we celebrated Japanese Children's Day by creating their famous "koi" dots, which are very colourful and popular fish that symbolise the resilience with which they want to educate children, as they swim against the current. Another day we created our "teru teru bozu", which are little ghosts that the Japanese put in their windows to ask for good weather (as a spanish, I really need it, hahaha). Another day we created Sakura trees, which symbolise ephemeral beauty and evolution.

On the other hand, in the first-grade classes, we took advantage of St. Nicholas Day to do an activity in which they practised English, drew pictures and made small gifts for each other. The activity consisted of me proposing three categories: animals, colours and emotions. They had to suggest the English words they knew and then write down their three favourite words on a piece of paper. They wrote their names and we redistributed the sheets among the students. Now they had to make a drawing that combined the three concepts to give to the original person. It was lovely and they loved it.

See you the next week with more ideas!

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Penultimate week of volunteering!

This week we travelled to Australia in Świetlica, as we wanted to visit every continent. In this case, we got to know the different animals that live there. We also did some Aboriginal painting, just like the ancestors of this place, recreating their pointillist style with paint and cotton buds.

Apart from this, we gave different classes. With the older children, we wanted to continue with the cultural exchange and held a session on the history of Spain through a quiz with questions that encouraged critical thinking. However, with the younger children, we decided to continue with more playful English classes, so we came up with the idea of setting up a market to practise vocabulary (food, animal and clothing shops), as well as simple phrases ("I want..." "This costs... zloty"), etc.

Next week, I hope the letters from Spain will arrive so that we can complete the letter-writing exchange project and also finish the multicultural mural. In addition, we are preparing a farewell gift.

See you soon!