On Valentine´s Day people send  gifts and cards.

These let others know that someone loves them.

The story began when a Roman emperor banned men from marrying. he wanted them to join his army instead.

St. Valentine was a priest who carried out weddings in secret. He was sentenced to death.

On his last day, he thanked his jailer´s daughter for her friendship. He signed his note,

“love from your Valentine”

Today, senders do not say who the presents and cards are from.

This year in Tineo we decided to sing a very romantic song.

We did a bit of rehearsing first:

And now the grand finale: 

Also, once again, we declared love to our sweethearts.

We even got CONNOR to declare his love…

The History of Groundhog’s Day:

When German settlers arrived in the United States

 in the 1700s,

they brought a tradition known as Candlemas Day. 

 Candlemas Day came at the mid-point

between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. 

Superstition told that if the weather

 was nice on that day, the second half of

 Winter would be stormy and cold.

The weather continued to be important

to the early Christians.  If the sun

 came out on February 2,

the day halfway between Winter and Spring,

 it meant six more weeks of wintry weather.

In Europe, it was a hedgehog

 that was watched with hope that he’d

not see his shadow.  When settlers arrived

 in America, there were no hedgehogs to be found. 

So they adopted the groundhog as

the new world’s weather forecaster.

The groundhog was chosen because

 it wintered underground like the hedgehog and

 because the Native Americans in the region

 respected the animal greatly.  They considered the groundhog

 to be a wise and sensible animal.

Although Groundhog’s Day is an American holiday, it has European roots. 

Here are some sayings you might like to read:

From England:

If Candlemas be fair and bright,
Winter has another flight.
If Candlemas brings clouds and rain,
Winter will not come again.

From Scotland:

If Candlemas Day is bright and clear,
There’ll be two winters in the year.

And from the United States:

If the sun shines on Groundhog Day;
Half the fuel and half the hay.

We were listening to this song in class on Friday. We quite liked it, or better said, we liked how it sounded, but we hadn’t paid much attention to the lyrics.

However, when we went through it in class we discovered we didn’t like the story it was telling.

We’re definitely against ill-treatment, and we think that in a love relationship you shouldn’t need to say “I love the way you lie” to your lover. What do you think?

CHRISTMAS CAROLS  

• Last Wednesday (24th November 2010) we went to Gijón. We visited a really enjoyable exhibition at “Laboral Centro de Arte”. Watch these videos to see some of the installations and artworks we saw:
• We also took some nice pictures there. Click on the image to see the display.

• Later on, we watched “Boy”, a very funny film made by Maori director Taika Waititi. These are the trailer and the final dance:

Bonfire Night is celebrated in the United Kingdom on 5^th November. The date marks the failed attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament.  

Guy Fawkes was Catholic and practiced his religion in secret. He was really very angry with  king James I because he passed many laws against Catholics.

In 1605, Guy Fawkes and a group of conspirators formulated a plan called the ‘Gunpowder Plot’. They put 36 barrels of gunpowder in the cellars of the Houses of Parliament  to kill the king and his ministers. The king received an anonymous letter and his soldiers arrested Fawkes and his friends.  They were tortured and executed.

Nowadays on Bonfire Night people organize their own parties or attend big fireworks displays.

They stand around the bonfire, set off fireworks and eat lots of delicious Bonfire night food. They eat sausages, pork pie, baked potatoes, baked beans and toffee apples.

They also say this famous chant:

Children make puppets called “guys”. They use old clothes, fill the body with newspapers and build a face with paper bags and draw a face on it. Children go out with their guy saying ‘A penny for the guy’ and adult people give them some money to buy sparklers or sweets.

 In Tineo we did some things to celebrate the occasion: CLICK on the man to see the pictures:

We all had a great time.

You can follow the recipe to make Toffee Apples by looking at the following video:

We celebrated Halloween in Tineo once again and we all had a great time, didn´t we?

It was a time to remember, wasn´t it?

We had Conor Patrick with us as the storyteller.

Click  HERE 

He told us frightening stories; we all got very scared.

We did a lot of things to put on display: skeletons, scary witches, banners, candy bags, Jack o´Lanterns, acronyms, projects, Halloween cookies and chocolate.(Yummy, yummy!!!).

Some also dressed up for the occassion

Check all this out for yourself by clicking on the Jack o´ Lantern 

And not only this, we also did some dancing, wiggling, clapping and a bit of moonwalking.

And what´s more, it´s all recorded

 SEE YOU NEXT HALLOWEEN!

Once again, it’s Halloween time! 

Fall has arrived, leaves are falling, we’re enjoying delicious apples, hazlenuts, … pumpkins…

And pumpkins are a synomym of Halloween, as we all know!

We’ve been talking about Celts,  tombstones and jack-o’-lanterns all through this week. Here you have a brief account of all we’ve been learning (or, with some of us, recalling!).

The name “Halloween” began as “All Hallows Eve.” This became “All Hallow E’en,” leading to “Hallowe’en,” or Halloween. It was the evening before All Hallows Day, which was later called All Saints’ Day. (In this case, “hallows” meant “saints.”).

All Saints’ Day is a Christian festivity, a feast for all martyrs and saints.

November 1st also marks an ancient Celtic festival named Samhain

(pronounced sah-win), or “summer’s end.”

Samhain is a pagan festivity. At the turn of autumn—

with the harvest finished,

the days getting colder, the nights getting longer,

and everybody getting ready

to face the winter—,

the superstitious Celts naturally started to think about the death and the unknowable.

These two traditions intermingled with each other long time ago, and little by little the celebration of Halloween, as we now it by now, started.

 Enjoy a spooky Halloween time, and remember not to come close to graveyards… just in case!!

These are the books we are going to read this year 2010/11 in our English classes

(we’ve already started with some of them, haven’t we?)

1st. ESO

-The Jungle Book, by Rudyard Kipling, ed. Vicens Vives

- (and also for the bilingual group) This is London, by Philip Prowse, ed. MacMillan

- 1st ESO FLEX. - Uluru, by Helen Burton, ed. Burlington

2nd. ESO

- The Secret of the Stones, by Victoria Heward, ed. Vicens Vives

-  Bilingual group: Wallace and Gromit: The Wrong Trousers, by VV.AA., ed. Oxford

and also A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, ed. Express Publishing

- 2nd. ESO FLEX.- British Myths and Legends, by Julie Hart, ed. Burlington

3rd. ESO

- British and American Festivities, by Gina D. B. Clemen, ed. Vicens Vives

- (and also, for the bilingual group) Pygmalion, by George Bernard Shaw, ed. Express Publishing

- 3rd ESO FLEX.- The Adventures of Captain Crossbones, by Anne Stanmore, ed. Burlington

4th. ESO

- Legends from the British Isles, by Deborah Meyers, ed. Vicens Vives

- London, by John Escott, ed. Oxford

- 4th. ESO DIV. - The Adventures of Captain Crossbones, by Anne Stanmore, ed. Burlington

1st. BACH.

- The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, by Sue Townsed, ed. Burlington

- The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde, ed. Vicens Vives

2nd. BACH.

- The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole, by Sue Townsed, ed. Burlington

- Australia and New Zealand, by Christine Lindop, ed. Oxford

In 4th ESO we’ve been talking about books these past days,

and many of us agreed that we loved reading stories!

Some of us liked thrillers,

others liked fantasy, science fiction, comics,…

What about YOU? Tell us about your favourite books and stories,

and if you’ve already started reading any of the books above, tell us what you think of it!

We accept any suggestion !

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