Our new bottle greenhouse and a close encounter with a balloon

Warm greetings to our friends in Uganda at Kafuro and the other twinning project schools. At Liss, we are very grateful to all the adults who come in and help and particularly grateful to Geof, who comes in and helps out Mr Haycock, our site manager. Geof has taken on the task of rebuilding and refurbishing our bottle greenhouse and has done a splendid job. We would like to pass on our thanks to him. We now have a place to grow our plants when the weather in the UK is colder.

Last night we had a very close encounter with a hot air balloon which came extremely close to the roof of the school after the children ahd gone home ofr the day. Mr Stanley had been working in the greenhouse and spotted the balloon. He had time to take a quick photo before the balloon disappeared.

We would like to know if you have seen a hot air ballooon near your school in Uganda?

Rihamu Junior School in a Community Clean – Up Exercise

Greetings Everyone!!

Community Clean up exercises are top on the list of our School Social activities. During these exercises, we clean community areas, parks, markets, bus stations and the elders homes in the community. We use local brooms, polythene bags, hoes and spades. The exercise is usually fun where children learn about giving back to the community, sanitation and hygiene, making friends in the community and we also teach the people in the community various topics concerning sanitation and hygiene.

We do this exercise once every term.

The communities where we go are usually much cleaner after the exercise.

Do schools in the UK clean their communities? We would like to learn how schools in the UK go about this exercise.

Thank you all

Shakilah
Head Teacher – Rihamu Junior School

School Grounds Day at Liss 2019

On Friday, Liss Junior School held their annual School Grounds Day. This started at lunchtime with parents being invited into the school to have lunch with the children. Then, the afternoon was devoted to cleaning up the school grounds and improving the school environment. Among the tasks carried out by the children were the following:

Ash Class – Front flower bed were replanted. Tyres behind amphitheatre were filled with compost and planted.

Oak Class – Collected leaf liter  and  repositioned logs to line track.

Willow Class – Refurbished our bug hotel

Beech Class – picked up litter from around the  school grounds

Birch Class – Wood collection for the cob oven. Made bird feeders and get plant pots ready for the summer.

Pine Class – Cleared out and replanted raised beds with vegetables

Rowan Class – Bottle greenhouse pots were prepared for replanting. Mr Stanley is preparing to grow tomatoes but admits that they can never be as good as Kafuro tomatoes. The wormery was topped upwith food waste and compost distributed.

We were also joined by rangers from Queen Elizabeth Country Park who helped us to clean our pond and cut back some of our willow.

Many hands make light work and by the end of the afternoon the school grounds looked much better. We would like to ask Ugandan schools how they keep their school grounds tidy (we have already heard from Kafuro in the past, it would be nice to hear from some other schools).

Ugandan meals and water melons

Good to hear about our friends at Liss who have been studying about our Ugandan meals and how we prepare.
Talking about water melons, this was a discussion by Primary Six class today in the morning. Water melons, tomatoes and onions are the main crops we are planting this season in our Kafuro gardens.
Water melons are very sweet and are thirst- curing crops.
Planting a water melon, we buy seedlings from the seed store ( packed seeds grow better than those we get from fruits and dry to be planted). We make a 2 feet by two feet ditch, we plant in four seeds of water melon when it’s our wet season like how it is becoming now.  It takes four to seven days to germinate, then we care about directing them to different directions as the spacing in about one metre from one ditch to another, then spraying starts as they are very much attacked by pests.
At around two months and fifteen days (75 days) our best water melons are ready for harvesting and fresh to eat.

We are reminded to eat fruits after washing them clean

Talking about Muchomo, its so nice when made by an expert. We read about our teacher’s wife and family on making best muchomos in the region. They are based at New Life Safaris.

Wishing you all the best, keep us informed about the food you make.

written by Asasira Posiano

Cooking Ugandan – style meals

Today Liss children in Yr 6 created their own Ugandan-style meals in groups. The children used a range of ingredients that they had tasted the previous week, but also used water melon, pineapple and rice. The children worked very hard to create balanced meals and the photos can be seen below.

And now a question for our Ugandan friends. Evie, in Rowan Class, wants to know how long it takes to grow a water melon from seed to full size? Can anybody help her?

Ugandan – style food tasting

At Liss, as we approach the end of our Uganda topic, we set the children a design technology task – to plan and make a Ugandan – style meal. Before the children can do this, they have to taste Ugandan food. Mr Stanley was very busy in the Liss kitchen making the following:

Roast IRISH potatoes

Roast Sweet potatoes

Chapatis

Muchomos

Banana chips

Salad

Katchembali

The children tasted the food and had to complete an evaluation. The next step will be to plan and create their own Ugandan meals. We will report to you on their progress!