Before we left for summer vacation, our class finished up a project based from the Flat Stanley books.

Our class on the field trip. This is one of the memories we wrote about with our Flat Friends in Australia.

Have you read one of them?  What did you like about it?

We read the book and then collaborated with teachers in Australia, England, and United States on a project that took many months.

Here is what we did.  First, we read the book.  Then we created Flat Selves and a Flat Friend Journal.  

Here is Flat Stanley. Our Flat Selves looked like us but had the same shape of body...FLAT!

This journal would travel with our Flat Self to another class around the world.  Our Flat Selves started in Point Lonsdale, Australia.  They stayed their for a couple of weeks getting to know the children that lived there.  

Here is a video on what they did:

This was video created by Mrs. Murphy, the teacher in Australia who had our flat selves.  The children there write in our journals about the exciting places and things they did with our Flat Selves.

Meanwhile, we had two different classes sent to us.  We had Mrs. Murphy’s class from Point Lonsdale in Australia for awhile and then  Mrs. Todd’s class from Rocky River, North Carolina.  We wrote in their journals about the adventures they had with us.  It was a fun way to practice our writing!

Have you ever been to Australia or North Carolina?  Tell us what you saw. 

Here is a video we created to show what we did with our Flat Friends.

Just like some stories, this one had a sad ending.  After visiting with Mrs. Murphy’s class, they were sent to another school in Australia-Curl Curl North Public School in Curl Curl, Australia.  We never received our Flat Selves back from this school.  Hopefully, they will arrive so we can find out what amazing adventures we had with others around the world. 

Thank you to everyone for a wonderful time with our Flat Friends.  We will have many fond memories to look back on.  

Australia, North Carolina, and Arizona are so far apart, but we learned that no matter where we live we are all the same when it comes to enjoying life.  We also learned that our differences make us unique and a blast to get to know!

If you have been following our blog, you probably know that we have buddies in Kenya.

Our Kenya friends!

We are very lucky to have them as friends because we learn so much about their life and they learn so much from us.   Our class has become experts on the plant and animal life found in the desert, so we wanted to share some of what we know with them.

Exploring the desert outside our classroom!

We decided to create a poster on the information we learned and send it to our Kenya Buddies.

Here we are researching the species we took pictures of using our class digital camera. See the poster on the wall?

This way they will get to see what our desert looks like and the wildlife we have.  They just received it and are very happy.

Students at Bensesa School with the desert posters we made.

You may be asking what we have learned from them.  Well, let us tell you…

Kenya is a country in the eastern part of Africa.  The coast of Kenya is the Indian Ocean.

The capital of Kenya is Nairobi.  Our Kenya buddies go to a school that is in a rural part of Nairobi.

April is the one of the months that are rainy in Kenya.

They learn to speak English and Kiswahili in school.

A Day in the Life of a Kenyan Child

One of the foods they eat for breakfast is mandazi and chapati.

Mandazi is fried dough shaped like a doughnut.  The picture below was sent to us by our friends at Bensesa School.

They eat mandazi for breakfast.

They also eat chapati, which is fried dough.  They may have this for lunch or ugali.  

Chapati!

Serving ugali and mandazi at school.

Do you know an interesting fact about Kenya that you can share?

Do you know an interesting fact about the Sonoran Desert to share?