Hope you and your families are doing well in these uncertain times. We are approaching Christmas and we would like to invite you to our pre Christmas celebrations.
Please join and enjoy our Advent Calendar Adventure.
Each day we will open a new window on our learning.
Each day we will have a little activity to get us into the Christmas spirit.
If you would like to join in the Advent Calendar Experience, please follow the link.
Hope you all had a nice break. Life is very different from what we were used to and our last term of the school year 2019-2020 finished without the traditional celebrations, multicultural dinner, paella rally…
I am so pleased with how everyone adapted to lessons online back in March and how students are asking for more online provision that suits them at any location.
This summer new activities were on offer. Alessandra took us on a tour of Italy, with culture, history and real Italian cooking.
With Elena a few “peregrinos” did the camino challenge where walks and cultural challenges were added weekly. The feedback has been fantastic, therefore we are looking into our next cultural activities. Backstage tutors are preparing cultural activities to add to our weekly provision.
The new normal has brought a new dimension to our little language centre and our students are learning languages and culture as well as technology. I know, sometimes it is a very challenging combination but we are here to learn together and to support each other at good times and bad.
This Autumn will be challenging as the days will draw in and everyone will stay at home as much as possible but tutors as much as students will be looking forward to our weekly meeting.
If you have not booked, please follow the link to do it. If you have done it, thank you very much.
Everything started a year ago…While we were in one of our enrichment activities in Spain our group of students asked for flamenco lessons back in Bedford!
Sevillanas workshop in Madrid June 2014
Back home we contacted Claire, La Fresa Flamenca, and since then two groups of students have learnt this type of Spanish dance.
Last Saturday night, as a grand finale we offered a “ palma”workshop with tapas and paella. In this workshop we learnt different Spanish rhythms and after that we all danced sevillanas, that is a dance from Seville, in the South of Spain.
We had Timothy Pearson, our guitarist, and Claire Astbury, our flamenco teacher. Everyone had a fantastic time!
There were 25 of us who went to the talk about Katharine of Aragon given by Alison Weir.
I was not sure what to expect as Katharine has always seen the cause of religious separation from the Catholic world in England. Having heard a lot about Alison Weir but having never read her books, nor followed her on the media, I knew only that she was a well-known English historian.
What a talk!
Alison’s narration and story-telling techniques, as well as her deep knowledge about the early Tudor times transported us to the times of Kathari ne of Aragon. We learnt how tough this Spanish lady was and how ruthless Henry VIII was to her. She did not manage to meet her only living child, Mary, for the last years of her life.
Katharine knew her role in life, and in her last letter to her husband, written on her death-bed, she wrote, Dear husband, and signed it, the Queen of England. http://englishhistory.net/tudor/letter5.html
Alison is very erudite on the subject of Henry VIII and her way of presenting the topic made me realise how much more I would like to learn about Katharine of Aragon. We are thinking of organising a tour where Alison can tell us more. Thank you to everyone who came on the trip and shared this experience with us.
Kate Atkins, our in-house artist ran a fantastic workshop for the whole family. We were part of the UK family art festival. Different drawing techniques were used.
Children and adults learnt about the Catrina ghost and how Mexican people celebrate the day of the dead.
We hope next year we will work with other artists and make the event bigger and richer!!