On December 5, national day of the native forest, the YEA team of Agrupamento de Escolas de Vale de Ovil, ERASMUS + Program, participated in a reforestation project in an area affected by the fires. This voluntary action is part of an extended program in the region aimed at restoring ecological and environmental heritage. The students of our school planted more than a hundred new trees. We are YEA !!!

In May 2018 and 2019, a big group of our school students with our teacher Ondrej Dostal participated in the traditional event - Cleaning of the Bystřice River. Our river is fifty four kilometres long and the water flows to the Morava and then to the Donau River and then to the Black sea. Children with our teacher, parents, volunteers and city hall staff set off on two predetermined routes. With gloves on their hands and plastic bags, the children set out along the river bed and along the shore.

As usual, a lot of garbage was gathered to the plastic bags and then carried away by a tractor. Two big groups were working for more than four hours and at noon they met in the centre of our town, near a bridge. The event was over and the gatherers were rewarded for their work. Then they left home with a sense of well-done work and the knowledge that they contributed a great deal to the better look of our town. And perhaps it will be a lesson to them that garbage does not fall to the ground or rivers, but to garbage cans.

Learning how to be proactive and environment friendly our students volunteer at the eco market fair. They learned about eco products and their production but also tried to make this market place better. They have painted and participated in this fair as voulonters in the afternoon. Lot of them joined this action and would like to be a part of another one. Children like to participate in a such projects activities because then they can be creative and active in their local area.

Learning how to be proactive and environment friendly our students volunteer at the eco market fair. They learned about eco products and their production but also tried to make this market place better. They have painted and participated in this fair as voulonters in the afternoon. Lot of them joined this action and would like to be a part of another one. Children like to participate in a such projects activities because then they can be creative and active in their local area.

On 7 th March 2018 our students attended a workshop about financial literacy in Erste Club – youth department at Erste&Steiermärkische Bank. The presentation was held by the department manager Duško Dorić. Students learned about the history of money, coins, paper money and currencies, the Croatian transfer to euro, credit cards, interest rates, savings and 
increasingly frequent financial blockades of young users of the bank. They also had the opportunity to ask questions about finances.

Thank you, Erste Club, for your hospitality!

Making a posters as a one of the favorite ways of presenting the learned knowledge, one of the favorite activities of a student which allows students to show their creativity. Posters we usually made in pairs or groups so activity is more fun.

Seventh grade students have been studying diligently about the history of Croatian money, development and changes throughout history. They learned about the development of a piggy bank. They presented their knowledge with posters who decorated their classroom.

The students also learned to create posters on a computer in tool Canva. Tips on how and why we need to save, how smart and responsible use the resources we have, they presented using digital posters.

How to be a smart consumer?

In this activity students learned how to be responsible with their money.

They worked in teams. The assignment was to write what makes a smart consumer. At the beginning we talked about consumers rights. Afterwards we talked about marketing tricks that make people buy products like advertising, nice packaging, false discounts, music in shops that influence our shopping mood, special offers like buy at the price of one and so on. We also talked about how commercials on TV and the radio influence consumers. Students know lots of advertising slogans and they made a commercial by themselves in which they used marketing tricks. We also discussed the difference between paying with cards and paying in cash. We agreed that when people pay with cards, they don’t really realise how much they spend. Students pointed out that is why it is important not to buy compulsively but to make some planning before. The discussion led to the difference between needs and desire and students realised they often buy things they actually don’t need.

Every team had to present their video at the end. Students finished the activity by publishing some advice for smart consuming on a padlet wall like: go to the store with a list of things you need, don’t buy things you don’t need, always take the invoice, buy on discounts, compare prices of products in different stores, don’t give your personal data about credit cards on the telephone or in e-mails, do some research about your consumer rights, read declarations on products, be sceptic when the offer is too good to be true, check the expiry date on a product and so on. Our students concluded there are tricks for smart consumers so go for it because saving money is smart.

Near our home town Rijeka, on our biggest croatian island Krk, is a company for farming and production medical and aromatic herbs. They farm 360 000 immortelle plants in an ecologically responsible way. In distilery they thermally process the green immortelle mass (with water steam) and thus obtain essential oils and hydrolate. This process our students could see, also smell and taste hydrolate as well as essential oils. Our students learned about cultivation, distillation and use of immortelle in pharmaceutical and cosmetic industry. The owner explained them about production, cultivation and profit. Immortelle is picked twice a year, in July and November and should be distilled within 24 hours. Students learned how and when it is picked, also how much immortelle do you need for 1 litre of immortelle essential oil. They found out about the price of one litre and think about all the work that has to be done to make such a big profit. The owner explaint to them about all the difficulties he had as an entrepreour. Students also learned about the importance of history at this place beacause that owner found out later. Actually, they foud out that it was a place were was historical battle between Caesar and Pompey.

In 2019 our eightgraders went through three whole day workshops of financial literacy. They worked in groups of four and learnt a lot about currency, family budget, business ideas and plans, about banks, loans and other interesting facts. First all groups went through some theoretical parts. In the second part of each they the groups worked on their own and at the end they had to prepare a presentation of their work and had to be prepared for lots of questions and discussion. We cooperated with a proffesional team from The Financial Literacy for school – a company that was established in 2012 and that is one of yourchance NGO projects and helps to create financially literate pupils, teachers and schools. This company systematically and individually develops teachers knowledge and skills in this topic and helps methodically to implement the principles of financial literacy in school subjects like Maths, Art, ICT and others. Financial literacy is a very important part of everyone´s life. By engaging in this field, we can influence an important social theme – the life and prosperity of indivituals and the society as a whole.

We had a big fair of science products. We behalf of students of Eramus+ team also exhibited our Robotic products. It was held on 29^th of May…

We exhibited As Erasmus team:

• smart color mate which says the colors to blind people
• Mayalarm which warn us when the milk is ready to leaven. when homemade yogurt is leavening, the degrees is too important
• Auto Umbrella which opens automatically when it is rainy.
• Smart Fan which works like climate according to weather temperature but it is more healthy

Students made handmade product and souvenirs to sale them at school fair in Czech Republic. They made many bookmarks, painted coasters and Easter decorations for the fair in Czech Republic. Money that they collected went for UNICEF. While selling products on fair students negotiate about the price and learned about earning money . They could see that it is not so easy to sell products and earn money. They also had to negotiate about the price to sell more products. While selling their products they have to calculate different kind of currency because buyers wanted to buy products in Crown but also in Euro. At the begining they had to agree for the price of each product. Also they had to decide about some selling offers like three products for two euro. In this task they have realized that it is not so easy to earn money.

Also they made suvenirs for Third Transnational meeting in Rijeka. They did 3d printer tags for Erasmus teachers, ceramic presents with typical croatian coast houses and Croatian Glagolitic,  the oldest known Slavic alphabet.

In this task students learned a lot. They learned about making and promoting products, learning about croatian culture and souvenirs, learning about negotiation, differnet currencies and also to be proactive members of school and local community.

The I.C. "Carducci Paolillo" from Cerignola represented the Erasmus project, its activities and objectives during the Christmas market held at Palazzo Montefornari in December 2018. The students involved in the project had the opportunity to promote their project to the school community and to share their activities, those carried out and those to be carried out.

Pupils prepared various works of art for this year’s Christmas charity fair. They combined their artistic creativity and entrepreneurship by making useful and decorative objects and selling them at the charity fair. The preparation, course and execution of work lasted several months.

The first products were ceramic candle holders. In art lessons they formed the candle holders from clay and it took them several weeks to dry on air. What followed was sanding and paining with ceramic colours. With the help of the art teacher Ela Vujnović the candle holders were baked in the furnace at school. After that they needed glazing and rebaking. Together with teacher Snježana Drabić they created graphics with Christmas motives. This is a very extensive job because first you need to create a matrix that will be pasted on the surface. They are then painted and printed using a printing machine. Pupils created two prints. They expressed their desire to create pictures for sale at the fair so with their teacher Slavica Pospiš they cut out the bases and prepared wonderful pictures.

Apart from that they created dish coasters from newspaper paper and painted wooden Christmas tree decorations. Parents prepared cakes which were also included in the sale. More than the earned money they were happy to know that with their work and effort they could contribute to gathering financial means which will enable our pupils to participate in various field trips.

We arranged  postcard workshop with Erasmus Team. About 15 students participated to this workshop. They made handmade postcard. They can use them to celebrate special days instead of buying. It would be more economical and it give us an opportunity to reuse old materials. So, They released that handmade products would be more valuable as a gift. 

Every September pupils from our school celebrate the European day of languages and every September we invite foreign students from Edison project to our school. Together we learn about the similarities and differences in our life style, in our educational system and in our languages. In 2017 we add a new activity to our day – we created and wrote a set of postcards for our new friends from Portugal, Turkey, Croatia and Italy. We made the postcards in our Art lesson and added the texts in our language lessons. We send some of the postcards to our Edison friends as well. We learnt that we have similar words not only with Croatians, but some words sound more of less same even with Turkish, Italian and Portuguese language. At Christmas time we created a new set of postcards with Christmas ornaments and sent them to our families and friends. 

Friends are like baloons.
If you let them go, you can't get them back.

International Day of Peace

Every year on 21 September our school celebrates the International Day of Peace by releasing a reasonable number (one per class) of helium filled balloons with messages of peace and friendship. 
This year in our English class we talked about the value of peace and the importance of good relationships among people. We concluded that there are too many wars and disagreements in the world and that there is peace only somewhere on Earth. :-)
We searched the Internet for famous quotes about peace and selected the best ones. In order to share them with anyone who might be interested, we created an interactive set on Quizlet. To view it clik on https://quizlet.com/226106628/peace-quotes-flash-cards/ 
You can also play the interactive matching game on https://quizlet.com/226106628/match. 
Fave fun and ... be in peace, not in pieces. :-)

Except messages students made 3D postcards for their new Erasmus friends.

During the Christmas period, Erasmus students took part in a seminar to create Christmas greeting cards. They were made with recycled material and with material to be reused because they were rejected by other activities. The students took part in the workshop with great enthusiasm and had a great time. The students used the tickets made by them to wish relatives and friends. They learned that if I do, I save.

Students and teachers from the 1st Primary School of Čakovec celebrated the European Day of Languages by independently designing and creating postcards and sending them to pupils and teachers in partner schools across Europe.

Children's creativity and imagination have been shown in full glory. The students made their own drawings, made postcards of old stuff and textile materials and gave them new value. The students independently recycled old paper and made postcards of recycled paper.