From Flat Miss Cairns, made by Kade, and Emilce, in San Rafael, Mendoza, Argentina.
From Greg and Flat Mrs Coxhill, made by Addison, in New York City, USA.
Native American people called the Lenape originally lived in this area and the name Manhattan comes from their word manaháhtaan which means a place where wood can be found to make bows (for their bows and arrows). Then in 1626 Dutch traders bought Manhattan Island from the local people and called their settlement New Amsterdam before it was handed over to the British in 1664 who renamed it New York. In the middle of Manhattan is a big park called Central Park. Most people here live in apartment buildings so they have no back yards to play in. A lot of us go to Central Park in our free time to relax, for picnics or for exercise and there are always lots of free concerts there in the summertime. We often go there to ride around on our bicycles or just to hang out with our friends.
Can you see the swimming pool in the photo of Central Park? In the winter it changes into an ice rink where people go ice skating. The lake also freezes over but it’s too dangerous to skate on it as the ice might be too thin and you could fall through it. You can also see all the apartment buildings surrounding the park – the tall ones are newer and the highest one has 131 floors! Our building where Mrs Coxhill is staying is from the 1920s. It is 14 stories high and we are on the top floor, I have marked where it is on the photo between Central Park and the west side of the Hudson River. On the other side of the river is the state of New Jersey so the Hudson River is the boundary between the state of New York and the state of New Jersey. It’s a bit confusing sometimes because New York is the name of the city and also the name of the state. The Statue of Liberty was a gift from the people of France to the people of New York in 1886. It represents the Roman god of Liberty (or Freedom) and the structure of it was built by Gustav Eiffel who also built the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
The statue is on a small island called Liberty Island off the bottom of Manhattan. It is next to Ellis Island which was where immigrants from all over the world came through until the 1950s, so the Statue of Liberty welcomed them into the country. You can climb up the inside of the statue and look out the windows in the crown that she is wearing. Can you see the windows in the photo? A lot of the new people settled in New York and now there are about 8.4 million people living in New York City and 1.6 million in Manhattan. But during the week the number of people in Manhattan goes up to about 4 million because a lot of people come in for work from the other boroughs and other states. Like Melbourne, New York has a lot of immigrant groups so we can enjoy the different cultures and foods from all over the world. I know you like spaghetti bolognese Addison – there are two main areas in New York where you can get good Italian food, Little Italy in Manhattan and Arthur Avenue in the Belmont area of the Bronx.
We like going out to different local restaurants to try all the different foods – my favorite is a local restaurant called Flor de Mayo which has Chino Latino food that is a mixture of Peruvian and Chinese food. Usually these types of restaurants are started by the descendants of people from China who went to live in Latin America. Flor de Mayo is a Spanish name – in English it would be Mayflower which is the name of the ship that brought some of the first English immigrants to the USA. I hope you liked hearing a little bit about New York. Kind regards, Greg & Anne-Marie
From Flat Alexa and Sara in Germany
Dear Alexa I'm so sorry you had to wait so long for my emails but now in Germany where the school has started almost 2 months ago, I had a lot of school work to do. But I really enjoyed taking part in this project and taking photos and collecting information about Germany in my free time. I hope you like what I came up with and the photos that I and my brother took. I really hope it's not too boring because I mainly wrote about history? haha anyways I hope you still like it ! Kindest regards, Sara :]
Flat Lachlan is still having fun in Uganda. This week he has learnt how to make banana pancakes with special bananas and cassava flour. Cassava is a plant that you eat the roots, and the flour is made by drying it and then milling the result.
So these are the bananas before we used them. They look a bit like Ladies Finger bananas.
Then, here they are mashed before adding the flour,
Then when the flour has been added, it is flattened out and circles out, a bit like making scones.
The
final step is deep frying them and then of course eating them. They are
delicious. Flat Lachlan thought that was the
best bit. There was enough for everyone to have some. ‘Kiwoma’ means
delicious in Lugandan, and they were.
Flat Ms Kilner got to
meet my Year 1 class in New Eltham which is South East London outskirts heading
towards Kent. They've just returned to school after 6 months of remote learning
and are very excited to be back.
Each day they get to do
outdoor learning and we even have a Forest School! Flat Ms Kilner loved it
there!
We have Year 1 lessons
in the morning and Prep based activities in the afternoon because we missed so
much of their Prep year.
At Christmas year we usually put on a huge Christmas play so this
year we are thinking of how we can do that as a video to share to our parents.
