Newspaper Clothes

Tuesday marked Finland’s 99^th Independence Day. It was a cold one too (-20c to be precise). As a result, it felt pretty good to watch the big president’s event bundled in thick blankets with a hot chocolate to hand. On a deeper note, getting to know Finland’s history has been a real privilege and it was truly special to get a taste of the celebrations.

Yesterday saw the students return to school, however, and everything was back to normal (if you can call making clothes out of newspaper normal). That’s right – as part of our discussion on multiculturalism and how we define culture, I asked the International Studies students to make one of three traditional pieces of clothing. They could choose from: a kilt, a sari, or a kimono. The rules were simple. They had to try to make this clothing using only newspaper, sellotape and scissors. There were some wonderful creations...

We noted that culture can be judged through such things as clothes and it was soon time to move on to the main task! The students’ second challenge is to make tourism videos based one of three multicultural cities: Sao Paulo, Toronto, and Singapore. They will have to convince the judge(s) to visit their city while providing information to show just how multicultural it is and what it has to offer. After completing their research yesterday, the students are ready to film their videos at the start of next lesson and I'm sure excited to see how they all turn out!