The fun & educational hospital school visit!

The core InnoBarentsLab members An Tran, Nina Niskala and I visited Rovaniemi´s hospital school on 8.11. This was already a second time to visit for Nina on accord of Give Back to Finland project but this time An and I were joining in and the activities had changed.

As before in autumn 2015, we met Asko Peuraniemi, the principle of the school, and also other staff members so we had a nice short chat about who we are and what is going on in InnoBarentsLab. Little before 10am us members moved to the class for secondary school kids and began our program. I started off by having all three of us introduce ourselves after which Nina moved on to check that the voice clips for quiz were ready. An took lead then and asked also the students to introduce themselves. They were quite shy at first but everyone managed to introduce themselves in English eventually.

After that An hold a crash course in Vietnamese language, introducing the key phrases and the five accents used in writing. Kids also got a short description of Vietnam´s history and geography in between the language teaching.

Next up was the language quiz where kids (and also staff!) were guessing the language used in short sound clips from three examples. Maybe the quiz was easy or people present quite smart since all the answers were correct.

Program ended on gingerbread decoration session where both kids and staff were free to decorate cookies exactly how they wanted using icing sugar and sprinkles. The results were individual and pretty art.

In the end we thanked the kids and staff. Asko offered us three lunch in hospital staff cafeteria and we had in-depth discussion about traveling and working. It was agreed that Give Back to Finland Kids 2016 project would take place on primary school students´ class in about two weeks.

Author: Laura Ukkola

Photos: An Tran & Laura Ukkola