Australian Pen Pals / Travel Buddy (Spring, 1998)
This past spring (1998)we had Poss, the possum from Austral Public School visiting our class. Poss has had lots of experience travelling around the world. Each year, his teacher, Mr. Paul Sweeney chooses a place for him to visit. This year we were lucky enough to be asked to be his host school. He came with a map and lots of information about his homeland. The children even included some bags of special candy treats that everyone (teacher included) enjoyed! One treat (Vegimite) which we know they love was appreciated as well (but its taste is something that we weren't quite used to!).
Meanwhile, our class shared information about our school and community with Mr. Sweeney's class in Australia via e-mail.
We also showed Poss around our school and took him to various classes. We took some pictures of him with our class & we sent them to our friends "down under". We included some treats (peppermint nobs & bulls' eyes) and a package of hard bread for them to use in making a favourite meal of Newfoundlanders, brewis.
Another thing we included were stories about ourselves, our school, our town & our favourite activities. We even put in some local newspapers, travel brochures, a map of our province, some songs and some folklore about our culture. We mailed it in June and it arrived in Australia by the end of August.
This is an activity that our class really enjoyed and would recommend to any class.
If you would like to visit the homepage of our friends in Austal Public School please click here and you can read more news about Poss and his continuing adventures as he travels around the world.