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H i g h l i g h t s o f S e m e s t e O n e

Bangla School T he end of semester

one is upon us. The last few months went

incredibly fast as our children spent their time learning Ben-gali language and the myths, the culture and the traditions of a land we have left behind and call “Home”.

On Sunday 29 April, the chil-dren welcomed the month of Boishakh - the advent of Ben-gali new year with dances, songs and poetry recitals. At the conclusion of the function,

they paid tribute to the Ben-gali language by singing Ami Banglai gaan gaaee.

On Saturday 7 July, the Bangla School of Victoria joined the Bangla Sahitya Sansad (BSS) in celebrating its annual children’s festival by staging an abridged ver-sion of Rabindranath Tagore’s T a s h e r D e s h . After only four rehearsals, our children staged a spectacular show in front of a spellbound audience.

Participation in such a cultural event offered an enriching experience to the children. Not only did they gain famili-arity with the story and the characters of Tasher Desh, they also learnt about Rabin-dranath Tagore and Rabindra nrityo-natto. The opportunity to act, dance, help with mak-ing the props and participate in a group performance was a complete fun-time experience for them!

Tuku Bandopadhayay

Bangla School Newsletter  Issue 02 — July 2012            http://www.banglaschool.org.au/

Contact : Prodyut-Tuhin Dey - 0433 321 727 Mount Street Neighbourhood House 6 Mount Street, Glen Waverley, Victoria - 3150 MELWAY 71 3C-3D

Children of Bangla School of Victoria celebrated the Bengali new

year with great enthusiasm. They are joined in this photo by their two

teachers, Anindita Bera and Tuku Bandopadhayay.

Bengali New Year 1419

T he children of Bangla School of Victoria celebrated their School’s

annual function Poila Boishakh on Sunday 29 April 2012. This was an opportunity for the chil-dren to welcome the Bengali new year. While some children recited Bengali

poems and participated in folk dances, others chose to speak to the audience about Rabindranath Tagore, Kazi Naz-rul Islam and the various traditions of celebrating Bengali new year in Kol-kata and Bangladesh. The one hour program was concluded by the song Ami Banglai gaan gaaee and followed by a sumptuous feast.

Parents and invited guests thoroughly enjoyed the School function and con-gratulated the children on their achievements. Special thanks to Chanchal Mandal for teaching our children the inspiring song Ami Banglai gaan gaaee and Shomik Sengupta for accompanying the children on Tabla.

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H i g h l i g h t s o f S e m e s t e O n e

Tasher Desh On Saturday 7 July, the students of the School stole the show when they took part in Bangla Sahitya Sansad’s An-nual Literary Festival as invited guests and presented an abridged version of

Rabindranath Tagore’s famous dance-drama, Tasher Desh. Two young children from the wider Bengali community joined our stu-dents in the performance. The

School would like to acknowledge Aaheli Burman, Diya Dasgupta and their mothers, Dola Burman and Bhas-wati Dasgupta, for their contribution in the success of this production.

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Stories by children . . .

Anisha Chakroborty’s story

Mayukh Bera’s painting

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Stories by children . . .

Aneek Sengupta’s story

Mekhala Bera’s story

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Pritika Sinha’ s story

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Shohaag Sengupta’s story

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Oxford July 2, 2012 Hello. Oxford has become even more exciting. I have been doing lots of things since I last wrote to you and most of them have been really fun. On the 20th of March years 3, 4 and 5 all participated in a poetry compe-tition. Everyone had to pick a poem by a poet to memorize and then recite in front of the school. I picked a poem called “Whattif”. My friend, Giles picked a poem called Daffodils that his great-great uncle had written. It turns out his great –great uncle was William Wordsworth. My Mum fell off her chair when she heard that Giles is related to William Wordsworth. We went to the Internet and searched out some of his poems. On the 27th and 28th of March, years 5 and 6 performed a French play on the French Revolution. The French Revolution is where the people of France revolt against the King and Queen at the time. The people of Paris had run out of money and food. In the end the King and Queen get guillotined. I played a representative of the people in this play. We had to speak all our lines in French! Fortunately the fact that we got Chocolates and Squash at the end made the experience a whole lot better. A professional film company filmed us as well.

In late April my family and I went to Germany. We went to Ham-burg, to Berlin and to Heidelberg.

In Hamburg we went to a model mu-seum where there were model train sets and even model plane sets that moved around and the exhibits changed from light to dark and at night time the lights in the houses and trains all switched on. The model museum was breathtaking and at times so realistic that I forgot they were models. In Berlin we went to a museum called Checkpoint Charlie. This is where the border between East Berlin and West Berlin used to be. In the 1980s Russian troops and American troops faced up to each other on oppo-site sides of the border. We have been studying World War 2 in school where the Russians and Americans fought to-gether to beat the Germans so now when we went to Germany and I found out they were enemies it was quite sur-prising. For me, this was an amazing peek at history. We only stayed in Hei-delberg for a day so we didn’t really do anything there, except walking around the city. We took the train on our travels within Germany. The trains had a cool name - ICE (Inter-City Express). They

were really fast, much faster than trains in Mel-

bourne. If you looked out of the window the trees and landscape flying past were just a blur.

A few days back I came back from a school camp in Normandy, France. We left on the 25th of June at 4:30 am. We took a bus to Portsmouth and then took a ferry over the English Channel. We spent 6 hours on the ferry. Luckily there was a cinema to entertain us throughout the journey. When we finally arrived at the campsite we played soccer. The next day we went and climbed Mont St Mi-chel. Then we went through a river and quick sand. We jumped on the quick sand to see how far down we could sink. I sank right down to my knees. This was the highlight of my trip, though if we were at home our parents would not have been happy with our mud-covered clothes! On Wednesday we went kayaking. Kayaking is like canoeing except with only one person per boat. I fell into the river –the water was freezing cold. So did around 5 other kids. Later on we did circus tricks like juggling. It was really cool. After lunch we went to the nearest town to follow a trail where we had to look at signs for clues to answer questions. Before going back to our camp we all bought ice cream. When we arrived back at the camp we made bread for dinner. On Thursday we went on the high ropes course. In the high ropes course you swing from tree to tree with zip wires and other things. Later on we went sand yachting. On our final day we went on a treasure hunt in which my team came second. After that we just took the bus and then ferry home again. On the ferry back I watched a movie called Top Cat.

When we finally arrived home we were about two hours late and it was past midnight! (Continued on next page)

Letter from Aditya to his Bangla School friends . . .

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(Continued from previous page) Yesterday we went to the Lords Cricket Ground and saw a match between the India and England women’s XI. Lords was brilliant and the view was really close. After hearing so much about

lords though I didn’t understand what was so special about Lords - it is just like any other cricket ground but the experience was still fantastic. We will arrive back in Melbourne in exactly one week. So see you there!

Aditya Moitra

Nabaneeta’s painting

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Sanchita’s painting

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