Well, when our Chinese friends visited last December, they were so impressed with how welcome they were made to feel at Bede Burn that they were desperate to return and give some other children the chance to experience the North Eastern hospitality!

The children and teachers (including the Head Teacher) from Meiyuan School arrived, weary, yet excited, on Sunday afternoon.  On Monday they spent the day with us at school, getting involved in lessons throughout the day.

Miss Lenney organised some rotational symmetry activities in her lesson and this gave our children the opportunity to chat and get to know their new friends (although I’m not sure how much of the finer details of the game ‘Bulldog’ they understood!)

Miss Summers further impressed by dressing up as Little Red Riding Hood and encouraged great team work as the children from both schools retold the story to each other before acting it out.  Some of our boys seemed quite attached to the red hood too!

Finally Miss Smith put both sets of children through their paces in a PE lesson, again it was brilliant to see our children encouraging and helping their Chinese friends in the exercises!

After school, Miss Lenney and I took the Chinese to Arbeia and gave them a tour of the Roman fort.  We didn’t even make anything up!  Although cold and blustery (they are used to a hot and humid thirty degrees) they all seemed to enjoy the visit, even the smell boxes…

The children will be back with us next Monday and will be staying for the KS2 disco (tickets available from the office.)

Some great photographs from the day are here.