Making Holiday Cookies

During the week before winter break, the Basic class was busy making holiday cookies.

On Monday, they watched a video about making cookies and learned all the names for the ingredients and measurements.

On Tuesday, they mixed up the dough.

At first, some are dubious that cookie dough will ever taste good

Who needs a Kitchen Aid?

Eh Ka Nyaw and Thin Than work together to get the dough mixed up

Absolutely perfect

What a workout!

On Wednesday, they rolled out the dough, cut out the cookies, and baked the cookies.

Nyo Nyo, Kyaw Po and Cuong cut out flawless cookies

Three good friends: Dung is from Vietnam, Maricela is from Guatemala, and Damanti is from Bhutan.

Cathy demonstrates the art of cookie cutting

Mue Leh, Moo Ko Paw, and Lay Lay Moo cut out cookies as a team

On Thursday, they mixed up frosting and decorated the cookies.  Some of the cookies went to our friends at Arlington Hills Lutheran Church.  The rest of the cookies went home for families.

Pu Day adds red food coloring

This group is a cookie-decorating factory!

Tey Moo puts many colors on his cookies

Maria shows off one of her beautiful cookies

Getting the cookie plates ready to deliver

Sarah, Naw Boh, and Jen pause for a picture with a pile-o-cookies!

The entire class sings "Jingle Bells" as they deliver the cookies to the office and to Mr. Jim

After the class finished decorating and delivering the cookies, they worked with Jen to write a class story about their experience.

"Yesterday we made cookies.  Today, we decorated cookies.  We quickly mixed powdered sugar, water, and food coloring.  Sa Ki Na made yellow frosting.  Eh Ka Naw made green colored sugar.  We put the frosting and colored sugar on the cookies.  We were happy.  We washed our hands, the bowls and the tables.  We put the cookies on the plate.  We put plastic over the cookies.  We wrote Happy Holidays on the plastic.  We sang the Jingle Bells song.  We gave the cookies to Mr. Jim and to the office.  We said Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!"

Happy Thanksgiving!

On Wednesday, November 23rd, we had our annual Thanksgiving Party at Arlington Hills.  There were over 90 learners that attended, plus about 20 volunteers, teachers, and special guests.  Somehow we managed to feed them all!

The men from Andrea's class took over the making of mashed potatoes with Teacher Kirsti supervising. They peeled 15 pounds of potatoes in all, but there were no leftovers at the end of the meal!

Teacher Jessica's students helped decorate for the event. They used turkey decorations that Rachel's Childrens English School students created the day before. Both the children and the tukeys were adorable!

Some of the women from Teacher Andrea's class helped Mrs. Wiehe hang up coats in the Alley Shoppe while we were setting up for the party.  Every learner was able to take home two winter coats at the end of the party, as well as hats, boots, scarfs and mittens for themselves and their families.  We are so lucky to be able to partner with the Alley Shoppe to help keep our learners warm.

 Teacher Jessica's class preformed "Oh Susanna" for the school.  It was very popular!

Teacher Andrea's class preformed "Down by the Riverside"  They were really nervous because they were doing it from memory, but they did a wonderful job and sounded beautiful, so they shouldn't have worried.

Everyone at the party wrote their name and something that they were thankful for, and glued it on the "Tree of Thanks".  The Arlington Hills Lutheran Church is displaying the tree in their lobby during the holiday season.

 Teacher Marya, who was the only teacher with turkey-cooking experience under her belt, was in charge of the turkeys.  They turned out delicious, and more importantly, no one came down with food poisoning!  A HUGE thanks to Annelisa, Gail, Cathy, and Diane who chipped in to help us buy the turkeys.

 Aung Moe Kyaw, Tey Ley, and Than Thin show off their turkey-carving skills.

 Kirsti and Emily graciously finished up the final potato preparations. 

Finally!  After all of that work, it was time to eat.  Many learners brought food to share, so we had the traditional Minnesota holiday foods of turkey, mashed potatoes, and stuffing, along with papaya salad, rice, taquitas, rice noodle dishes, and curry.  Jim even baked apple pies that he served warm with ice cream.  It was a delicious day.



Tricks and Treats

Jim, the head of maintenance from the Arlington Hills Lutheran Church, put on his annual trick pool shots show for the school.  There were over 90 learners, teachers and children attending this year!  Jim preformed original trick shots with volunteers from the audience, and everyone ate popcorn and got a salted nut roll to take home, courtesy of Jim.  A great time was had by all!



Jim explains the game to the learners.

The Children's English School loved the trick shots!

Jim gets some help from members of the audience.

Tree Nae and Way Way Lah play Jim's game, "Helping Hands Across the Sea".

Ready, aim, shoot!

Teacher Jessica is one brave woman!  Fortunately for us all, Jim didn't miss, and Jessica is still with us.



Good-Bye Garden!

We said good-bye to our gardens for this year and got them ready for the winter. 

Teacher Jessica's class, led by her sister Liz that day, took care of the courtyard tomato and chili pepper gardens.  They stored the potting soil, sifted out the rocks for drainage, pulled the plants, and stacked up the pots.  Some of the students took chili pepper plants home to try planting them in their apartments over the winter.

Teacher Marya's class took care of the outside church garden.  They pulled up all of the plants and got them ready for Jim to take to the compost heap.  They took down the fence and the sticks for trellising, and got them ready to store in the garage for the winter.  It took us weeks and weeks to put everything up in and around the garden, and less than 10 minutes to take it all down.

The marigolds were still beautiful!

Teacher Andrea's class took down the Sue's Park garden.  They pulled the fence, pulled all of the plants, and said good-bye until next year. We have to say a huge thank you to the wonderful Hmong family that allowed us to use their water for the garden so that we didn't have to carry water from the church.  They saved our backs and arms from a lot of work! 

Bal Tamang wrestles with the fence.

How many students does it take to pull out a fence post?

Nga Reh decides to take the sunflower heads home for a snack.

Aung Moe Kyaw shows us how strong he is.

We carry the vegetables back to the church to send with Jim to the compost heap.



Teacher Andrea's class is very grateful to Santiago's family, who allowed us to pick apples from their huge apple tree in their backyard.  

Personal and Minnesota Histories Meet

We took an exciting trip to the Minnesota History Center today. The day started at 9:30 as the first group of 20 students boarded the 64 bus toward downtown. Over the course of an hour, over 80 students rode public transit and practiced feeding tickets and tokens into the bus. One group even had the authentic (although not intentional) experience of getting on the wrong bus and having to backtrack.

Once we got to the museum, Chong assumed the role of bus driver on this restored bus in the MN150 exhibit.

Eh Dah practiced conducting as he listened to the MN Orchestra.

The "Open House" exhibit gave everyone a chance to practice the vocabulary they're learning this month in the housing unit. Here, two students are playing in the "yard."

Many of the students made connections between their own wartime experiences and the displays in the "Greatest Generation" exhibit.

Say K Paw compared notes with an interpretive volunteer on food rations used in the U.S. during WWII and those used in the Thai Refugee Camp where he lived.

On the way back to the school we packed the bus with Arlington Hills learners. A few learners joked that today was "Karen Language Day" on the bus. Several students were soaked after having run through the downpour to get to the bus. Despite the rain, everyone seemed to have a good time.

Garden For May

First time we go to pick dirt on the garden in to the church and we pick on the pot. We mixed together the dirt and rock in the pot.After we buy the flowers in the market .Andthem we plant the flowers tomatoes and chilipaper in the garden.

the june garden.

in june we picked the grss, the plants grew. some vegetables. grew some plants had small flowers we looked vegetable plants tomatoes plants.