Head's Lines

World Soil day

Last Friday was World Soil Day. Khroo Kitty and a group of dedicated students invited Ajarn Noke, Mr Roo and myself to the High School to commemorate this day by planting two trees by the Spirit House there.

A Student’s Reflections on World Soil Day

World Soil Day is a day when we as a community divert our attention to the importance of healthy soil and understand how crucial healthy soil is to us. Healthy soil gives us big beautiful trees (which provide us with our oxygen and helps to rid our air of CO2), and fresh yummy food. It falls on the 5th of December of every year in honour of King Rama 9 who officially sanctioned the event. King Rama 9 was said to be a very “down to earth man” who travelled to the remotest areas of Thailand and sat on the ground with farmers and villagers to listen to their issues and provide solutions by launching more than 4,000 sustainable development projects. Because of this we celebrate World Soil Day on his birthday, the 5th of December every year. Now people all over the world celebrate this day along with our school which truly sees the importance of healthy soil. During the years we have had a new soil campaign to focus on such as: stopping soil erosion, stopping the soil pollution and this year's focus on food grown from soil. 

We as a Thai class participated in celebrating World Soil Day by doing things like :Planting a Golden Shower TreeTraditional Rice GrindingMaking compost out of krathongsMaking posters to raise awareness within the STA community And all of the activities we participated in helped us to realise the importance of soil since good and healthy soil is crucial to make the plants grow healthy and strong. 

Along with learning the ‘boran’ or traditional process of making rice, we planted a Golden Shower Tree (ต้นราชพฤกษ์) in our Thai class. We received the seeds from Asian Herb In Space project which are the same seeds as the ones being tested in space! The reason we planted the Golden Shower Tree is because it is the national flower of Thailand, as the bright yellow represents both Buddhism and King Rama 9. These flowers are used for many important festivals. For example the yellow flowers are used to decorate, and temples all around Thailand use the plant to splash water on Buddha statues and fellow Thais during the Songkran Festival. People also use the plant to pray. We had previously planted the seeds last year, and now that the plants have grown, we were able to repot the grown plants into a new location which is near our school's spirit house! We were very fortunate to come together as a community to learn more about the importance of the Golden Shower Tree and learn about the growing process. 

Khroo Kitty’s Year 9 Thai class and Miss Kiyomi’s Year 8 Japanese class came together to use the compost previously made by students to help the plants grow into the beautiful golden shower trees. The compost was made from recycled things all over our school and is completely eco friendly. We used leftover eggshells from the canteen and leaves from the making of krathongs on Loy Krathong Day. Then we all helped plant the tree into the healthy soil (with our compost) which is now ready to grow some more! While we were re planting the plants we were also accompanied by Mr Paul, Khroo Noke and Mr. Roo who were very helpful throughout the whole process. 

Moreover, in our Thai lesson we got to experience how much effort it takes to harvest a grain of rice. Firstly, the rice was collected, and after that we were able to take that rice to pound in a mortar (ครก) to separate the peel from the grain. Following that, we had to hand separate the peel and collect the grains of rice. We then were able to see how much work it took just to get one grain of rice and the value the grain of rice had. This method was used by the farmers all throughout Thailand and still to this day there are still some people using this method. 

Now there are new technologies like tractors, rice transplanters etc. which help farmers work more efficiently. We have learned a lot and now value rice much more as we know the amount of work and effort that the farmers put into getting the rice for us!

Christmas Festivities

Last week was filled with Christmas celebrations as we had Year 3 and Year 4 music in the Sports Hall and the Year 5 Christmas Music Concert in the Theatre at High School. These were all excellent events with some fantastic singing and musical performances from members of each year group. It certainly has given everyone a nice Christmas lift as we look to the final week of this long term, as well as the Christmas Fairs and Year 6 and High School Music Celebrations throughout the week.

Last Friday there was a great performance by the High School Strings Ensemble to welcome everyone to “Festive Friday” with many students, teachers and admin staff dressed in all sorts of Christmas clothes. Breaktime was especially great with a whole school Christmas sing along led by students and teachers in the Atrium.