Solids, liquids and gases

MI High Agent, we need your help to destroy the listening devices hidden in celebrity chef Tommy Blumenheck's kitchen – before it's too late!

Fire Brigade Visit to School

As if it wasn't hot enough at the moment, a detachment from the Saudi fire brigade paid a visit this morning to give a demonstration of some of their fire fighting and rescue skills.  They were invited by the Reception classes who have been studying 'Carers and people who help us' but we all enjoyed their visit.  They showed us a selection of cutting and rescue tools, which are sadly used a lot here in the Kingdom with the number of car crashes that we have.  That's why Nurse Eileen is so insistent that we all wear our seat belts.  We got to see Mr. Suter putting out a fire on the playground, and then Farah in 5S became the envy of everyone watching as she got to squirt the fire engine's hose across the playground.  Thank you Reception for inviting us!

Aren't they supposed to be red?

The inner workings of the fire truck.

How many firemen does it take to put out a fire?

Demonstrating their hydraulic rescue equipment.

Hydraulic jack.

Hang on - aren't they supposed to put fires out?

Uh oh!

What's this coming out of the mist?

Is it a bird?  Is it a plane?

Mr. Suter to the rescue...

This is how it's done!  Cool as a cucumber.

Farah gets to squirt the world's biggest water pistol!

5S travel back to the ancient Olympics

On Saturday 21st May, 5S entertained parents and students alike at our Junior assembly with a trip back in time.  Back to 776BC, in fact, to the first Olympic Games. 

We were treated to a fascinating account of when and where the games took place, and the types of events the ancient Greeks enjoyed. 

In such a small hall it was surprising that 5S managed to fit in chariot races, sprints, pentathlon, boxing and a running race in full military armour!  There was lots of fun involved but 5S also demonstrated lots of comparisons between the original Olympics and those we see on our televisions today.

The mean Spartans

The proud Athenians

Ready for the race in armour!

Playing to a packed hall.

Add caption

Our commentators Matthew and Valerio.

Posing for parents.

Tayma, Sarrah, Talia, Farah, Ami, Sophia and Daniela.

Two of our champions.

With thanks to Daniela's Dad for copies of the photographs.

Mathletics frenzy!

The world top 50 leader board - 6B and 5S slug it out!

The whole of the Junior department has gone maths crazy this week as students from BISAK have been competing in the Middle East Mathletics Challenge.  The children have been answering questions and accumulating points for themselves and their class.  Some fierce rivalries have been developing, particularly between Mr. Botha's 6B and Mr. Suter's 5S!  The lead has been changing frequently as the student's strive for top spot.  Who said the competitive spirit was dead?!


While not all the year 5 classes have made it onto the leader board, there are still some fine individual performances from students within Year 5 achieving some fantastic results.  The ICT lab has never been so popular, and as Mr.Whitaker, our Primary ICT teacher says, "I've never known a programme or game that has generated so much excitement."

Mathletics finishes on Sunday, so children can still play throughout the weekend.  Can a Year 5 class finish top of the BISAK pile?  Keep them at their maths...

We're back for the summer term!

What a fantastic response to our Greece blog!  Grannies, aunts, uncles,cousins and friends from all round the world were following the progress of our children in Year 6 as well as Year 5 as they experienced their Greek adventure.

We're back for the new summer term now, and it's back to business as usual for our blog, documenting the activities and goings on in Year 5 as the term progresses.  To all our new found followers - don't leave us!  It's been great having you follow our progress and just because we're back in school now doesn't mean things get any less exciting. 

At the moment in our Literacy lessons, we're looking at persuasive language and letter writing, in particular letters of complaint.  This BBC Bitesize activity is a good way to see how good you can be at complaining!

Can you leave me behind please?

 Apologies for the news blackout last night – in the excitement of our arrival back in Saudi came the reality of a downed internet server.  By now we’re sure parents have all the details of the children’s trip – most probably your ears were burning all the way back to Khobar!

 We had a slow start to the day – with an 11.00am pickup, there was no need to wake up until 8.30am.  There was not a single child awake before this time, they all slept on.  Ms. Naidoo too – she slept through her alarm but was fortunately woken by a friend calling from Saudi who thought she would need the extra time to pack her suitcase!


We had a smooth transfer to the airport.  On the way we discovered that Mohammed had left all the presents he’d bought in Greece in Tolon, and so one phone call later it was duly arranged that Mr. Gikas would visit in the summer to collect them (that’ll be a hard task for him, considering his favourite restaurant in Greece is a kilometer along the coast!).  Fortunately, the camera that Mohammed had left on the bus the day before was duly returned by the driver.

The sight of 30 children travelling around Greece was generally received with comments along the lines of “They’re so cute!”  If only they knew!  We were by far the youngest group of overseas tourists that we saw.  We were fussed over by Qatar Airways staff in the airport who quickly checked us in – although there were one or two passport discrepancies and they had to call back “the little girl Naidoo.”  (Actually, that was a recurring theme as the immigration officer in Dammam couldn’t understand why Ms. Naidoo remained at the desk seeing her group through – he thought she was one of the students). 

 Arrival in Doha was fairly prompt and gave the children their last opportunity to spend any remaining money they may have had – which, let’s face it, wasn’t much!  We should really have received a special commendation from the Greek government for the amount of cash we pumped into their economy!  We had a final bumpy flight from Doha to Dammam during which Mr. Suter was aggrieved to be beaten at the adult quiz game by Maya and Salman – they were guessing the answers, for goodness sake! – although Mr. Whitaker was delighted to beat Valerio at chess! 

 Upon landing, we managed to beat the main rush in the immigration hall, although Elizabeth did her best to delay us as her visa had to be scutinised by three different officers.  Eventually she was ‘released’, we gathered our bags, and emerged to the cheers and greetings of the assembled throng of mums and dads waiting for us.  

 What a fabulous week.  The children have been a credit to themselves and the school.  They’ve learned a lot, enjoyed new experiences and we hope had a lot of fun in the process, 



Laila enjoyed herself so much, on the bus to the airport in Athens she asked, “Can you leave me behind please?”

The strain shows!

Worn out

We thought we’d end this blog with the thoughts of the children themselves, taken from their journals:

Carina: “My favourite part was the Acropolis.  When you see it in the books it’s good, but when you’re there, it’s, like, wow!” 

Noura: “We went to the Parthenon after that.  It was very long and felt like it was called the Parthenon and on and on…”

Elizabeth: “Elvis Presslyiano did weird acts for us like a multicultural cat…” 

Maya: “In the museum we saw Greek vases and the most disgusting thing in the museum is the naked people.”

Matthew: “Today we got up to find a magnificent view of the sunrise from our balcony.”

Ami: “We climbed the Acropolis and it was amazing.”

Laila: “This is a week I will never forget.”

Khaled: “We had lunch – I had chicken and bread.  They were yummy.”

Valerio: “Luckily today I woke up before Mr. Suter and Mr. Whitaker could sing.”

Dylan: “I ate chicken that didn’t taste so good – I miss what my mum cooks.”

Salik: “The three islands were beautiful and huge.”

Lojain: “Breakfast was not the same because we were in Tolon.  It was unexpectantly better.”

Faisal: “We went for dinner and had beef, rice and a Greek food.  I don’t know what it was called.”

Noura: “We then went to see some statues that are disgusting because most of them are naked.  As Anna, our tour guide had said, all men statues are naked.”

Jacob: “On the second island we went to the clock tower.  It was hard work.”

Lynn: “When we got to the museum and had a look around it we got to understand the old culture of Greece.”

Mohammed: “Today was such fun because I took a lemon from a lemon tree.”

Ridah: “I didn’t like walking, and my legs were hurting so much, even though I was wearing trainers.”

Noura: “We went to the beach and the water was freezing.  We were bullied by Mr. Suter and Mr. Whitaker.  We got our revenge later on.  We buried Mr. Whitaker and put boobs on him and made him a mermaid.”

Ahmed: “Today we woke up at 7.00am.  Mr. Suter had to come in and wake us up.  How does he open our door without the key?”

Kush: “We saw a cat on Ayra’s lap and we scared it away – it just vanished into thin air.”

Ayra: “I was sitting down and a cat came and sat next to me and then she climbed into my lap and Ms. Naidoo said that I put her in my lap.  I said I didn’t, because I didn’t.  And I did sanitise my hands after so bye!”

Daniel: “At the museum we were excited and it felt amazing.  There was glass and under it there was old things…”

Simon: “We went to the museum and then the Acropolis.  It was a long way up.”

Aboudi: “My favourite part was the cruise.  I liked the islands but I liked being outside in the wind best.”

Omar: “Then we arrived at the first island to make shopping.  For every island, we shopped!”

Salman: “The best bit (at the beach) was when we covered Mr. Whitaker with sand and he couldn’t move a muscle.  But finally he roared and got up.”

Bagus: “Since I can’t play on my PSP because there’s no battery I have to watch the view.”

Tamara: “We visited three islands – very nice – but the first one used their legs as a living.  But I also don’t think they know what cars are.”

Mariana: “I got ready to go on the cruise to three islands but I got sea sick on the cruise!”

Zaid: “We saw loads of statues from the past.”

Ruben: “We made a friend called Anna, which I like because she gave us very good information.”

Noura: “I left my clothes on the bed before and now they’re under the pillow.  The room cleaners are like tooth fairies.  I leave nothing under my pillow and they give me my clothes.”

The end of the road/dawn of yawns

After yesterday’s adventures, an early start this morning was again on the cards as we had to pack up and leave the seaside.  At 6.30am this morning there was the most amazing sunrise over the adjacent hills, but there were very few students to see it.  After breakfast, we packed up – despite every room claiming that they had absolutely checked and there was nothing left behind, we managed to collect a vast array of things left behind.  Mr. Gikas was particularly pleased to be reunited with his belongings too!

Wow! Our arrival at Epidaurus

Our first journey this morning took us to the theatre at Epidaurus.  There was a collective “Eugh!” as Ahmed ran off the bus to puke in the bushes (in fairness it was a winding road) followed by a collective “Wow” as we rounded the corner and saw the auditorium for the first time.  It’s some kind of holiday for Greek students at the moment and so all of the attractions today were full of noisy students – not ours! – but we still had time to get four of our group up on stage to sing “Under the Sea” to general acclaim.  Sadly, Noura was too shy initially to repeat her success with “Poor Unfortunate Souls” from the recent Junior production, and by the time she had drummed up the courage the moment had passed as the stage was taken over by another group.   

A modern tragedy - BISAK singers

From Epidaurus we continued to Mycenae, first of all to the Beehive Tomb (Atreus’ Treasury for the classicists).  Jacob and Valerio managed to incur the wrath of an Italian tourist by scraping their feet along the ground, churning up clouds of dust  - fortunately they didn’t understand a single word of the tirade he directed against them!  From there we headed up to the citadel of Mycenae, entering through the famous Lion’s Gate.  When asked what animals we thought were depicted there, Ruben very astutely volunteered “Elephants” (Have a look at the picture and you’ll see why we laughed!). 

What no Whitaker?

The weather today has been fantastic – sun cream was definitely needed – and by the end of the tour of Mycenae stomachs were clearly rumbling, so we proceeded to a modern temple of food, where we ate baked lamb, salad and ice cream.  Mr. Whitaker rolled out of the restaurant, having gone round scavenging food from the children’s plates.  Mr. Gikas did his best to comply with various requests for plate smashing entertainment by dropping one which rendered the whole restaurant silent – both Simon and Daniel went one better by actually dropping and smashing glasses.

Our theatre team

Suitably replete, we had a quick stop at a local pottery making factory where we saw a pottery demonstration – Kush was pulled up to help show how the Cup of Justice worked, and he was obviously so good that the shop nearly ran out of them!  We had a final stop at Corinth to see just how far down it was from the bridge to the canal – a mere 80m.  Sadly the bungee jumping place adjacent to the bridge was closed and so we didn’t get a chance to send Ms. Naidoo over the edge (although she might argue that’s exactly what the three male teachers with her have been doing all week!).  A final ice cream stop, and then back to Athens where we were reunited with a variety of clothing and other items that’d we’d left two days prior (Mr. Gikas was grateful to be brought together again with the flip flops he’d left behind - they were the first items out of the bag!).   

Sanctuary of Asclepius at Epidaurus

This evening has been spent with a “Greek Week Quiz” – children were split into teams and had to answer a variety of questions with letters of the alphabet as the first letter of the answer.  Mr. Whitaker compered the evening, but he did surpass himself earlier in the evening when the teachers were setting the questions.  “What’s a type of column beginning with the letter I?” Mr.Whitaker: “Doric?”  Some of the children’s answers were slightly spurious, in particular for L where the answer should have been ‘locust’ – we had ‘l-grasshopper’, a ‘lotus’, and a ‘limping grasshopper.’  When asked to use an adjective beginning with ‘v’ to describe their week, we had the following:  ‘vonderful’, ‘valuable time,’ ‘varied,’ ‘very awesome,’ and ‘vigorously amazing.’

Beehive tomb at Mycenae

So that’s it. We sang happy birthday to Daniel in anticipation of his birthday on Monday, and now the children are all in bed, staff are slowly chilling and we’re all looking forward to a bit of a lie-in tomorrow morning (Valerio asked why we were getting a lion). We fly from Athens at 2.00pm, and despite the fun we’ve had we’ve 30 children looking forward to a hug from Mum and Dad tomorrow evening. See you back in Saudi!

The Lion's Gate, Mycenae

Kush demonstrates Pythagorus' Cup of Justice

Bridge over the Corinth Canal

It's a long way down!  Who's foot?



Sunrise in Tolon - not many saw this!