Veritas

In February 2000 Third Class received the following message from Muriel Wells:
This is a message to provide details of your teddy bear match. Please contact your matched class to ensure that all details I send you are correct and that you are able to get the communications up and running. Please be flexible and supportive. Lots of people are still new to all this. Be patient. Be sure your matched class is ready to proceed. Write to them and check. If you are going to be on holidays please let your partner know so they don't wonder what happened to you. Try to check your email frequently and reply as regularly as possible; but remember sometimes waits are inevitable. Communicate regularly - that is the key to the success of this project. When you are ready, send each other a teddy bear or other soft toy. It is nice to dress them. You might like to include photos and a map of your local area and some local momentos. You don't have to. Please check your postal address to see if there are any errors. Please use airmail to post the bears. Surface mail is too slow. Once the bear arrives you should use email for the bear to send home its diary. This is the way your students learn about each others cultures. You may decide to study specific things like food, flora, fauna or environment. It is up to the two of you to work this out together. Please do not forget to write to each other regularly. Have fun and good luck. Here is your match:-
Ursula Hearne, Grade 3, Dominican Primary School, Dun Laoghaire, Dublin, Ireland
others.ias@eircom.net
Robyn Tomlinson, Grade 3, Havenwood Primary School, 3255 Havenwood Drive, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, L5X 2M2
robynkrista@home.com
Please note change to URL and email
Muriel Wells Facilitator: The Teddy bear Project http://www.iearn.org.au/tbear
mwells@iearn.org.au
Work 61 03 96372329

On Monday February 14, we received this message.
Hello Ursula,
I am assuming by now that you have been contacted by IEARN and notified that your class has been matched with mine for a teddy bear exchange. Before I introduce myself and give you any information I just wanted to check and make sure that you are still interested in participating. We are very excited about the program and our travel buddy looks forward to visiting Ireland! Please let me know!
Robyn Tomlinson
Havenwood P.S.
Mississauga,Ontario
Canada

On Wednesday February 16, we replied.
Hello Robyn,
Delighted to get your e-mail. Yes, we are looking forward to sharing this project with you. There are 30 children - 15 girls and 15 boys, aged 8 and 9 years in my third class. We are getting our travel buddy - Aoife O'Brien - ready to send to you. We will be looking forward to meeting yours.We have a web site - http://homepage.eircom.net/~saintcatherine. You will be able to find out a bit about our school there.
Best Regards
Ursula Hearne

This was the start of our project. Here are some of the e-mails we exchanged. The green ones are the ones that we sent and the blue ones are the ones that we received

Hello and thank you for the quick reply! I have 26 children in my grade three class 15 boys and 11 girls. They are all 8 or 9 years of age. My class is one of 5 grade three classes in the school. Havenwood P.S is located just outside Toronto in the city of Mississauga (population 500 000). Our school is very large and has 760 students in grades K-5. Here is our Web Site if you would like to take a look! http://www.peel.edu.on.ca/~havenwd/ We have 2 buddies that always travel together (Jake and Nuts). Last year they visited Kirkland Lake Ontario (way up North!) and look forward to crossing the ocean this year! We are putting some things together for them to take with them. They should be packed and ready to go by the end of next week. We are on holidays from March 13-17 so we probably wont receive Aoife until we return. Please keep in touch. Robyn Tomlinson

February 29
Hello Everyone in Grade 3, Attached are pictures of us getting Aoife ready for her Journey to Havenwood. We hope she arrives safely. We would like to know what it is like to live in Mississauga. What is the weather like? Do you have snow in Winter? What is the weather like in Summer? What sports do you play? How does the weather affect your sports? Do you celebrate any special occasions that we don't know about? Looking forward to meeting Jake and Nuts. Your friends in Third Class.

Hello Third Class. Jake and Nuts are getting ready to go. They are leaving tomorrow. Here are a couple of pictures of them. They are doing a couple of their most favourite things before they leave. They love to play on the computer. They also love to look at our fish! They have also been learning about pioneers! Yes we have lots of snow in the winter but it gets very hot in the summer. It usually is around 30 degrees Celsius. Jake and Nuts are bringing pictures of them playing in the snow with us! We had a big snow storm last week but this week it is above zero so the snow is all melting. We are happy that spring is coming! At our school we just had a floor hockey tournament. A lot of us also play baseball and soccer in the summer. In the winter we like to play hockey and go skiing and tobogganing with sleds. Tomorrow we are going skating. We go 4 times until the end of March. We all like to live in Mississauga. It is a big city with 575,000 people. We have lots of malls and movie theatres. We are sending about living in Mississauga with Jake and Nuts for you to read. You can also find out about Mississauga if you look at the web site www.mississauga.com The next holidays we are celebrating are St. Patricks Day, then Easter then Victoria Day. On July 1st we celebrate Canada'a birthday. We hope that Jake and Nuts get there safe and fast. Please tell us about your school. Do you have to wear uniforms? It looks like you do. What are you learning about in your class right now? We had a pioneer field trip today! We learned how to make wool. We also made a rug.
From Miss Tomlinson's Grade 3 class.

March 23.
Aoife has arrived and we are very excited that she is here. She was very happy to get out of her package. We couldn't figure out why the package was singing!! Thank you for the giant pencil and the flag and the little man. We really liked the magnet! We are glad she made it here safe. She was very hot today in her snowsuit because it was 20 degrees today. The snow is all melting and it is very warm We did not have to wear our coats on the playground today. It will be cold again next week about - 10 and we will get more snow so her suit will come in handy. We will get some clothes for Aoife when the weather gets warmer. Next week is our vacation so we will not be at school. Some of us are going away and some of us are staying here. We are so excited to take Aoife home and show her around Mississauga and Toronto. We have got her a camera so she can take pictures! We will send some pictures of her arrival in our class. On our vacation we will be celebrating St. Patrick's Day. It is a fun holiday here. We eat cornedbeef and cabbages!!! McDonald's even has green milkshakes. They are called shamrock shakes! Victoria day is Queen Victoria's birthday. WE have fireworks. Aoife will love it. We hope that Jake and nuts make it there soon and we hope they are safe. Miss T's Grade 3s

March 23 2000
Dear Grade 3 Class Jake and Nuts arrived safely. We are very exited to have them. We are starting to write their travel journals. Thank you very much for the cards ,maps, maple syrup, flag, news letter, school notes, stickers, pencils, pens, maps, puzzle and the mug. We really love your books about yourselves and about Mississauga We are going to do one like yours about ourselves and about Dun Laoghaire. Jake and Nuts will take them home with them when they are going. We notice that you like watching Pokémon. We love to do that too. We collect Pokémon cards we swop them in the yard. Do you? We think your school is great. We would love to live in CANADA. We will take good care of JAKE and NUTS. Thank you very much for the Maple syrup. Mrs.. Hearne shared the Maple syrup with the class on rice cakes and rich tea biscuits. Only Michael had tasted it before. We loved it and Darragh said it was very nice. The bit we like most about Mississauga is the snow. We never get snow as deep as that in Dun Laoghaire. It must be great fun. We will let you know how Jake and Nuts are getting on in our next e-mail.

April 12, 2000
Dear friends in Third Class
Thank you for sending us the maps and the posters of how to play Hurling. We got them both last week. We looked on the Internet to find out some information about hurling. We also got some pictures. We are still having lots of fun with Aoife. She came skating with us last week! Yesterday it was snowing here so the temperature musthave been below zero! People did not wnat to go outside for recess because it was sooooooo cold! This week-end it will be like spring again because it is supposed to be almost 20 degrees! We get very confused here because our weather changes so much this time of year! Praveen and Aoife were out in the snow and we took some pictures. We will send the pictures with this message. It took us a long time to figure out all of the religions in our class but WE DID IT! We have 26 people in our class. Here it goes! We have 1 person from Kuwait, 5 people from Sir Lanka, 6 people from Vietnam, 2 people from Bosnia, 2 from Jamaica, 1 from Nigeria, 1 from Nepal, 3 from Pakistan, 1 from China, 1 from Jordan, 1 from Palestine and 2 from Canada. Some of these people have the same religions. Here it goes! 9 people are Muslim, 7 people are Buddist, 6 people are Hindu and 4 people are Christian. See if you can figure out which religions go with which countries. We took pictures of our religious groups (some people were away). They are attached. in the order we said above. How are Jake and Nuts doing? How many people have taken them home? Aoife has visited some of our houses. We hope you have a great Easter holiday. We only get 2 extra days off! We are going to have an Easter party in our class we are hoping that the Easter Bunny will come and leave chocolate eggs for us!!! Aoife will love it!
Do you play hockey in Ireland? It is our National sport. Tonight is the first game of the Playoffs for the Stanley Cup. Toronto is playing Ottawa. We are very excited that Toronto is in the Playoffs this year and we hope they win!!!!! Aoife will be watching the game!We will send you a poster of our hockey team, the Toronto Maple Leafs! We hope you are having a good time with Jake and Nuts.
Your friends in Miss T's Class!

Dear Friends in Grade 3
Thank you for your e-mail and especially for the information about your nationalities and religions. We will make a graph when we come back after the Easter holidays. Your pictures are beautiful. We are glad to hear the maps and posters arrived safely. Jake and Nuts are having great fun. At this stage everyone in the class has had either Jake or nuts home to visit. We are writing their journals.Here are some extracts.
Nuts 29-3-00
When Emma and I went home yesterday we had our lunch and went to the park we played games. We went home and our dinner we had pizza and chips. We did our homework. we listened to Westlife. It is Emma’s favourite band then we played games. Then we knocked for Michelle. We went swimming with Nicole Ryan and when we got there I went to Michelle’s mammy. Michelle’s mammy took pictures of me and Michelle and Emma in the first picture, then Nicole and Michelle and Emma and I got in with Richard in the second picture and in the third picture. We went home had our tea and went to bed at 9 o clock.
By Emma McIntyre
Jake 29-3-00
Today I’m going to Carla Sundermann’s house. She does not live in Dun Laoghaire she lives in Greystones, which is 11 miles away from Dun Laoghaire.
When school finished I went into Carla’s Mom’s car and we started to drive home, it took ages because of all the traffic. When we at last got home Carla went over to the letterbox to see if there was any post, there was a piece of paper and on it, it said that there was a parcel for her mom in the post office so Carla and me cycled down to the post office and collected it for her. When we got home we had dinner, which was mash salad and fish, then we played curb’s with one of Carla’s friends. Then Carla had to go to choir she brought me with her. When we got home it was still a little light but I had to go to bed. I slept very well in Carla’s house.
by Carla Sundermann
Nuts 11-04-00
Sarah Jane and I came home and we read a book called TOY STORY 1. Then we went out to play with Sarah's friends Penny and Danielle. We played skipping. And then we went in and had our dinner we had chips and pizza and a bit of coleslaw and then we went to bed at 9 o clock
By Sarah Jane
Jake 04-04-00
Today Joseph and I went home to Joseph's Granny's house.First we ate our dinner. Then Joseph introduced me to his cousin Stephen.Then we did his homework. We watched Pokémon with Steven. He was going to play a match but it was cancelled. Joseph's Mum came in. We went to collect Joseph's sister from ballet, Then we went home to watch Who wants to be a Millionaire. Then we went upstairs to bed.
by Joseph McCambridge
11-04-00
One day Aoife’s (a different Aoife) brother Ciarán and her next-door neighbour David found a Robin’s nest in a bush. There was a blue egg in it. Her brother held the egg. David said "we got an egg". Then the egg broke in two and the egg was gone. We are sending a picture of Aoife telling the class about the nest. Jake and Nuts are very interested in it. Aoife’s Dad said not to touch a nest again.
We had a No Uniform Day last week. We all paid £1 to the Principal to wear no uniform. The money was sent to help the people in Mozambique. Emma came to school in a silver party dress. Jake took a picture with his camera.
We will write again after the holidays Your friends in third class

3rd May 2000.
Dear Third Class
How was your Easter Holiday? Did the Easter Bunny come to your class? He came to ours. We decorated Easter Eggs and we made Easter Bunnies to carry our eggs home in. We also had an Easter Egg hunt! Some people found lots of eggs and some people did not so we shared them all evenly.
Aoife had fun decorating Easter Eggs with Mr. Brand's class. She was visiting for the day. Miss Tomlinson took some pictures of Aoife with Mr.Brand and with our eggs and bunnies. We are attaching those pictures.
We want to know what Jake and Nuts did for Easter? Right now at our school we are doing a play called Puss 'n' Boots. Some of us are in the choir. Some of our guppies (fish) just had babies. They are so tiny we can barely see them! They are as small as ants! The Toronto Maple Leafs won the first 7 game series against Ottawa. Now they are playing the New Jersey Devils. They won the first game but have lost the second and third. We hope they win tonight! We promise we will send you a poster soon! Joshua in our class went to see one of the games in Toronto! He is soooo lucky! We have also been keeping a journal with Aoife. We have included some of our entries. It is so nice and sunny and warm this week it is over 20 degrees! On Saturday it is supposed to be 26! Its almost like summer. We are spending a lot of time outside playing sports. We can't wait to see your graph of our nationalities. How is that going? How are Jake and Nuts doing? What are they up to? From your friend's in grade 3
THE JOURNAL
April 5, 2000
Today Aoife and I went to McDonald's and she got a toy furby. When we got home we watched t.v. After we watched some shows and we made a bracelet for her together. I tought my baby brother how to say Aoife. My brother played with her for a little bit. Before we went to bed we watched t.v. in my bed. She slept on my bubble chair.
Eldiana.
April 6, 2000 Aoife and I watched Digimon and Pokemon. We played Nintendo. We played Hangtime. We went to the park and we played tag. I was it, then we went on the swings and then we went home to play on my computer. I forgot to make her dinner. I made a bed on the floor for her to sleep in. We played pool and Aoife beat me. Joshua
April 8, 2000 On Saturday me and Aoife went to Planet bowl. Aoife got 2 scores and we shared them. Me and my nephew shared a ball because mine was too hevy. Me and Aoife won the first game. My sister won the second game. Me and Aoife took a picture of me standing with her. My brother throws the bowling ball very slowly. I wonder if the kids in Ireland know how to play bowling? Amela
April 11, 2000 Today Aoife and I celebrated my birthday. Aoife helped me blow up some balloons. She started to get excited when all the people came. My dad took a picture of Aoife sitting on top of our aquarium. She likes to look at our fish. I gave Aoife a toy from one of our loot bags. She liked the chocolate cake so much. After all the people went home we opened my presents. I got 2 Digimon action figures. They were Gurromon and Greymon. Then we went to bed. We were very tired. We went to sleep at 12:00am. Praveen
April 12, 2000 Me and Aoife watched Hockey. In the first period there was no gaols. In the second period Tucker scored from the Toronto Maple Leafs. When the game was almost over Mats Sundin scored from the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Toronto Maple Leafs won! Mohsin
April 15, 2000 When we got home me and Aoife played, read Chinese and watched t.v. On Saturday we went outside to play airplane. I let Aoife eat fake food. On Sunday I played with her and bought her a bracelet and a butterfly ball that bounces. My dad took a picture of Aoife and me at the tree. We played tag. Then Aoife beat me at checkers. I wonder if the girls in Ireland know how to skip? I read with Aoife. I read Amber Brown sees Red. We both liked it.

Hi Grade 3
We had great Easter holidays. Carla went to her granny and granddad’s house and so did lots of her cousins from England and Germany and her granny and granddad had the usual big Easter hunt she found 43 Easter eggs. Her Granny gave her an egg that she had made herself. Carla got 4 big Easter eggs. Aoife also had a great Easter holiday, Her cousins came to her for Easter. They had a football match. After the match they had their dinner. After their dinner they played the Sega. They played street rage. Then they all went home. We had a feis (an Irish dancing competition) about three or four weeks ago. Michelle and Nadine came first out of the girls and Michael and Max came first out of the boys. We all had numbers on us so the judge knew who we were. The girls were dancing first and the boys were dancing after the girls. We really liked it and we cant wait until next year to do another feis. On the 8th of June we will be going on a school tour. We are going to an army camp for our school tour. We will see airplanes. It will be very interesting. Do you go on school tours? We are bringing Jake and Nuts. In school we are learning about graphs. Jake and Nuts are helping us. Do you do graphs? We are attaching a Microsoft excel file with the results. Let us know if you can’t open it Fourteen children from our school won the write-a-book competition and went to the Royal Marine Hotel. Federico and Sam are from our class and they won it. (Sam is writing this paragraph). When we arrived we had to wait what seemed like an hour! After receiving our rosettes with Jerry May (TV star) we went home. Jake and Nuts send their love.
Your friends in Third Class

May 15 2000
Dear Third Class,
Thank You for the email. We are glad you all had such a great holiday! Did you like the pictures of Aoife we sent you? She had a good Easter holiday too. Right now in all of Ontario the Grade Three classes are writing a BIG test. It is a provincial test. It has 6 books that we have to finish. Today we did some of the Math book, some of the Reading book and some of the Writing book. We are done for today and we are glad. We have 4 more days to go! The Toronto Maple Leafs lost thier last game and now they are out of the playoffs. We are really sad but they did such a great job this season! Next season starts in September. Yes we have "school tours" but our school is so big (700 kids) we have class trips. We are going with the other 4 grade three classes to Black Creek Pioneer Village on May 29 where we are going to live like pioneers for the day. On June 6 we are going to the Peel Water Festival where we are going to learn about the importance of water. We will take Aoife on both of our trips! Thank you for the graphs you sent. They were really good. Yes we have learned how to do graphs in Grade Three. This week-end coming up we get a holiday on Monday for Queen Victoria's Birthday. It is Victoria Day. We will celebrate with fireworks! Aoife will love it! It sounds like your feis was lots of fun! You must have been very proud of your winners! Say hi to Jake and Nuts and Aoife misses you all! Miss T's Grade 3s

25th May 2000
Dear Third Grade, Thank you for your e-mail. We love to hear from you. In our last e-mail we forgot to mention that we liked the pictures with Mr.Brand and Aoife. We liked the painted eggs and the boxes for them were very good. The eggs were very colourful. Mr. Brand looks cool. We do not have any male teachers in our school except Carla’s Dad who teaches German to sixth class twice a week. Do you go to Mr..Brands class regularly or was it just for the day? Sister Francis who worked in our school has promised to come in and teach us about Celtic Art so we are looking forward to that. We forgot to mention that we liked the picture of Aoife and Praveen in the snow. It looks really cold but both Praveen and Aoife look snug in their snowsuits. We are sorry to hear that the Toronto Maple Leafs went out of the playoffs. We hope they win in September. Richard likes ‘Arsenal’. They are a soccer team in England. They came second in the league. Sarah, Darragh and Nathan were chosen by our coach Paraic to go to Croke Park (Our National Stadium) to play Hurling and Camogie matches next month. They will take Jake and Nuts with them. It should be great fun. Carla and Richard were chosen as the most improved players to go to the Dublin training grounds for a fun Day on the 8th June. Your big tests are probably over. We hope you did well. We did Maths and an English test at Christmas.Nobody has to do them but we did them to compare ourselves to the rest of Ireland. We hope Puss ‘n’ Boots was successful. Our Concert is on the 19th of June. The girls are doing a Scottish dance. The boys are doing an American line dance, ‘Cotton Eyed Joe’. Jake and Nuts will have great fun watching us. Aoife seems to be having a great time. Joshua, in our class most of us have played bowling before and most of us like it. Once Michael was playing bowling and he slipped on the alley and he blacked out. Once Aoife’s mam got so many strikes that she won a trophy. Carla went bowling on her brother’s Communion Day. She came second. Last Saturday Maxim and Yasmina made their first Communions (a Catholic Sacrament). Emma took Jake to sing in the church. He took pictures in the school hall. The rest of us made our first Communions last year. We will be getting our summer holidays on the 30th June. We can't wait. When do you break up for the summer? Jake and Nuts send their love.
Your friends in third class.

Friday June 02, 2000
Dear Third Class, Thank you for your e-mail. We are glad that you mentioned about Mr. Brand's picture. Sometimes we join up with Mr. Brand's class to do special projects or watch videos. Sometimes we play games with them outside or in the gym. We have 8 male teachers in our school and our principal is male as well. Yes, our BIG test is over. It was hard, some people disliked it and others thought it was fun. The test took 5 days. On May 22 nd we had the day off to make it a long week-end. It was Victoria day! We watched fireworks to celebrate. Miss Tomlinson went camping but had to leave because the bugs were biting! Right now at our school we have a soccer league going. We are all on different teams and we play at lunch. Today the Falcons and the Eagles won their games! Puss n Boots was really good. They took a video of the play, they should be ready soon. Can you watch VHS movies? If you can we will send you a copy of our play. It is wonderful! This week we are having try outs for our Talent show. The talent show is coming up next week. We also have play day on the 21st! We get to play games outside the whole day! You said that some of you are working on an American Line Dance. Last term we learned the "Electric Slide"! We all did it together! Our summer holidays start the same day as yours do! July 1st is Canada Day. We will be celebrating Canada's birthday. Again we have fireworks! On Monday we took Aoife on our class trip to Black Creek Pioneer Village. We will send a brochure with her. We had lots of fun. Last week we had a birthday party for Shuhd. It was her first birthday in Canada. Aoife had lots of cake. We took pictures. One of the students in our class moved. Maggie is now at a new school. Aoife might go and visit her new class for a day. We just finished learning about 3D shapes. We made 3D shape mobiles and they are hanging all over our room. Right now we are studying about magnets and drugs. June 9th we are going on another class trip to the water festival. Aoife will enjoy learning about the importance of water. On June 10th it is National Kids day.....Miss Tomlinson thinks it is kids day everyday!!!!! We hope Jake and Nuts are still having fun. Aoife will be leaving on Monday June the 12th. We will be sending her back with lots of presents she got while she was here. Is there anything that you sent with her that you would like back? We hope to hear from you soon. Miss T's Grade 3s

Thursday, June 08, 2000
Dear Third Class. Here are some pictures we thought you might like. Yesterday we had our Jump Rope For Heart event. The whole school was skipping to raise money for the Heart and Stroke Foundation. As you can see Aoife had lots of fun! So did we! Miss T's Grade 3s

14th June 2000.
We are very sad that Aoife has left. We will miss her. She is on her way home. Miss Tomlinson

Dear Grade 3 class, Thank you for the E-mail you sent us. Are there more than 30 teachers in your school? There are 9 in our school and they are all female. When Carla goes on her holidays she usually camps and the bugs only bite her mother. Yesterday we went on our school tour to Baldonnell, the Irish Air Corps base. Jake came with us. We were lead around by Michael Byrne, a search and rescue helicopter winchman. We saw all sorts of different helicopters and planes. We went into three hangars .We had lunch in the canteen and after Michael had shown us all around we went back to the canteen to buy a treat .I Got a Mars Bar.I got to try on Michael’s hat. He wasn’t allowed to wear it near the runway because it could fly off and go into a helicopter's or a plane's engine and stop it from taking off and crashing into a nearby building, say, the air traffic control building. Jake came too and had a great time! That day Nuts went to Parnell Park with Richard and Carla for a fun day. It was a treat for Carla and Richard who were the most improved hurley and Gaelic football players this year. On Tuesday the 13th of June we went on our sports day. We went to Cuala GAA club. We played lots of games of Gaelic football, we are sending some pictures of our teams to you. We lost most of our matches but we won enough to get us into the semi-finals. We lost again. Mrs.. Hearne says we will have to practice playing as a team. Jake and Nuts were not with us. They had already set off on their journey home. We had the photographs in their camera developed. Michael wrote about them on the back. His pencil did not come out very well and we forgot to go over it with a pen so we hope you can make out what they are. We got another camera for them but the film is not finished yet. We will take some pictures of our concert and will send them on later. We will really miss Jake and Nuts. We had a great time with them. We will never forget them. We are looking forward to seeing Aoife again. We are sure Aoife enjoyed learning about the importance of water. Next week we will be learning about water safety. We loved the photographs of your school playground. We are attaching some of our playground at lunchtime. Our playground is L shaped around 2 sides of the school. We hope your talent show went off well. Our concert in on next Monday. Belated Happy Birthday Shuhd! Bet you had a great party. We hope Maggie likes her new school and that it is as good as the one she is leaving. Hope to hear from you soon.

June 30, 2000
Aoife has arrived back! We are very excited. We are looking at all the things she brought with her. They are all great! We will contact you again.
Love to everyone from Aoife and third class.

June 30, 2000
Hello Third Class! Thank you so much for your message! We are so happy that Aoife made it back safe! Jake and Nuts have had a wonderful time catching up with everyone. Today is our last day of school this year. We are watching the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and having a party! We are sorry that we didn't mention that the Maple Leafs play ice hockey!!!!!! Ice hockey is our national sport! We just wanted to thank you one last time for letting us look after Aoife. We miss her so much already. We hope that you all have a wonderful holiday. Your friends in Third Class.