On Saturday 28^th January, as part of the Erasmus + Project ‘New Media-New Methods’, Henry Beaufort students and staff travelled to Finland. Firstly the group spent a night and day exploring the capital Helsinki. We walked around several famous landmarks and watched the 4D aerial Helsinki experience, before meeting with the other schools in our project from Spain, Italy and Germany and travelling together to Soini. This is a small village, five hours north of the capital, where our partner school is located.

This is the second time that we have made this trip, but the first time that we have travelled in the winter months. As well as being incredibly beautiful, it was a fantastic opportunity to try lots of winter sports that are typical PE lessons for the Finnish students, but were very new to us!

Throughout the week we were able to try exciting activities including an afternoon of ice fishing, snow shoeing, cross country skiing, ice skating, kick sledding and for the bravest, a dip in the icy water with a traditional sauna to warm up after!

Everyone at the school; staff, students and host families warmly welcomed us and gave us a fantastic insight into their lives and culture. Mornings were spent at school working on our New Media – New Methods project. Students started the week sharing presentations about the flora and fauna, typical weather and natural phenomena of their country, before creating E-Books for the remainder of the week. Students worked in mixed nationality groups to create presentations on the different states of water and the anatomy of fish, as well as conducting several surveys and recording results of various competitions using different computer programmes.

On Thursday morning we travelled to the town of Seinäjoki to visit the local newspaper offices, Illka. After a presentation on the history of the newspaper, we heard about the move towards web based news and listened to a presentation by a web editor who was preparing to launch the new version of their webpage. After this we were able to visit the printing factory to see where the paper is printed each night, ready to be sold all around the region the next day. We spent the afternoon at the nearby Duudsonit Activity Park.

All in all it was an unforgettable trip, with all Henry Beaufort students settling seamlessly into Finnish family life. They fully participated in all aspects of the trip and were a credit to our school.

Miss Wilson - Trip Leader