In Year 5 we have linked with a school in the Kumbo Diocese of Cameroon called St Martin de Porres. Miss Hughes visited us and told us about what life was like there for children like us. They have to pay to get an education, they have to provide their own pens and pencils and if they didn't have one the teacher would send them home! The children would have to walk long distances to school some for as long 2 hours.

Miss Hughes was going back to Cameroon for another visit so we asked her if she would take some 'hands of friendship' from our class to the children there. We wrote out names and a bit about ourselves on one hand and when Miss Hughes took them to Cameroon the children there did the same and sent them back to us! We were all very excited to have the opportunity to share ideas and feelings with children on the other side of the world.

We also sent 2 of our favourite books, 'Fantastic Mr Fox' and 'Kensuke's Kingdom', over to the children to help start a library for them and hopefully next time we could send some more!

We are going to go to Mass at St Peter's in a couple of weeks time to tell the Parishioners all about our friends across the sea.

We really enjoyed this activity and so did the children from Cameroon as they said it was the most exciting thing they had ever done! we hope to continue this link by sending some letters and would like to start a joint project with the children there - we can learn so much from each other - we think it would be great!

by Olivia and James.