A Hundred Days festival

Dear our friends,

As we are already the third-formers, our duty was to organise a traditiona festival for our school-leavers, called „A Hundred Days“, which means, that only one hundred days remain till the first final examination. Our senior students feel it and for some of them it is a joyful, for others, maybe sad event. They feel sad as they know thay thay will have to leave school, part with their class-mates, leave their beloved class-teacher and enter the world of adults, in which they minght face different problems.
But on this, particular day they do not want to think about problems; they come to school to celebrate. All the shool- leavers were gathered in their clssrooms from where they were taken to the first, second, then third floors in order to fulfil different tasks, which had been set for them. For example, on the first floor they could find thenselves in a Stone Age and leave their hand prints and initials in clay.

On the second floor they appeared in the Middle Ages and could take photos of themselves in medieval costumes. And on the third floor everybody was given a candle to be taken into the Assembly hall and put there.
After all the students and teachers gathered in the Essembly hall, the performance started. In the beginning we showed the process of the creation of the Earth on which we all live. Then audience was taken to the Stone Age and saw wild dancing of the prehistorian people. With the song about time they were taken to the Middle Ages, also presented through songs and dances, adn finally appeard in modern times.

The school leavers were also given to show their program and, the most importįant, to say their big thank you to the teachers, class-teachers, school administracy and parents.
Among the speakers were the Principal, class-teachers, parents and other guests of honour.
At the end of the ceremony traditional nominations were given to some of the school-leavers: among them were „Lady of the year“, „Gentelman of the year“, „Worker of the year“, „Fanthom of the year“ and others.

The whole ceremony was a moving event. We wish our school-leavers good luck in the comming exams.

Agnė ans Inga

Our New Year Carnival

We have an old tradition – to organize a New Year Carnival before the New Year at our school. According to this tradition approximately a month before the school council decides on the topic for the Carnival. This year it was “The Land of Fairy Tales” and each class had to choose one of the fairy tales and prepare some performance according to their own script. The performances were planned on the last day before winter holidays.

The audience included the students, teachers and a special “competent” commission, whose task was to decide whose performance was the best. However, it was not an easy task to decide who was the best, because some of the performances were equally good and interesting.

Most of the participants did a lot to prepare their performances: the students not only wrote new original scripts, which were both very contemporary and at the same time really funny, but also surprised everybody with their costumes and extremely good acting.

That was why together with the traditional Old man and Old Woman, we could see Lithuanian policemen from nowadays and traditional domestic animals, for example a little cow acted as a typical teenager.

One of the most original was the fairy tale “Red Riding Hood” or “Little Red Cap” in which the Red Cap was not a naive village girl, but rather “knowledgeable” young student, whose granny is no more an old village woman, but a clever elderly lady, who has attended self-defense courses and is able to protect herself from the Woolf, who is interested in cigarettes, alcohol or drugs.

It goes without saying that good things win over the bad and everyone is rewarded.

The last performance, which was also nominated as the best – was the fairy tale “The Sleeping Beauty”, in which the Sleeping Beauty is a boy, who remains quite passive through the story, while girls, both “good” and “bad” ones continue fighting for him. The final idea is the same: only good feelings, such as love, courage, devotion always win over the anger and selfishness.

This performance included a lot of dancing, music and even some tricks, so and this was why it was chosen as the best. at the end of the carnival all the classes received certain awards for their fantasy and efforts to entertain others and enjoy themselves.

Our school's birthday

Our school's Birthday
Do you like celebrating birthdays? We think that it is unnecessary question and the definite answer would be yes. It is fun to celebrate your own birthday or take part in someone else's birthday. The traditions how to celebrate it may vary, but all they include inviting guests giving and receiving presents eating a birthday cake and organizing certain entertainment for the guests.

This year is exactly five years since we became Vilnius “Laisvės” Gymnasium, the only Lithuanian high school in Naujoji Vilnia. As we love our school and are proud of its achievements, it was decided to commemorate our first little anniversary and organize a birthday party at school.
First of all, we decided to remind everybody the history of our school and to present our most important achievements, activities, organizing a special exhibition in the school corridors.
Though at first sight it looks that we are very young, but in fact we have got our history. The very first Lithuanian school in Naujoji Vilnia was founded in 1957. It was a secondary school were students were studying from the first to the eleventh grade (after the restoration of independence we have to study 12 years to get secondary education). In 2003 the senior forms were separated and a new school was founded. In 2006 we received the status of high school and got the name “Laisvės”, which means “Freedom”.


Another important moment was inviting guests. We were lucky as the celebration of the anniversary coincided with the visit of our Italian partners from the international Comenius School Partnership project "SPECIAL DAYS TO ENJOY TOGETHER” from Istituto di Istruzione Superiore “G.Garibaldi” Macerata, Italy. Also, we had guests from the Department of Education, from the municipality, from the Center of Culture and from all the schools in Naujoji Vilnia.



It is needless to say, that the guests brought presents. The Department of Education rewarded a lot of the teachers for their persistence and hard work, traditional presents from other schools were books and flowers; our Italian partners presented a wonderful album about their town Macerata and students from other schools recited poems and sang songs.

And then it was our turn to entertain the guests. There were different ideas how to do it, but we wanted something not very traditional, something more special. And then Rita Kriaučionienė, the Substitute Headmaster and teacher of music, suggested making use of the topic of our project – the festivals show the guests the elements of the most traditional Lithuanian festivals, presenting them in the course of the year. This is how the idea of the performance of “The Seasons” appeared. It was directed by Rita Kriaučionienė and became the main accent of the celebration.

Actually we can say that all school worked on it. First of all special scenery was created: everything from costumes to the stage decoration was made by students under the guidance of the teachers of Art and Technologies. The music which plays a very important role in the performance was created by students with help of computer technologies. Dances were created by the teacher of Dance and students themselves. There are no words, only music, dance and traditional festivals… .



Everything starts with the winter and its most traditional Lithuanian festival, known as “užgavėnės” or carnival. Students in black carry masks, those in folk costumes perform songs and dances, typical of the festival. Also we can see two most typical characters Kanapinis (the Hemp man) and Lašininis (the Fat man) who represent the eternal fight between winter and spring or between old and new. Winter is followed by spring and the celebration of Holly Easter, then comes summer, when all Lithuania burn fires and dance through the St John’s night – it’s Midsummer. Later comes autumn, when we gather harvest and visit the graves of our ancestors with certain traditional ceremonies. And when the days become shorter than nights we are waiting for Christmas with traditional Advent ceremonies.

The full performance can be viewed in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qYaMkUXM18

The Teachers' Day

The Teachers' Day in Vilniaus "Laisvės" Gymnasium

Hello, dear friends,
We would like to tell you about one of our traditional school festivals – the Teachers’ Day. This festival is celebrated on October 5th all over Lithuania, but different schools celebrate it in their own ways. In our school it has become a tradition that the school leavers organize something for the teachers. Every year our students try to think of something different to make this day very special and memorable for the teachers. Traditionally teachers are congratulated and given flowers both from individual students and from whole classes to express their gratitude.

Another important moment is the substitution of the teachers by their students. The idea is to give the teachers an extra “day-off”, which means that teachers are not supposed to work on that day – their work is done by their students. As it is a difficult task to give a class to other students who are only a year or two younger than you, that’s why sometimes two students substitute one teacher. For the students it is a big challenge and responsibility, but we never lack volunteers to do it. On the other hand we start appreciating the teachers work much better… .



So, on October 5th Wednesday, at twelve o'clock all the classes were over and students were allowed to go home, except, certainly, for us, the 4th forms. We invited teachers to the assembly hall where he organized a show – program for the teachers. This was a big performance and we had to prepare for it.


The preparations started more than a week before: the very first idea was to create a show “Dance with a teacher”, but then our second thought was that not all the teachers would like it. So, after long consideration and lots of suggestions we unanimously chose the idea of “Golden Books”. Actually we had too many ideas and too little time, so we began from the most time consuming task – making of the rewards. We had to make 40 Golden books for the teachers and one large Golden book for the administration.



To make teachers feel cozy and relaxed we created a friendly café atmosphere, where teachers were served by students and treated with home-made cookies and sandwiches (we made them ourselves). In front of the entrance we laid a red carpet for the teachers and made photos of each of them.
The most difficult part was to gather everybody for the general rehearsal. There were a lot of arguments during that little time that was left till the Teachers’ Day, therefore we had to come to school at the weekend. The rehearsal at school lasted till the evening, so Paulius who cared about others most of all, bought some instant soup and brought to school. It was fun to have meal in such a way – all together. Then we went on with rehearsing and arguing and in the end we decided that we will improvise according to the situation.
The main purpose of our performance was to present a kind of a parody of each subject, involving singing and dancing which would typically represent the subject. After each subject representation we invited teachers who teach this subject and gave each teacher a Golden Book with the words of gratitude and congratulations.




It was fantastic to see smiles in teachers' faces and hear them applauding to our performance as well as thanking us for everything. We devoted our last song to all the teachers and it was very moving when teachers started singing together with us. The final ceremony was handing in the Big Golden book to the headmaster and donating an enormous cake to our beloved teachers.
The last minute it came out that our Geography teacher Darius turned 40 on this day – so everybody sang “Happy Birthday” to him.
After the performance we felt tired but very happy as we managed to make our teachers happy on that special day.

Dovilė and Laura

Schools festivals

Schools festivals