festivals

[Donkey]

I want to be a good girl and celebrate all multi-cultural festivals, however I have seen the calendar and there are sooo many of them!!

we will end up having some kind of party all the time!!!

can anyone tell me which are the main ones???

e.g which one of the eid ones is the actual 'party'

I am thinking, christmas, chinese new year, easter, eid, diwali

but I don't want to miss any of the important ones out :(

trying to get my head around planning :D

[sarah707]

I try to do a couple a month which link to other planning I'm doing or go with what children are doing at nursery or home... although none of my lot do any multicultural festivals at home and parents aren't all that fond of them doing them here to be honest!

I tend to keep it fairly low key - we will try some food, make some pictures together, look up ideas together on Google then do them... that sort of thing and while we are eating / making, I will talk about how the festival is important to people from other countries and we will find the country on the map and add it to our passports - we add a country every time we explore it.

Last week we thought about how Jewish children celebrate Passover and we are doing Earth Day this week, including Arbor Day as it's about trees so fits in well with Earth Day...

Hope this makes sense! :D

[miffy]

I do something similar to Sarah and always make sure I photograph the children's "work" as evidence for Ofsted :D

miffy xx

[Donkey]

food and pictures sounds right up my street!!!

but its which ones? the calender has sooo many!!!
do you find yourselves doing the same ones over and over or do you find yourselves celebrating different ones every year.

I live in a very multicultural part of the city so I may have mindees of different faiths. need to do more reading me thinks

[miffy]

Choose the ones that interest you or are special to your mindees

Chinese New Year is a good one because there's lots you can do for that - making dragons, red envelopes, eating chinese food

You'll find lots of ideas for different festivals on the forum

miffy xx

[Tatia]

Yeah, I agree, wait and see what festivals are special to your mindee families or seem to be common in your area. For instance, I added the Festival of Ganesh because there are 2 very large celebrations at the beach round the back of my house.

[mjw]

Any good May day ideas. Thought about making hand held type maypoles with lots of streamers and Morris dancing with lots of bells. Bet you lot have got lots of better ideas....:idea:
Mary

[angeldelight]

You might find some ideas here

Even if you dont this is a great website for lots of other things anyway

http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/holidays.html

http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/year/index.htm

Angel xx

[mjw]

Thanks Angel. Plenty on that site
Mary