Learning about Celebrations Other Than Christmas
At this time of the year Christmas is full steam ahead at our house, but because we live in Australia we are also celebrating the end of the school year here and recogising all the hard work and growing up the kids have done across the year and getting ready for the summer holidays.
But these are not the only celebrations that are happening at this time of the year, and while my kids know a little bit about Chanukah, and understand that it is winter and there winter based celebrations happening on the other side of the world, this year they are keen to know more so we’ve been hunting down some information, ideas, activities and links…
A Jewish Homeschool Blog has a fabulous selection of Chanukah activities, we especially like the Menorah made with the tap tap (hammer and nail set)
For even more Chanukah activity ideas, Living Montessori Now has a huge list of links and ideas.
While we are a little late for Dwali which was in November, my kids loved the idea of making a Floating Rangoli shared at Mommy Labs, and she also shared a great round up of more beautiful Rangoli here.
This lovely post about Saint Nicholas Day or ‘Szent Mikulás’ by Mamma Pea Pod was a great way for my kids to learn a little of the history of Santa, as well as a new (to us) celebration.
We’ve also been reading and talking about the Winter Solstice as so many of our Christmas traditions come from Europe and based around the winter solstice… but since it is also the Summer Solstice here next week we discovered this lovely post from Love in the Suburbs.
What are you celebrating at this time of the year?
Please feel free to leave a link to a blog post you’ve written about your own celebrations and traditions
Oh, thank you for sharing our Szent Mikulás post! I think it’s great that you are encouraging your children to learn about celebrations from other cultures.
This is the first year Tricky has been able to understand anything so we’re only just putting the foundations down for our traditions this year. Tonight we went to the giant Christmas pageant, and whilst we won’t go again for a few years because of the huge crowds, it was so nice to see so many different religious and cultural groups represented. Even the Hari Krishnas had a float!
We celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah and have fun with both of them!
We celebrate St Nikolas day on 6 December as well as Christmas – and we try to combine features of both German and Australian Christmas traditions (Christmas in Germany is very different from in Australia – much less partying and jollity and more contemplative and inward-looking). We also try to learn about other cultures’ traditions – there is a lovely book we are reading at the moment called ‘Light the lights’ which is a story of a little girl whose family celebrates both Hanukah and Christmas. It has a really positive message about how we can all benefit from embracing other cultures and traditions.
This time of the year is all about Jesus for us. We celebrate his birth and enjoy spending the Christmas season around friends and family!
Thank you so much for sharing all these links! I’ve been looking for something like this and will be pinning this post to come back to.
I love that at Girl Child’s school this term they have been studying celebrations. I was very impressed. I know they covered Ramadan, Dwali and Shrove Tuesday.
Hello, I discovered your blog recently and have really been enjoying reading it. Thanks for this great post – celebrations are such a wonderful way to learn about other cultures. We’ve just celebrated Hanukah, and if you’d like to know what we did you can read about it here: http://thirtynineblog.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/8-days-of-fried-food.html . This is a very busy time of year for us since we also celebrate Christmas – my husband’s tradition. But this year we’ve decided to do something different: make a cardboard tree (I’ve posted about that too – http://thirtynineblog.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/cardboard-christmas-tree-tutorial.html).
I wish you and all your readers a fantastic holiday full of celebrations!