Yesterday, we celebrated Harmony Day! 2EF had a day full of activities which celebrated and highlighted the diversity within Australia and more directly within our school.
The morning began with a reading of Whoever You Are by Mem Fox, this book highlights the fact that no matter where we are from, where we are in the world, or what we look like, we all have the same hearts, smiles, laughs, and pain.
Many of the children wore orange which is a colour that signifies harmony, happiness, and joy. Other children wore traditional cultural dress to show how proud they are of their culture. It was wonderful to see so many children and teachers were involved.
Once we had an understanding of Harmony Day we had a discussion about our different cultures. We discovered that in 2EF we have a range of different cultures to celebrate. We created digital presentations about our cultures.
After Recess we read the book, My Two Blankets by Irena Kobald at the same time as every other class in the school. This book is a wonderful book about a little girl who moves away from her country to live in a new country. She shares her feelings while she adjusts. She uses a blanket as a metaphor. She wrapped herself up in the blanket every night. This blanket was filled with all of her safe, familiar things from her home country. Over time she becomes more familiar with her new country, makes a friend and learns the language. She begins to create a new, safe blanket for her new home as she begins to feel happy and safe there.
We talked about what makes us feel safe and worked to create our own, paper blanket. Each child work hard to decorate one patch of our paper blanket, including all of the things that are familiar and safe to them as an individual.
Once have completed the blanket, we will attach them all together and display our safe blanket
To end our wonderful day we partnered up with some older year 5/6 buddies from 5/6 NB for a shared reading experience.
