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Celebrations-family event boxes

by Diana Hudson (Australian)
(Tokyo, Japan)

Being an international school we approach Christmas in the context of celebrations. This year we have asked all the children to bring a family event box to school.

They fill the box with artefacts, word cards, photos, and other things that they feel represent a celebration that is important to their family.

This year we have had quite a few Christmas boxes, and also Easter, Eid Ul Fitr, Diwali, Thanksgiving to name a few.

We felt that this included all the children and did not emphasise a particular celebration - especially one that comes historically from a religious perspective.

The children then present their box and we talk about the celebration (how some children celebrate and others don't because it's not important to them). We try to avoid deep religious discussions, however a child brought in a figurine of Mary, Joseph and Jesus for her Christmas box. We talked about the special boy and that he grew in a man who did wonderful things for people and because of this we celebrate his birthday, which is Christmas day.

The kids were satisfied with this. We also talked about how some people celebrate Christmas just because its fun.

As a follow up to these boxes, we are providing centre tasks where children can do an activity related to one of the event boxes. i.e. make a Christmas decoration, make a lantern for Chinese New Year, make paper candles for Diwali etc..we are also reading books about the story of Christmas, Eid, Diwali, Easter etc..so give children more information about these events.

We then plan to compare the celebrations and find similarities and differences between the events themselves (For Chineses NY and Eid kids receive money envelopes) and the way people celebrate them (secular/religous etc...)

A long task taking several weeks but fun and inclusive of all the children. (This is suitable and has been done with 5 year old children)