What do you celebrate?

The end of the year brings with it warmer weather and many reasons to celebrate. While some celebrations are national holidays, like Christmas and Easter, there are many others happening all the time. 

Books are a wonderful way to explore celebrations and festivals from the many diverse cultures that exist in our communities and the world. You could borrow some books from the library and talk about the similarities and differences in the celebrations that you see or even better, look up your local festival guide for events to attend.  

You can explore these as an opportunity for the whole family to learn about another culture, and what a wonderful opportunity to learn some unfamiliar words and even words in a new language! Let’s Celebrate by Kate Dipalma and What Do You Do to Celebrate? by Ashleigh Barton are a great introduction to this huge topic. 

Many cultural celebrations include songs too! Singing is a wonderful way to expand our vocabulary as because the repetition helps us to remember unfamiliar words. Learn ‘Jingle Bells’ together and then look up the Australian version ‘Rusty Holden Ute’. There is lots of fun vocabulary to explore plus it’s a great conversation opener to how there are diverse ways to how Christmas is celebrated around the world.  

What about songs you sang to celebrate as a child? Sharing celebratory songs from your own childhood is not only a wonderful way to connect with your culture and ancestry, but it’s great for growing brains too!