Willow was wowed by today’s Festival of Languages as it gave them the opportunity to learn so much about countries around the world.
First stop was the Punjab in India. The children learnt that 1.2 billion people live in India. They also found out that the Langar (lunch) at the Golden Temple in Amritsar feeds 35,000 people for free – every day!
After some delicious poppadoms and chapati we tried our hand at Banghra dancing.
What do you think?
Next port of call was South Africa where we heard the fascinating history of how the country was colonised. It was first found by the Portuguese, but then colonised by the Dutch before then being taken over by the British. The turmoil caused upheaval for the Afrikaans people who went on a ‘Great Trek’ in 1836 to find themselves independence. Again we had some delicious food (the milk tart is so scrummy!).
Some children did not get to eat the cinnamon pancakes – so Sunday pancake breakfast is compulsory homework!!
Then we went to Iraq which was intruiging as it is not a country we know much about. There are 36 million people, it takes 6 hours to get there, it is part of Asia on the Arab peninsula, Baghdad is the capital and there are 6 golden mosques!
After lunch (which was normal Friday pizza from our Hitchin Kitchen!) we made trips to Mexico and Slokavia.
Mexico is another country which was colonised, this time by the Spanish. It has a population of 130m and is part of North America. Their independence day is on 16th September. We discovered that Mexico was inhabited by Mayan and Aztec tribes. We also found out they love music and food!
Finally we made it to Slokavia which looks beautiful! Lots of castles and caves. The capital is Bratislava and there are 5.5m inhabitants. Now Slokavia, Mrs Burr has a little issue with your weird Easter tradition of pouring water over girls then whipping them with willow branches…. ?
Thank you so much for all of the parent volunteers who gave up their time to enrich ours. The children had an amazing day and I’ve got some new holiday destinations on my list!
