Celebrating Eid!

There is only one child in my class who is not Maori/Pasifika - he is Afghani. 

This is him.

As the only kid who isn't Maori/Pasifika, sometimes he misses out a bit.. 

As a school we have week long celebrations for Maori language week, Tongan language week, Cook Island language week, Samoan language week (etc), but there is no Afghani language week... 

So everybody else got a celebration of their culture, and he, and his little brothers, didn't. 

So in Room 6, we made our own celebration! 

Today was Eid, a Muslim celebration which marks the end of Ramadan. It is celebrated by visiting and spending time with family and friends, sharing a feast together, buying and wearing fine new clothes and giving gifts to others. We made the whole day about Eid. 

The boy, Mojtaba, was delighted. Archana and I had told him beforehand that we were doing something special for Eid, and he was bubbling with excitement when he turned up to school this morning! 

To begin our day, I discussed with the class how we celebrated everyones culture through the various language weeks (and more!), but that one culture from our class didn't have a language week, and thats not fair that we didn't celebrate theirs! The kids all nodded in agreement. They understood. Even though they know nothing about Afghanistan and Muslim holidays, they understood that Mojtaba's culture was just as important as theirs and that we should celebrate it all the same. These are some pretty empathetic 8 year olds, tell you what. 

We had several aspects to our day 

-We learnt a song that explains how Eid is celebrated

-We learnt how to say 'Eid Mubarak' and greet people properly

-Decorated cookies that we could then give to people

-Made cards to wish people a happy Eid day

-Ate Sheer Pudding

The rest of the class were so keen to try out the new Afghani food, with some then practising how to be polite about not liking it (haha!). They loved the idea of giving a card and cookie to somebody to wish them Eid Mubarak! The boys even spent the day looking after Mojtaba's two younger brothers who came to celebrate with us.

It was a great day all around. I was so proud of the kids and how enthusiastic they were to learn about the Afghani culture and gives things a go!