On Friday 18 March, Orana Pre-School children celebrated their annual Harvest Festival. Seasonal festivals are an enriching part of Early Childhood’s cultural and community life. It is through festivals that the children identify and recognise the changing rhythms of the earth.
At harvest time, we reap Mother Nature’s summer treasures and prepare them for winter. The teachers have been busy harvesting a bounty of fruits and veggies; apples from the orchard, tomatoes and herbs from the veggie patch and even rose hips to store for the winter months ahead.
Our Harvest Festival is a time to give thanks to nature for all she provides, and to remember as human beings, we have to keep finding the inner strength to care, not only for each other but for everything in this world. Perhaps this is most poignant now more than ever.
Leading up to our Harvest Festival, the children busily helped to prepare harvest crowns, decorating them from foraged flora. It was truly a delight to watch their anticipation build. On the day, crowns were worn, harvest songs were sung and festive bread consumed. The children placed veggies, some from their own gardens, onto our harvest table and marvelled at the season’s splendour; veggies that will be made into delicious harvest soups to be enjoyed for weeks to come.
