We've had a very fulfilling weekend with the first annual Montessori Cultural Day held on Saturday at the Central Coast Montessori School. This year we celebrated the continent, Europe. This day has been many hours and days in the preparation to present the children with wonder, magic and European culture!
The day dawned beautifully, blue sky, a gentle breeze. Polar opposite to last Saturday when the day was postponed due to tumultuous weather.
The school area was divided into the four areas of Europe. Within these areas we included; food, beautiful objects of significance, music, pictures, books, craft and games.
The day was a big success. Everyone came along dressed up as a character or specific costume of Europe. The children were smiling and the adults were ready to go to impart various experiences and facts about Europe.
The day and it's preparation were three fold; to create meaningful relationships that would deepen the strength of the community, to create a positive, happy learning experience through environment for the children and to raise money for an outdoor wood fired oven for future school events including summer movie nights.
By 11am we were very excited to hear that the wood fired oven had been donated to the school by a very generous parent!
We played games from around the areas of Europe including, soccer, Little Birds, May Pole and bocce.
Also played was Tug o War, renamed Rope Pulling! This game played by the children, then the mums and then a dads team. This created some fun competition. It felt like it brought everyone together in a lighthearted way. There was lots of smiles and laughter, children cheering their parents on, partners and friends encouraging them to 'pull, pull!'
After a massive feast - every family brought a European dish - we sat under the willow tree to sing some songs including Rainbow Conection to a ukele. We then selected winers of the raffles. There were about 10 prizes including 3 very large hampers that everyone had donated a little towards.
Watching the children's faces was magic and watching the effort that so many people went to to create such a memorable day was spectacular.
