Sweetland: Holidays

26 March 2012

Even though I don't normally work on Mondays, I went to school for an hour to work with a group of 5th graders. During our class together we talked about holidays and what elements holidays have.

We started by brainstorming holidays and ended up with a list with a variety of types of holidays--such as Christmas, Easter, Constitution Day, Labor Day, Mother's Day, Moros y Cristianos, etc.

I talked to them a little about a few American holidays--such as Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Presidents' Day.

Once we made our list, we talked about what these holidays have in common. In short, what does a holiday consist of. We decided that holidays usually involve time with family and a special meal/food.  Some holidays are religious and others are in honor of a special person/event. There are also holidays that have a special symbol/figure--like the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus. The favorite answer for all was that holidays sometimes mean that there is no school.

Next, I asked each student to invent their own holiday for Sweetland--using some of the things we discussed as being common to holidays. You can imagine the first ideas to pop out of their heads were holidays like Sweet Day and *insert student name* Day. We ended up with four options.

Healthy Day--since people eat sweets all the time, Healthy Day is the only day in which people can't eat sweets. They have to eat fruits and vegetables.

Sweet Day--as the name suggests, it's a day in which people eat sweets. Some of the kids complained that this was a normal day in Sweetland.

Big Sweet Parade Day--this has the same premise as Sweet Day, but it was described to me as "like Thanksgiving for Sweetland." All of the farmers bring people sweets for the year.

Pilot Day--this holiday honors pilots in Sweetland. On this day, people dance on the wings of the airplanes and they eat chicken wings.

We debated which holiday to adopt, and it came down to a pretty close vote. However, Pilot Day ended up winning.