Maple Class celebrated Diversity Day yesterday, visiting both Spain and Sri Lanka.
Quico’s mother came in and taught us about aspects of Spain, including the geography, language, culture and food.
She brought in some homemade tomato sauce, which is often eaten on bread at breakfast-time, for the children to try. They first prepared a delicious platter of cold meats and cheese, and all seemed to thoroughly enjoy munching their way through it! It was great seeing some children trying some of these ingredients for the first time.
Handling knives carefully as part of the preparations
A delicious platter with a variety of produce from Spain
In the afternoon, the children listened, entranced, as Lorelie’s mum read the children a story written by a family relative which was based on a traditional folk tale from Sri Lanka.
She (and Quico’s mum, again!) showed the class more pictures and shared facts about the dress, culture, architecture and other information about the beautiful country from which they are both originally from. They showed us what the ornate yet complicated lettering looks like, and I think the children realised how lucky they are to only have 26 letters in our own alphabet to deal with, instead of the hundreds that make up both Tamil and Sinhalese languages.
The children were delighted to sample the different food from Sri Lanka, including jackfruit, lychees and homemade roti and coconut rice.
Enthusiastically eating the different food from Sri Lanka
“I enjoyed cutting and eating the tapas. The cheese on the top of it all made it look like a masterpiece!” Frank
“My favourite food was the olives which I’ve never tried before. ” Chloe
“The story that was read out has a moral to it: that you can’t get away with things!” Hannah
“I enjoyed learning about Sri Lanka because I learnt many facts like it is the only place in the world where you might find an elephant and a blue whale in one day.” Katie
“I learnt ‘one to ten’ in Spanish and they don’t have pounds, they have euros.” Lorelie
“We were given some abstract art painted by the famous Picasso. We were instructed to cut a small square out of one of his pieces and expand it to try and make the square look like part of our own painting instead of his.” Sadie
“The Picasso art was fun because we could make the picture blend in. We used oil pastels” Charlie
“I enjoyed trying new foods and exploring different art and culture from both Sri Lanka and Spain. ” Elodie
