November: Fireworks, Faith & Remembrance Day

Novembers Cultural Festivals

November is a month of fireworks and fun, as we move one step closer to the celebrations of Christmas and Hannukah here at Hatching Dragons. It is a month that is awash with UNESCO international days and cultural festivals and so we're hard pressed to consolidate what we're learning with the children into more manageable, bite sized cultural exploration. November's international festivals include:

• 2nd November - Day of the Dead (Mexico)
• 5th November - Guy Fawkes' / Bonfire Night (UK)
• 6-18th November - COP27 
• 9th November - International Stress Awareness Day
• 10th November - World Science Day for Peace & Development
• 11th November - Armistice / Remembrance Day
• 13-20 November - Inter Faith Harmony Week
• 14th November - Global Entrepreneurship Week
• 14th - 20th November - Global Education Week
• 16th November - International Day for Tolerance
• 18th November - World Toilet Day
• 20th November - World Children's Day
• 23rd November - Buy Nothing Day
• 30th November - Remembrance Day for Lost Species

Our End of Month Festival

We can't possibly include all of that material even if we wanted to (and we really really want to) so for the benefit of our children, we've simplified things a little to focus on those that are most relevant to us and the overarching theme for the month. As you can see there are general themes inherent in at least some of the cultural festivals listed above:

• Armistice surely is all about the importance of peace, harmony between faiths and tolerance. Guy Fawkes' gunpowder plot found its origins in the sectarianism between Protestant and Catholics (not particularly harmonious at the time) and the wars between Protestant Britain and Catholic France, which steers us back to peace and the remembrance celebrations to honour those who sacrificed their lives for our safety. In that sense, International Stress Awareness day can be rolled into the overarching theme of the importance of peace (for ourselves, between people and between countries) - there can surely not be anything more stressful or damaging than war.
• Education and Children go hand in glove and so we'll interrogate how we can celebrate Education as a mechanism to increase understanding and tolerance and arrest the impulses that lead us to war,
• And there cannot be a greater fight of our time than the climate, and how we must achieve balance with nature as outlined in COP27 for suffer the calamity of further species loss

Our educational programming for November, in preschool, focusses in and around these themes, and our activities, stories, songs and rhymes will be working towards enhancing the children's understanding of what it means to be a global citizen - what responsibilities we have to each other, ourselves and our planet to ensure that war and the damage that it can cause never happens again. So on the last Friday of each month, we hold a Cultural Festival to celebrate the children's learning in this regard and we thought it would be right and proper for our charity partner to be Help for Heroes this month. Read more about our charity partnership scheme

Reboot the Future

Most if not all of the source material comes from Reboot the Future's Global Dimension, our go to resource for intercultural programming here at Hatching Dragons. You can sign up / register for updates with Global Dimensionand get your own annual plan / calendar here and i would strongly recommend any and all families to look into the educational resources and campaigns they put out not least because we'll be following suit in the schools