Niamh's Year in India: Halloween/Bonfire Night/Remembrance Day

In the past few weeks we’ve been doing lots of crafts and things with the kids because we were running out of worksheets to do with them and there were three very important dates which we felt had to be celebrated. Halloween, which we thought the kids knew but they didn’t, Bonfire Night, we said it was like Diwali, and Remembrance Day.

Halloween was a fun one. I explained to the kids what it was in the morning, which was interesting. I don’t think they got it. But I showed them some pictures of me dressing up and they told me I looked “super.” Then it was Halloween game time! If I mention the word “game” in the class room they kind of explode so I’m very wary with my wording. But we played Pin the Tail on the (neon orange) Cat. Making the kids required so much artistic skill that I just don’t have so I’m very pleased with the result.

I made some Halloween masks in third and they really enjoyed that. I was just stupid enough not to bring string so they just had to hold the masks to their faces.

In first we made some handprint bats! They really liked them, but trying to get them to sit still to have their hands drawn around was actually quite painful.

Bonfire Night was surprisingly hard to explain. So I decided just to say that it was just like Diwali with the fireworks and we also have a big fire as well. Which they seemed to understand.

First just did some handprint bonfires which was really good!

This photo is amazing because it shows the typical chaos in the first standard classroom.

And then third did some chalk firework pictures!

Remembrance Day was a lot harder to explain. We knew that they didn’t commemorate Remembrance Day in the same way as back home but we didn’t realise that they hadn’t even heard of the First World War. As a proper History Geek that actually made me really angry and then as a person I was disappointed. It was a massive event that completely changed history and the world which Indian men fought and died in, yet they had no idea what it was. Even the older class I sometimes teach, 5^th Standard, didn’t know what it was. They were also trying to tell me that Gandhi stopped it. As amazing as Gandhi was, I’m 100% sure that he wasn’t the one responsible for the end of the First World War. So for our Remembrance Day, we made lots of poppies.