Holidays and traditionsFinal primary school cycle (10-12 year olds)

Program School to School

ActivitiesActivity 1 The book of fesTivAls, celebrATions And TrAdiTions

duration: 1hour session.

objectives: • Identify elements inherent to our culture• Disseminate our traditions, including students’ personal experiences.

Material needed: A4 paper or cardboard, photographs, magazines, scissors and glue. It is convenient to ask students to bring photos of festivals and celebrations (i.e. birthdays, weddings, carnival, or of them wearing local traditional dress, etc)

Activity:Together, we will create a book with all the popular festivals and traditions that we know in Spain. It can include small family celebrations, any type of popular festival, either civil or religious. Any occasion that we think is special will do, whether it takes place in our town or village, or in another part of the country.

First, we will make a list divided in two categories:

• Family celebrations: birthdays, weddings, births, christenings, etc.• Festivals: carnivals, country fairs, dances, religious celebrations, etc.

When the list is complete, we will divide the class in as many groups as necessary so that each group can make a page. The page will include:

• A description of the festival or tradition: what it is, why it takes place, with whom it is usually shared, in which part of Spain it is celebrated, etc.

• Drawings, photographs or images cut off from magazines to illustrate those traditions.

Holidays and traditionsFinal primary school cycle (10-12 year olds)

Program School to School

ActivitiesActivity 2 bollywood

duration: 1 hour session.

objectives: • Identify Indian cultural elements through its cinema.• Compare Indian cinema to the cinema we are used to, especially American and Spanish cinema.

Material needed: A4 paper, pencils, colouring pens, etc. The teacher will look on the Internet for fragments of one or seve-ral Bollywood films. The fragments should be visually significant, such as scenes where there is dancing, music or other rituals in which their particular aesthetics can be appreciated.

Activity:We will watch some scenes from Bollywood films. They are little known in our country, but in India they make more films than in the United States.

After each scene, the class will think about the differences with the cinema we are used to, which is normally American.

- What surprised you most?- What visual elements does it contain?- What are the clothes like?- What is the dancing like? And the music?- What meaning could this scene have?- Does it remind us of any film we might have seen?

After two or three scenes, the students will write a short essay about Indian cinema that includes all they have learned.

Holidays and traditionsFinal primary school cycle (10-12 year olds)

Program School to School

ActivitiesActivity 3 hindu deiTies

duration: 1 hour session.

objectives: • To learn about Hindu deities.

Material needed: A4 paper or cardboard, colouring pencils or pens. Before the activity, the teacher will look on the Internet for an image representing some of the main Hindu deities: Ganesh, Hanuma, Vishnu, Shiva, etc. It might also be useful to have a brief description of each one.

Activity:As we have seen, Hinduism is very different from the Catholic, Muslim or Jewish religions present in our culture and nearby countries. The main difference is that it is a polytheist religion, which believes there are many gods.

First, we are going to learn about some of its deities, by learning their names and what they are like. The teacher will show different representations, and, looking at the images, the class will try to know more about them by asking the necessary questions:

- What could its name be?- Does it take human shape? Or is it an animal?- Does it carry anything? What could that mean?- What is your impression? Is it a good deity? Nice? Intelligent? Does it scare you?- What other details have you noticed?

After seeing five or six gods or goddesses and learning what they are like, we are going to do a little exercise: each one will write a story about what a hypothetical encounter with one of the deities we have talked about would be like. Imagine we had to ask them for something: how would we address them? What exactly would we say? Would it help us? You will need to take into account what each deity is like and choose the one we like most for our story.

Holidays and traditionsFinal primary school cycle (10-12 year olds)

Program School to School

ActivitiesActivity 4 MusicAl insTruMenTs

duration: 1 hour session.

objectives: • To learn about some of India’s traditional musical instruments.• Compare Indian instruments to the ones we know.

Material needed: A4 paper or cardboards, colouring pencils o pens. Before the session, the teacher will look for pictu-res of string, wind or percussion instruments used in India and will find out how they work. There is a small document, with detailed pages per instrument, in Wikipedia that can be used as reference (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_musical_instruments), where there are also many links to videos showing how to play the instruments. If the classroom has a projector, it might be a good idea to watch them in class, to learn what the instruments sound like.

Activity:We will learn about some of the main Indian string, wind and percussion instruments. First, the teacher will show us some images of musical instruments and will tell us their names. We will try to classify them in three groups. What type of instruments are they? How are they played? How do they sound? Do they remind us of any instrument we already know?

Once we are finished classifying the instruments, the teacher will say whether there have been any mistakes, and might, if he/she chooses so, present some of the videos to show what the instruments sound like.

Next, we will make a list of instruments we know to show the children in the school in India. For each one, we will prepare a page which includes:

- The name of the instrument and a drawing of it- Its type: string, wind or percussion- To what Indian instrument is most similar

It would be useful to divide the class in groups so that students can get organised, and so that each group makes one or two cards, without repeating them. It would also be interesting to look for traditio-nal instruments from our country such as: pandereta (tambourine), zambomba (folk drum), castañuelas (castanets), cazú (kazoo), gaita (bagpipes), etc. In these cases we can add the holidays and festivals they are used at.