Children across all groups at Cashmore Early Years Centre have had a wonderful time this month celebrating both Eid and Easter through creative activities, storytelling and hands-on exploration.
For Eid, the children have been creating glittery classroom decorations using moon and star paper, making saltdough stars by rolling, cutting and pressing in sparkly gems, and designing their own henna patterns on hand templates, thinking carefully about lines, shapes and colours. They have been arranging loose parts onto cardboard stars with a real eye for texture, pattern and size, and decorating biscuits with icing, drizzling, spreading and dotting to make them as colourful and delicious as possible. The beautiful book Golden Domes and Silver Lanterns has been at the heart of the celebrations, with children learning key words including celebration, gift, Ramadan, Eid, mosque and henna, whilst the younger children have been enjoying Eid lift-the-flap books.
Easter has been equally exciting! The children have been creating Easter egg designs with tissue paper and glue, colouring intricate egg templates, and making and painting their very own saltdough Easter eggs. Chocolate nests made a very welcome appearance too, with children crushing cereal and mixing it with melted chocolate. The highlight of the Easter celebrations has to be the egg hunt, with each group writing messages, placing them inside plastic eggs and hiding them around the classroom for the other group to find. All sixteen eggs were discovered, including one very cleverly hidden inside a welly boot! The children have also been enjoying We’re Going on an Egg Hunt, learning key words like celebration, hunt, search, duckling, lamb and Easter.
These rich celebrations help children understand and respect different cultural traditions whilst developing creativity, fine motor skills, pattern-making and language through joyful, meaningful experiences.