Early this week we celebrated St. Patrick's Day with the Chibi no Bi class.
St. Patrick's Day is a holiday. In Ireland, the holiday has a religious aspect to it, but here in America the holiday is focused on the cultural aspect. America has a lot of citizens who are Irish or who's ancestors came from Ireland. This holiday is to celebrate Irish and Irish dispora culture. That's why people will wear green, white, and orange - the colors of the Irish flag, and why they will eat food like corned beef and cabbage on March 17th.
Green is definitely the main color of the holiday though and was a large focus of the Chibi no Bi class. Students learned about green foods (green apples, green peppers, broccoli, etc.) and were also able to pick out the green animal in our group (the turtle).
St. Patrick's day has a bit of a magical and mythological element to it too! Leprachauns! Leprachauns are mythological creatures that are from Ireland. They look like little old men who wear green suits and green top hats. They have treasure that they hide at the end of rainbows. If you find their treasure, then you can keep it. How lucky! And speaking of lucky, four leaf clovers are also associated with St. Patrick's Day and good luck.
We taught the children all about these things in class and they all listened attentively. Also, some of the children even wore green too! It was a fun and lucky day.