What a pleasure any holidays bring to any adult (and even more so to a child)! Preparing for them, anticipation and excitement is even more emotional thrill. In Russian schools, students do not prepare so many matinees. But the holiday "Harvest Day" (especially since it is almost the first holiday at the beginning of the school year), the children look forward to!
The roots of this holiday
Finding the roots of this holiday is now not very easy. However, our ancestors arranged such festivities in the fall, rejoicing at the end of field work and the collection of a rich harvest. The main thing for them was to “thank” the natural forces for their help, appease them before future work on the ground. For this purpose, ceremonies of knitting the last sheaf with obligatory “labor songs” were held at the edge of the field, performed rituals with this sheaf: they went around the field, knelt before the arable land, carried the sheaf in barns, hung in a prominent place, as if proclaiming the primacy of bread on the farm.
Is the holiday alive?
Such traditions have sunk into oblivion. But the fact that the holiday is beautiful and cheerful remained. Modern students are happy to celebrate the holiday, however, already by their own rules.
Now it’s of interest to students to create interesting works from natural material on the theme “Autumn Harvest”. What only crafts we will not meet here:
- Gigantic vegetables (bizarre shapes, similarities with the world of animals and people).
- A variety of natural material and thousands of crafts on the theme of "Autumn Harvest." You can make them yourself even with first graders or children who go to kindergarten.
- The application “Autumn Harvest” is not so widespread and loved, but it also has a place to be (especially from straws).
- You can find crafts on this topic from other material: "Sunflowers", "In our garden", "The most-most ..." (salted dough, clay, paper, wood).
In a word, it will not be possible to list all the diversity in one article.
What next?
Crafts "Autumn Harvest" are prepared and ... what next? And then the holiday itself in specially designed and decorated rooms.
Quizzes, fairs, ceremonies, songs, dances and even compositions! You are not mistaken. How many are there now for writing essays! Children, especially those living in the city, have difficulty imagining how to grow and harvest the autumn crop. An essay on helping adults, knowledge about how garden crops grow, how they are harvested and what they do with them, is now often asked in gymnasiums, lyceums and schools. Which, in general, is correct. Knowledge and skills have never harmed anyone.
Bright colors
I especially want to dwell on this kind of celebration, as the autumn harvest fair. To create a craft with your own hands, to design it properly, and now to present it to the audience for consideration, is reverent. But just putting work on the counter-table is one thing, but selling a creation is not easy, but unusual - it's not an easy task. But the guys are coping with this. Some of them put on traditional Russian costumes, thereby attracting people's attention to the fact that there is a difficult event. Other guys, having compiled in advance or using ready-made tinkers, begin to attract “honest people” to their “shop” with wonderful and necessary souvenirs.
One can imagine how elegant, fun and colorful such fairs are. Well, if you also earned money, it’s aerobatics!
Holiday for the mind
One of the points of creating the holiday "Harvest Day" can serve as a quiz. Here is the expanse for tasks:
- environmental issues;
- knowledge of fruits and vegetables;
- knowledge about growing and caring for crops;
- recognition of vegetables and fruits by tactile sensations (feeling them blindfolded);
- nurturing a love of nature, etc., etc.
For this type of work, you will only need to take into account the age and hobbies of the guys.
And now the autumn games. Do you think there are none? Here is a sample list:
- “Guess” - according to the lexical description, guess the vegetable, berry, fruit.
- “In our shop there is ...” - a fabulous creature (Baba Yaga, Mermaid, Leshiy) “sells a medicinal plant” (plantain, nettle, mountain ash), you need to know which of the herbs helps with a particular disease.
- “Compose a fairy tale ...” - you can invite children to compose the story of the appearance of a vegetable, describe its useful properties, color or shape, in a word, fantasize.
- “Lay out a picture” - from seeds, or you can lay out a picture from fruits, a puzzle, everything that the fantasy tells.
- “Dance the way you could dance (cucumbers, turnips, dill ...).”
- Dramatization "What does the plant feel when ... (it is watered, torn, ironed ....)."
- “Cook ...” (salad, borsch, dessert from vegetables, berries, fruits).
- “A story of friendship-love between ...” - an essay-story, a staging.
Well, in the end, in addition to musical breaks and dances, of course, a photo shoot.
Later it’s worth making a whole film about how Harvest Day was celebrated in a school, kindergarten or other kindergarten. There are special programs that will help combine photos, music, text into a full-length exciting and memorable film. This film can then be included in the disk, which is being prepared for graduation or the last call.
Acting
In carrying out the festival "Autumn Harvest" dramatization and theatrical performances are excellent. Here you can even use any fairy tales in which there are any vegetables and fruits, starting with "Turnip" and ending with "Cipollino".
Song contest can also be included in the festival "Autumn Harvest". It can be songs about autumn, about the weather in autumn days, about vegetables, berries and fruits.
Dance variations on the theme of autumn, of course, is also a very suitable idea. Give vent to your imagination, and you will have "rainy" sketches, "vegetable dance", "waltz of berry land", "galloping peas in garden beds" and, in a word, gush with ideas, the holiday will only benefit from this!
Parent involvement
Parents are rarely or even not invited to the harvest festival. It is believed that on the holidays dedicated to mothers, and on May 9, it is worth inviting native adults. Why not change the traditions ?! Close students, too, if desired, can put on the costumes of the Mouse, Pea, Cherry, and it is not worse to show themselves in the role of fruit or another character suitable for the holiday scenario.
Children can be asked to ask their parents to dance the dances that they danced in their youth. It’s hard to imagine how pleasant it will be for them to remember their youthful years, it’s even more fun to convey the basics of “neck, boogie-woogie, rock-and-roll” to their children. Know and remember that collaborative action is much better at relationships than anything else. And when the holiday ends and some time passes, with what pleasure both children and adults will remember wonderful moments of communication and fun! It costs a lot.
Finally
So, the autumn harvest festival at the school is an excellent event that will not only help to diversify learning routines a bit, but also introduce children to traditions.