Some of the most important festivals within the major world religions fall in the latter part of the year: Divali (this year on 5 November), Hanukka (starting December 1 this year) and, of course, Christmas.
The challenge for early years practitioners is how to make the diversities of our world real and interesting for children when they may not know a lot about other cultures or religions themselves. That is why it's so important to engage parents and staff who can share aspects of their lives, and who may in fact be keen to do so.
This was illustrated very powerfully at the Ramadan Eid ul-Fitr celebrations at one of our nurseries. One of our practitioners, Mamoona, is a practising Muslim. She told me, 'This Eid is one of our main festivals and I really wanted to share this with the children. I enjoy knowing about other religions, so I wanted to pass this on to the children.'
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