Celebrating Festivals with Children

In this thoughtful book, Freya Jaffke describes festival celebrations in relation to child development in the first seven years. She considers in detail the main festivals throughout the year—Easter, Pentecost, St. John’s, back-to-school, harvest, Michaelmas, lantern time, birthdays, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, and carnival.

Drawing on many examples, she shows how we can celebrate festivals in a meaningful way with children, both at home and in kindergarten. Every festival is prefaced with a deeper contemplation for adults before considering preparations with children. This is followed by the actual organization of the festival—with games, craft activities and decorations, stories, songs, poems and the seasonal nature table.