Festivals from around the world

This primary resource introduces children to different festivals from around the world. Discover why different countries want to celebrate and over-indulge before Lent. Where is the world’s biggest carnival held? What kinds of costumes do people wear? What kinds of music can you hear at these festivals?

Pupils will learn about the similarities and differences of carnivals around the world, and how people celebrate in our National Geographic Kids’ Culture primary resource sheet.

The teaching resource can be used in study group tasks, as a printed handout for each pupil to review and annotate, or for display on the interactive whiteboard using the images included in the resource for class discussion.

Activity: As a class, ask children to discuss the different types of festival included in the primary resource sheet. Have they heard of any of these festivals before? Have they heard of the countries in which they take place? Ask pupils to compare the similarities and differences of each festival, recording their findings in a table. Pupils could hold their own class festival, dressing up in costume and making masks using the Carnival mask: Art primary resource sheet.

N.B. The following information for mapping the resource documents to the school curriculum is specifically tailored to the English National Curriculum and Scottish Curriculum for Excellence. We are currently working to bring specifically tailored curriculum resource links for our other territories; including South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. If you have any queries about our upcoming curriculum resource links, please email: schools@ngkids.co.uk

This Culture primary resource assists with teaching the following History objectives from the National Curriculum:

• Gain historical perspective by placing their growing knowledge into different contexts, understanding the connections between local, regional, national and international history; between cultural, economic, military, political, religious and social history; and between short- and long-term timescales.

And the following Key Stage 1 Geography objectives from the National Curriculum:

• understand geographical similarities and differences through studying the human and physical geography of a small area of the United Kingdom, and of a small area in a contrasting non-European country

This Culture primary resource assists with teaching the following Social studies objectives from the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence:

• broaden my understanding of the world by learning about human activities and achievements in the past and present

Scottish Curriculum for Excellence Early level Social studies objectives:

• I am aware that different types of evidence can help me to find out about the world around me.

Scottish Curriculum for Excellence Early level Social studies objectives:

• I can discuss issues of the diversity of cultures, values and customs in our society.

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