Harmony Day
Harmony Day is celebrated around Australia on March 21st every year. Harmony Day is a day of cultural respect for everyone who calls Australia home – from the traditional owners of this land to those who have come from many countries around the world. The reasons we celebrate Harmony Day can be taught and celebrated at all age levels! Even students in Kindergarten or younger can participate in this important holiday. Keep reading to find a variety of Harmony Day Activities and ideas for your classroom and for your entire school.
Harmony Day Picnic
There is no better way to celebrate Harmony Day than with a picnic! This can be as simple as inviting families to your school for a family picnic day or you can organise a picnic just for the students. Don’t forget to encourage students, staff and families to wear orange – traditionally, orange symbolises social communication and meaningful conversations. It also conveys the freedom of ideas and the promotion of mutual respect.
At our school we engage students in a day of multicultural cooking, which we then share at our Harmony Day picnic. This can be as simple or as complex as you like. In our Early Childhood Centre each class chooses a continent and cooks a simple food from that continent. Some foods we have shared are pizza, pasta, mini hot dogs, fried rice, lamingtons, crumbed fish, couscous, the list goes on and on….
Whole School Harmony Day Activities
Harmony Day can be a fun way to let students of a variety of ages participate in some whole school activities.
Set aside part of your day for cooking and sharing your Harmony Day picnic (or even better, spread these activities over a couple of days). For the rest of the day divide up all of your school’s students into small groups of mixed ages. Yes, that’s right… Kindergarten right up to Year 6! Have each teacher pre-prepare an activity from a chosen continent or country. The activity needs to be simple and easily differentiated. Now let the groups of students rotate through to each teacher (or a selected number of teachers) to complete each task. About 20 minutes will be ideal for each rotation. You will find that the older children will love taking on a leadership role with the little ones.
Need some simple activity ideas? Try these:
- Mosaics – Creating a picture with mosaic squares (Greece)
- Sushi making (Japan)
- Loch Ness monster craft (Scotland)
- Pottery – make a mini clay pot (many cultures)
- Make an ancient olympic crown out of leaves (Rome)
- Origami (Japan)
Harmony Day Handprint Activity
Harmony Day Crown
Your students will love wearing this cute Harmony Day crown to help celebrate Harmony Day. Simply choose from the four provided templates, colour in the people, cut out the template, add a headband and wear! Either print on orange card and colour in, or colour in with oil pastels and paint over the top with Edicol dye.
Find the Harmony Day Crown here.
Harmony Day Tie
This Harmony Day tie activity is suitable for a variety of ages. Your students will love to wear their tie whilst celebrating on Harmony Day. You can choose to do a simple handprint on one of the templates, or for older students it is the perfect way to display their Harmony Day writing.
Find the Harmony Day Tie here.
Harmony Day Bracelets
Your students will love decorating and wearing these cute Harmony Day bracelets. This Harmony Day bracelet activity is suitable for a variety of ages and can be used as a super quick fill-in activity.
Get the Harmony Day Bracelets here.
Harmony Day Song
Another way to help celebrate Harmony Day is to learn the song, Everyone Belongs. It sounds so beautiful when the whole school sings together! If you decide to have a family picnic day, what a perfect time to get the school to sing the song together!
Find it HERE.
Harmony Day Website
Make sure you check out the official Harmony Day website for information and resources HERE.
I hope these Harmony Day activities and ideas can help you and your students celebrate Harmony Day and learn how important respect for other cultures is.
