Harvest Festival at Hungry Caterpillars
Monthly Blog
By Daisy Sanders
The Harvest season is a very important date in the British Farming Calendar as it is the time when all crops are harvested for food and animal feed. There are several factors which could play a part in whether it is successful and these include having the right amount of rain (having too much or too little could be detrimental) as well as droughts. If you would like to support farmers, buying locally soured food and drink will help.
The Harvest Season’s history:
The Harvest Festival traditionally lasts from the end of August until the start of September. Historically, the harvest would have been celebrated with having a massive meal with lots of different types of meat and vegetables followed by singing and playing games. This would have been carried out by St Michael’s Mass on the 29th of September as a way to identify the end of the harvest.
Following from this, the nurseries at Hungry Caterpillars have joined in with celebrating the Harvest Festival!
The children took part in different learning opportunities including having the opportunity to dig locally sourced vegetables out of the soil and talk about where the vegetables grow. As a great sensory play learning opportunity, the children were able to use their toy tractors, collecting coloured rice and oats. The children also used playdough to explore the autumn colours.
Another amazing opportunity our children had was to collect food donations to donate items like rice, pasta and different kinds of tinned food to Ealing Food Bank.
If you would personally like to make a donation to Ealing Food Bank, please click here to see which items are most needed and where you can donate: https://ealing.foodbank.org.uk/give-help/donate-food/