Meeting at Public Library

Hello again! This week, it was the second week of the winter holidays. Yesterday was a great day, not only because of Tłusty czwartek, also because we had a second meeting with the Biblioteka Publiczna im. J. Lelewela in Pultusk😍 This time, we had a group of kids between 6-12 years old and our topic was  holidays of our countries. Since it is the carnival time, we thought that can be interesting to talk about.

We started with the holidays of Turkey. I told about our religious festivals/bayrams which are Ramazan bayrami and Kurban bayrami. In Islam, we celebrate Ramazan bayrami with lots of Baklava and sweets after a month of fasting. That’s why it’s also known as Holiday of Sweets. And Kurban bayrami is the festival of meat, when people sacrifices sheep or cow and give its meat to poor and needy people who cannot buy it. Then, I talked about our national holidays. I think the most interesting and attractive one was 23^rd of April Children’s Day. This day was dedicated to children by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of Turkish Republic. The kids were really impressed by the way of celebrating it by children taking over the government for one day. Everyone was saying that they want to be the president for one day, as well! 😁

After Turkey, Marta talked about the holidays of Croatia. We can say that, most of the holidays that Croatia and Poland has are similar. So, the kids were familiar with most of them. However, they were really attracted by the devilish creature Krampus, which visits you during the Christmas period if you have misbehaved. Also, they were interested in Croatian knight’s game; Sinjska Alka, which commemorates Croatia’s victory over Turkish invaders. It was interesting for me as well! 😀 When we finish the presentations, we tested their knowledge with a Kahoot quiz where they were competing in teams.

Then, we wanted to make a poster about holidays of our countries and Poland. I’m not going to lie, I wasn’t expecting them to be that good! We were so impressed by their talent. It was surprising to see that how many details they kept in their minds from our presentations. It made us so happy!💓

When we finish the poster, we have made some masks for the carnival. They picked the mask templates and they decorated them as they wish.

We had a great time at the library with these amazing kids. Thanks a lot to the library for having us during the winter holidays.

Greetings from Pultusk,

-Hande Ozdemir