Lower School’s first-ever Spring Festival celebrated global holidays that saluted renewal and new beginnings.

All around the world, countries celebrate spring in the traditions of their own cultures—through music, dance, art, food, color, light, or water. These celebrations most often focus on growth and new beginnings.

To join together as a community and honor the many traditions of the season, this March the Lower School at Sidwell Friends hosted its own celebration of spring. The inaugural event celebrated eight spring holidays included Holi (Hindu festival of colors), Nowruz (Persian New Year), Vaisakhi (Sikh spring harvest celebration), Songkran (Thai New Year), Losar (Tibetan New Year), Passover (Jewish celebration of the biblical Exodus), Yuan Xiao Jie (Chinese lantern festival), and the Spring Equinox (the first official day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere). 

Lower School Music Teacher Matthew Stensrud worked with several Parents Association Affinity Groups, colleagues, and students to bring the festival to life. “We wanted to make sure we didn’t miss any cultural celebrations,” says Stensrud, who added that he learned a great deal about his own students during the process of putting the show together. “Seeing students share with their teachers and peers the amazing traditional dances that they do within their own cultural communities was a real gift. We witnessed some unique talents and skills that we didn’t even know these kids had!”

The assembly incorporated several dance performances, two of which included pairs of siblings, both dressed in traditional costumes. One pair, a brother and sister in kindergarten and 2nd grade performed a beautiful Tibetan dance, a vibrant traditional component of the 15-day Tibetan New Year festival. Another pair, a brother and sister in 1st and 3rd grades, brought ebullience and joy through their spirited dance and playing of traditional instruments. 

A video of a Lantern Festival performance in China showed phalanxes of red-clad dancers and musicians playing huge drums to wake up spring after a long winter. A slideshow spotlighted still-life paintings of colorful flowers in vases created by Sidwell second graders. A presentation about the traditions of a Passover seder featured kids dressed as a bitter herb, a shank bone, an egg, and a piece of matzah—the symbolic foods that commemorate the story of the Jews’ escape from slavery in Egypt.

Keeping up the assembly’s interactive energy, preK and kindergarten students were invited to jump over small, symbolic “fires”—to recreate a Persian purification ritual performed during Nowruz that is meant to burn away sickness, negative energy, and bad luck from the past year. At the end of the program, students collaborated to answer riddles related to what they had learned during the global celebrations that were hidden in Chinese lanterns. If correct, the class got to keep the lantern in their classroom for the rest of the year. 

“There was so much happy energy in that room,” one parent said after the event. “Mr. S and the kids left us all feeling like we are all special individuals who make up one meaningful whole.”