In 2001, UNESCO adopted the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity and in December 2002, the UN General Assembly, declared May 21 to be the World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development.

The day provides an opportunity to deepen our understanding of the values of cultural diversity and to learn to live together better. At Whittonstall we celebrated this day by finding out about different Eueopean countries and exploring their languages through a theme of story telling.

We started the day by finding out about Bavaria, in Germany, where Mrs Elliot grew up. We looked at photographs of her family and found out about some traditional Bavarian customs before listening to her read the traditional tale of the three little pigs, in German, ‘Die drei kleinen Schweine’.

In our classes we listened to different stories in French and German and found out more about these countries and their languages, even learning to sing a song together.

To end the day, we held a Continental Food Market and the children and their families all tasted lots of different traditional Continental foods.

www.un.org