St David’s Day
The history of the Patron saint of Wales is steeped in mystery and awe. Said to have been born during a storm on a cliff-top in Pembrokeshire. St David was said to have lived a simple life, being brought up to be a priest from a young age, choosing to live as a vegetarian and performing several miracles throughout his lifetime.
Lesson Ideas
Welsh Traditions
During St David’s Day there are many traditions ranging from pinning one of the national emblems onto a piece of clothing your wearing to attending an Eisteddfodau (a type of concert).
Introducing even a couple of St David traditions during the day are sure to get the kids engaged and having fun whilst learning all about who St David was.
Take a look here at an amazing article written by The Telegraph.
Try Welsh Dishes:
Ready, Steady, Cook! Every country all over the world will have its local dishes and Wales is no exception. BBCs website GoodFood has published an article titled “Top 10 foods to try in Wales“. They also have links for each of dishes to a homemade recipe so that people can try at home.
If you have the facilities at your school why not pick out a couple of simple ones and see if you can make them in the class.
BBC Teach:
The BBC website have an absolute plethora of information all to do with St David’s Day and how best to teach about the patron saint of Wales within the classroom. Have a look below at some of the links to pages that I have found.
Historic-uk.com also has a very concise look at the life of St David and would be a good place to start if you aren’t too familiar with his life.
Learn Welsh Phrases:
A fun way to ease into the day is by having some fun trying to learn a few phrases from the Welsh language of Cymraeg. The Welsh Gift Shop have a phrasebook on their site which can be found here.
YouTube Videos
I found these two YouTube videos during my research for this topic and I thought they were too good to not put in the blog.
1957 and 2017, 60 years apart and apart from each other but altogether not that dissimilar. I believe these videos would act as a good compare and contrast task that could be completed as a whole class; what similarities and differences can be seen during the two clips and why do they think these things have changed.
National St David’s Day Parade, Cardiff March 1, 2017
St David’s Day, Carmarthen. 1957
Resources
Below are a handful of our new resources which are great ways to start getting involved with your very own St David’s Day celebrations.
Click the link here to see all of our resources that we have created in order to help you teach all about St David’s Day.
We hope these ideas have given you some inspiration for teaching about St David’s Day.
If you have any great teaching ideas for this topic, feel free to comment below (they might even get added into the topic calendar!)
