Autumn festival:LA CASTANYADA

JOAQUIM VALLMAJÓ SCHOOL NAVATA

November 2012

The week of All Saints’day in Catalonia we celebrate “La Castanyada”.It consists of a meal of chestnuts (castanyes in Catalan) and sometimes sweet potatoes too.Along with Christmas, Carnival and Saint George’s day, it is one of the main festivals we celebrate al school.

La castanyera

The figure of a chestnut seller “la castanyera” is the symbol of la Castanyada.She is an old woman dressed in peasant’s clothes and a headscarfin front of a stove, where she is cooking chestnuts.

This is our castanyera. We have it displayed in the corridor.Do you like it?

The playground was wet, so this year we celebrated the Castanyada in the new gym. We sat in a big circle all around to see the dances from different countries we had prepared in the Music class.

The P3, P4 and P5 students danced “La Castanyera” and “Pep Patum”, from Catalonia.

The 1st year students danced “La Badoise”, from France.

The 2nd year students “Tarantela”, from Italy.

The 3rd year students danced “Tre Sma Grumor”, from Sweden

The 4th year students “Troika”, from Russia

Year 5 class danced “Kolo de Srem” from Serbia.

And finally, year 6 class danced “Grand Square” from the USA.

The students in year 6 dressed up as chestnut sellers. As you can see some of us wore the “barretina”, the red typical Catalan hat. In the basket we had cones made of newspaper to put the chesnuts in.

We gave the children the chestnuts and the sweet potatoes to eat.

They were delicious. Yummy!

In the English class we talked about Halloweenand the biggest students made Jack o’lanterns with pumpkins.It was great fun!

We hope that you enjoyed hearing about the Castanyada.

From your friends at Navata school