With a sea of happy faces and a colour scheme of orange, Unley Primary School celebrated Harmony Day and its theme of “Everyone Belongs”.

The day began with SRC students blasting world music across the school yard to set the theme. Children were exposed to games played around the world at lunchtimes during Week 8 with origami being a very popular activity in the library on Monday and Friday. On Wednesday, children played an Indonesian game of boi boi in the yard that involved bean bags knocking down towers of cones, with ‘throwers’ and ‘stackers’ as the roles of team members. Marbles was played on Thursday in the library.

We had a wonderful Harmony Day assembly run by Caz and the students from Room 19, singing “Everyone Belongs”. Photos showed that classes rose to the challenge of creating the word HARMONY with their buddy class using just their bodies.

We were then treated to a feast for the eyes – a procession of children (and a teacher) from across the school dressed in traditional clothing. It was wonderful to see so many people proudly wearing their beautiful clothes and sharing their cultural heritage.

School classes created Harmony Day trees with decorated hands instead of leaves. The hands were decorated with Harmony Day messages, flags and words about belonging.

Together, the school community raised more than $600 to go towards Rotary’s WASH clean water campaign. Thank you to the entire UPS community for supporting such a fantastic week of celebrating our school’s rich diversity.

Sally Van Leuven EAL/D teacher