May Day

at Grange Community School, Burton upon Trent

The History Club from Grange Community School kindly sent us some information on their May Day celebrations, and these marvellous pictures.  

The club wrote: "All Burton Infant schools have a May Queen. We choose a May King and a May Prince and Princess too. All the Year 2 children vote for them and the younger children vote for the attendants

.

On May Day the Queen and her court process into the hall while the attendants throw blossom on the floor in front of her and we all clap to the music. We sing songs like:

Join us on this happy day
Out in the fields we can play.
Make this a good holiday,
First of the year.

Then the king crowns the queen, saying:

A queen we must have,
A queen for the day
------- we crown
Queen of the May.

Then the May Prince calls out "Three cheers for the May Queen" and we all cheer. After that the queen says "Let the dancing commence!" and we all dance round the school maypole

.

All the children make their own little maypoles, about the size of a tennis racquet which they can carry themselves. We use real flowers and branches or tissue and crepe paper to make these. We march round the streets carrying them and all the people come out of their houses to watch us!

The Year 2 children, led by the May Queen walk over to the Junior School to show our maypoles to the pupils. We enjoy this because we get a chance to see our big brothers and sisters.

This tradition has gone on for a long time in Burton on Trent and a lot of our mummies and daddies and some grandparents can remember doing it when they were small".

The History Club are Saad Ali, Hannah Carter, Sam Grant, Daniel Morson, Michaela Parr, Luke Pointon, Adil Ratyal, Heena Sadique, Faris Saweed and Daniel Smith.

Thank you to teacher Mary Barrett for giving us the opportunity of sharing this tradition.

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