Children from Jeongseon Kindergarten dressed up in hanbok on Tuesday and Wednesday to take part in a chuseok celebration featuring traditional games and a songpyeon rice cake-making session.
In Jeongseon-gun, where births are rare, each new child is a treasure — so much so that local public-sector staff visit families to throw a welcome party when a baby arrives.
Dressed in their colorful hanbok, the children were sure to warm the hearts of every adult they encountered over the holiday. Their teachers, too, put on hanbok for the first time in a long while, showing off the graceful lines they had kept tucked away.
On the kindergarten playground, the children tried their hand at a wide range of traditional games — ddakji (card flipping), jegi (hacky sack), biseok (stone tossing), gong-gi (jacks), bean-bag toss, arm wrestling, tuho (arrow pitching), top spinning and hopscotch.
Children aged 3, 4 and 5 were grouped together and rotated through each game booth, giving children of different ages a natural chance to mix, help one another and learn the values of consideration and cooperation. The 5-year-olds, with all the gravity of seasoned elders, stepped in to guide the clumsy little hands of the 3-year-olds.
On Wednesday, the children made songpyeon by hand for the first time — a rice cake they had only ever eaten before. Their faces were full of concentration as they shaped each piece.
Yang Ho-suk, principal of Jeongseon Kindergarten, said the event gave the children a chance to experience traditional games and songpyeon-making firsthand and feel the joy and value of Korean cultural heritage. "It was all the more meaningful because children of different ages played and worked together, learning to care for one another in the process," she said.
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