Asterakia playgroup and five musicians from the Rebetiko Carnival, put on two interactive concerts for the children of our community, one at the Hellenic Centre and another at the Cypriot Community Centre.
Many families attended the fun events and had the opportunity to sing, dance and eat traditional Greek food, as well as learn a lot about our traditions.
For weekly lessons and future events please visit: www.asterakia.co.uk
The idea of creating a fun musical class in Greek came to Asterakia founder Eleni after the birth of her first daughter Ariana. When Ariana was around 14 months, Eleni realised that she could understand the Greek language but was responding in English as she was attending nursery from the age of six months. It was then she realised the difficulty of raising a child in a bilingual environment and so tried to find different ways of teaching her the Greek language through fun games, nursery rhymes, and traditional tales with puppets. This continued with the birth of her second daughter, Lydia.
In December 2015, Eleni started putting everything on paper and soon enough Asterakia, the Greek word for ‘little stars’, was born, inspired by Eleni’s own little stars.
At Asterakia, children learn vocabulary and sentences in Greek whilst singing, dancing and playing percussion instruments. Through the use of original songs, as well as traditional Greek nursery rhymes, classical pieces and folk songs, the children learn the names of body parts, numbers, colours and everyday vocabulary. They are taken on a musical journey and are actively encouraged to play with a variety of percussion instruments that accompany each lesson, while helping to bring each activity to life. To ensure that each song comes to life, puppets and visual props are used to captivate the babies’ and toddlers’ imagination.