The National Cherry Blossom Festival and a Taste of Ancient Kemet

Note** The Blossom Kite Festival has been rescheduled for tomorrow, Sunday, March 30, due to today's inclement weather.


Next Saturday is the annual Blossom Kite Festival.  If you have never experienced kite flying with your kids on a gusty, spring day, you are missing a real treat!  It is tons of fun! Surprisingly, it is also therapeutic. The exhilarating synergy you experience when you and your children are commandeering your hand-picked kite, high up in the sky, makes you feel free, joyful, and content, as you forget about your troubles for a brief moment!


Every spring, the children and I pack up worn quilts, a picnic lunch, and our beloved collection of colorful dragon and butterfly kites, and trek down to the National Mall for the Annual Blossom Kite Festival. One year, we even got daddy to come along, who had more fun than the kids!  He now makes it a point of joining us every spring. This year, we hope to persuade our Babu (grandfather) to come along as well!


The Blossom Kite Festival is part of the festivities at the National Cherry Blossom Festival, which kicks off the celebration of the spring season in the Nation's Capital.  The breathtaking pink and white cherry blossoms that grace the tidal basin along the Potomac River in early spring have been a symbol of U.S.-Japanese friendship since 1912, when Japan gifted over 2,000 Cherry Blossom trees to the United States.  If you blink, you could miss them; their blooming season is exceptionally short! According to the National Park Service, the peak bloom time for the cherry blossoms this year is only five days from April 8-12.

The National Cherry Blossom Festival is a culturally-rich, three-week long celebration with activities for the whole family.  This year's festival will run from March 20-April 13. The Blossom Kite Festival, billed as one of the most popular annual events in DC, will take place next Saturday, March 29, from 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Prepare to be amazed at the crowds of seasoned and unseasoned kite lovers, who come from all over the nation and the world to show off their dare devil kite-flying skills and compete for awards. This year's festival promises to be a lot of fun for the entire family with several locations to visit, including the Competition & Demonstration Field, the Kite Club Display Area, Activity Tents, and the Family and Public fields.

Heru Bedhet Carving

If you feel guilty behind the loads of fun you had flying your kites and feel the need to get some "schooling" in, you and your lifeschoolers can research together the hidden secrets of the Black African civilization of Ancient Kemet (Egypt) and its influence on the development of the United States and its capital city.

You will discover that, if one looks closely above George
Washington's plaque inside the Washington Monument, there is a carving of a Heru Bedhet--the image that was placed above the entrance of every temple in Ancient Kemet.

Temple of Karnak

Reflecting Pool on the National Mall 

Imagine our surprise when we learned that the Washington Monument, which everyone around the world recognizes as a symbol of the U.S., is actually a copy of a 6,000 year old symbol that represents the resurrection of the first ruler of Ancient Egypt in the Egyptian mythology of Asar, Aset and Heru!

Known to the Western world as obelisks, these ancient African structures were called tekhewn by the Egyptians. It is amazing when you consider the similarities between the mirrored image of the Washington Monument in the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall and the reflection of the tekhenw of Queen Hatshepsut and Thutmose I in the Sacred Lake of the Temple of Karnak! (Anthony Browder).  You and your lifeschooler will have as much fun uncovering these and other hidden secrets about Egypt on the Potomac as you will have flying your favorite, spiral dragon and butterfly kites on the National Mall during the annual Blossom Kite Festival!

Have you and your children ever flown a kite together on a windy, sunny spring day?  Were you surprised to learn about the Secrets of Egypt on the Potomac? I would love to hear your comments below.