The Classroom Christmas Party

Our classroom tree was covered with the ornaments the kids made...and a popcorn chain. The youngest children enjoy arranging and re-arranging the figures of the Mary, Joseph, Jesus, the shepherds and animals under the tree.

During December we studied Christmas traditions in other countries. One of the things we learned was that in Germany each family has a creche (a nativity scene). This was surprising to the children since none of them had one at their home and the only one they said they had ever seeing was the one at school. (Although I did see one in the Catholic Credit Union today.) I thought it would be fun to challenge the children to make one out of modeling clay. I gave the 4 boys a set of colorful clay bars and a base. I gave the same to the four girls. They had 45 minutes to work together as a team to mold the clay into the figures. When the time was up, we would take a picture of what they had created.

Well the boys made their nativity scene in about 15 minutes while the girls were working meticulously on details. One glance at the boy's work showed a manger, and a baby, several "people" and a couple animals. It looked pretty good actually. They wondered what they should do for the remaining 30 minutes and I said,"Why don't you use the remaining clay to refine what you have, add some details, maybe make another animal... what do you think? They all said ok...cool.

I went over to the girls to see if I could help to move it along...when I heard loud laughing from the boys. Evidently one of the boys had picked up a sheep, turned it into a "marble" and shot it at the tree, which feel over. Then another boy grabbed the top of the tree and turned it into a "marble" and shot it at Mary and Joseph knocking them over (thus the laughing). Within about 3 minutes their scene was turned into several large colorful marbles. Hmmmm. Well, I told them that the girl's were moving right along... they now had about 25 minutes to re-create their nativity. They Hrrrrumphed for a minute but the thing about clay is ...not so much the final product but the way it feels in your hands. They picked up their "marbles" and before the time was up, had recreated the scene below. Nice.


Below is the girls' team effort. They also made a roof (stable) over the whole scene but I didn't choose that picture because the roof blocked the view of the figures.

Our Christmas party was really a lot of fun this year. Five of the local stores donated gifts for the children. We were so blessed. One store said go and pick out $150 dollars worth of merchandise from the shelves and it would be free. (!!!) Other stores gave goodie bags of candy, apples, chips, small treats.

After the three special ed classes had activities for the children in three 30 minute rotations,
Santa arrived and passed out the gifts to the children. He was great. He did a little punta (a Belize dance), danced with a few of the children and had us all laughing. The children loved their gifts. The little ones gushed and gushed saying "Look what Santa gave me!" They were so happy. After Santa left we had lunch, played some Christmas Bingo and exchanged gifts in our own classes.

This is a picture of Victor and his mom. When their rotation came to my class I told the story Reindeer Christmas and they made reindeer paper bag puppets. It's wonderful to see the parents of the children in Victor's class come to the parties and be involved in the school.

This is Abner. He is so funny. When Santa called him up to get his gift, Abner changed his voice to sound deep (like Santa's). Abner's imitation was so cute, that we all clapped and laughed. In this picture he is giggling because he feels the pen running against his fingers.

Merry Christmas everybody!

May the peace of God guide you and sustain you in the new year.