Christmas without snow or Santa?

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas... Which I don't really love quite yet. I love Christmas time and putting up the decorations, but my birthday is a late November one, so when decorations start appearing even in October I am not impressed.

This is my first Christmas after getting married, so I am giving in early and beginning to plan excitedly. Decorations are being hand-made to save the dollars, but there are so many options I figured I'd remind myself of my personal boundaries - no snow or Santa or anything snow-related or Santa-related. That's right. No snow globes, icicles, reindeer, or elves. The only exception is a fireplace 'theme' where I am planning on hanging the stockings.

And I'm thinking I will be treating my in-class activities the same. Sorry kids!

Why?

Well, let's start with the snow. If you are in certain parts of the world, snow is a perfectly natural, unavoidable part of the season. It isn't in Australia and here in QLD it will be hot. Snow is simply not natural here at this time of year. It is not a part of our Christmas experience. It simply makes more sense to be relevant for our season - ice cold drinks instead of hot chocolate, fans instead of blankets, and the only snowman decoration that makes any kind of sense here is the half-melted ones.

Moving onto Santa. For many, he is the magical part of Christmas for children. For me, he can be a bit of a disappointing fairy tale. There will be students whose families will not be able to pull off a magical Santa fulfilling all their dreams and ticking items from their wishlist. There will be students whose families do not encourage Santa beliefs, such as my own. There will be students with such high expectations of Santa that they will cry if their ipad is the wrong colour (or their car). There will be students who don't celebrate Christmas at all. As a Christian, I have no interest in lying to my children about Santa's existence and placing doubt on my other beliefs. I also place a different emphasis on Christmas and don't want to emphasis the gifts. Christmas can have greater meaning and joy than celebrating Santa's visit and receiving gifts.

So what is my alternative?

The 'true meaning of Christmas' is the simplest answer. In a Christian school, it is easy to emphasis the Christian symbolism and remembrance. In a public school, there are still other Christmas truths to emphasize and these can even be done with those who don't celebrate Christmas.

Broader Christmas themes can include:

• Giving: not receiving and maybe not even gifts. Think of giving to the poor, donating time to a cause, acts of random kindness, etc.
• Love and community: similarly to above, this could also include writing letters, spending time with community members, and working on relationships.
• Joy, peace and blessings: just having fun and celebrating life in general. Incorporate games, talk about having joy and peace even in hard times, go on a treasure hunt for things that make us feel blessed or at peace, learn how to calm down, journal blessings.
• Salvation: not just the amazing gift from Jesus, but also safety during the holidays. Let's not forget it can also be a dangerous season with drownings, road accidents, and fires.
• Pleasant surprises: don't you love it when loved ones visit unexpectedly, an ordinary day turns into some random fun, or you enter a room to find it transformed since you left? There's no reason this can't happen at school without it being about Christmas, though it can easily be linked in. Can you imagine how much your students would love it? It could even become an advent calendar themed event with one little pleasant surprise a day or a week. We had one teacher at my primary school who used to prank another class - why not even work on a pleasant surprise for another class or teacher?

These can be linked into class learning such as:

• Who is poor? How do they live?
• How can we help others?
• How can we control our feelings?
• How do different cultures celebrate?
• Family history.
• Who do I love and why? How can I show them?
• How can I stay safe?

If you are now wondering about the beloved decorations and class displays, you could consider going with a somewhat traditional Christmas still or a more subtle Christmas theme. You can exclude Santa and snow and still be left with stars, angels, candy canes, trees, pictures portraying peace or joy, a 'present' which is lifted up to reveal a 'giving' scene which isn't your usual present, family portraits, baby portraits, safety posters. Specific examples of how these crafts would work will be following in a separate post soon.

Gift ideas are quite a bit easier, even without snow or santa. These will be presented in a separate post soon.

How do you feel about booting out snow for a local reality and replacing a Santa emphasis with a 'meaning of Christmas' emphasis? Will this make the season unnecessarily challenging for you?

Wording Wednesday - Planning a day around reporting skills

How many of your students read the newspaper? My bet is, not too many. I remember often being expected by teachers to be a fan of the news, though I am still not sure why. Is it because it is current, local, informative or what? I will openly confess that I still don't read the news. However, I have always loved those reports on certain shows which are known as 'interest articles.' As a child, I used to fight about bed-time because I had sat through over 45 minutes of news to watch that one report that interested me.

Writing or recording interesting reports to draw in young people is certainly a skill. How many of your students will graduate with it? As I continue to gather and create resources for my relief folder, I plan on sharing them here, hence the second freebie in a row now. Today's little freebie is a rough outline from which to form a plan for a lesson, day or even a couple of days running, all based around article writing. Students can involve a wide range of subjects, engage in topic of interest to them, and create a class news presentation, paper, magazine, blog or YouTube channel (these can be private last I checked). This could be done as individuals, partners, or small groups and could end up being published in some form or link to a social action unit. The options are huge so it can be used across a range of grades and adjusted to fit an appropriate time frame.

So here is at least a day of reporting.

Want some resources to compliment this idea and aid in the more detailed planning? Well I happen to have found some I like:

• This form for peer reviews from Classroom Teacher Resources.
• TPT- A Peer Edit Guide to Write Right - While I would not buy this one for the ages I tend to work with, I love the five questions mentioned in the description and can see these being effective on a peer feedback form for opinion and news writing.
• Online Chart Tool - A free online tool for creating bar charts, line charts, pie charts, scatter plots, bar line graphs and more.
• ABC - Behind the News - An online news website designed with children in mind to introduce them to news reports.

Do you see yourself using such a theme in the classroom? How? Do you have any handy resources to add to the list?

Freedom Friday - Expression through open-ended Easter arts

Looking back over Easter arts I have done or led in the past, I realise they all have something in common - they don't leave much room for real creativity or expression. Just last year I had students decorate egg templates using chalk and tape resist. This technique was new for the students and looked cute but didn't leave much room for experimenting. The tape was laid, they coloured each block in a solid colour using the wet chalk, and waited for it to dry in order to remove the tape. The result was an entire wall filled with pretty colourful eggs, all of which looked almost identical. How often do we engage students in art and crafts which looks nice on the wall but allows little room for actual designing, creative thinking and a variety of results? Upon searching for open-ended Easter arts and crafts, my results were incredibly limited. In fact, Google could show the results on less than a single page. So I wondered, how hard is this people? Commence the brainstorming!

I have created a list of ideas for open-ended Easter arts which will allow students to create pieces which may have commonalities, but allow for a wider range of responses than we usually see. Do note that for ease, I have made most of them 'create,' but you can consider different mediums such as painting, collage, etc. This was simply because I want to leave this option also open-ended for you (and you could even give students some choice between 2-3 mediums, setting up small groups, allowing for greater variety in results).

• Create a picture of a hidden egg or eggs in whichever scene they like. This allows their scenes to be as varied as their imagination allows, and the eggs can be hidden or even camouflaged as hard as they like. I can imagine they would have fun trying to find all the eggs in other pictures if displayed too. (I can't help but think this would be an awesome collage activity.)
• Create an Easter scene without including eggs, chocolate or bunnies. This could be interpreted two ways, what would Easter be like without those things and how can we communicate Easter in other ways. (For religious schools, this challenge will help students focus on other meanings of Easter beyond the chocolate as well).

Large stone statues, or moai,
of Easter Island.

• Design or map what you imagine it would be like in a place called 'Easter Island'. After completing the activity, introduce children to the fact that Easter Island actually exists. You could follow up with research, a book, or time exploring Easter Island with Google maps. Concluding this learning, they could redesign their map or print off a real map to place next to their original design and compare their imagination and the reality. This could again be used to play a spot the difference and discuss assumptions made because of the name of a place (do they know about Greenland and Iceland?)
• Show one body part and what it looks like on Easter (along with possibly some small scene). Students may need some help to think about this. What do their mouths do? Get covered in chocolate? What do their eyes do? Could they show a reflection in the eyes or glasses of what they might be seeing? What different things do their hands do? Are they likely to be painting eggs, collecting eggs from hiding places, holding a huge collection of eggs, holding the messy hand of a younger child, or praying? Perhaps they could show feet running right past a hidden egg. The options here are again limited only by the imagination.
• Create an abstract design showing how Easter feels using carefully chosen colours and lines. To

  

  Bright colours, 'excited' lines and
  a circle of 'love' is used to express
  Easter feelings very simply here.

  combine this idea with the religious significance, you could ask them to create two designs, with one representing the feelings associated with the crucifixion and the other representing the resurrection. This may result in more similar results than some of the other activities here, but it allows them to carefully consider communication and specific design elements. If you so desire, you could use this design on an egg template, chocolate wrapper, or even Easter card.
• Create a poster advertising your favourite chocolate for Easter or communicating what Easter means to you. Have a look at advertisments before letting them loose in order to encourage creative thinking. They could keep it simple and draw the chocolate with a "The best option for Easter" or design a scene of cleverly hidden chocolates with a child searching eagerly and a line saying "worth searching for" or the reflection of the chocolate shown in big eyes, etc. Communicating what Easter means for them could also yield different results, especially if you encourage them to think beyond simply chocolates. This could be presented as a form of both expressing themselves and communicating to others in order to remind others that it isn't just about the chocolate (sorry for all you chocolate lovers out there, but I have talked about chocolate so much I don't think I can cope with much more).
• Collage a shape using words which could be associated with Easter, how it feels, what it means and words that could be said on Easter morning.
• Show a dream of the perfect Easter. Challenge them to think about the repercussions of receiving a chocolate egg as big as a house. It would probably melt before it was finished and make them quite sick as well as leaving no room in the yard for a little egg hunt. My family used to celebrate Easter with gifts instead of chocolate and this was perfect for me. I still have some of those gifts now and they remind me that Easter for me is not all about the chocolate. In fact, I remember getting one of them while camping with friends and family and the chocolate really didn't matter at all, so perhaps where they are and who they are with could even be the focus.
• Communicate 'new life.' Whether you are religious and thinking of the crucifixion, or not and

  

  Two popular ideas representing
  'new life.'

  thinking of spring (in some lucky parts of the world), eggs, bunnies and baby animals, these words are significant to the symbolism of Easter. Such a focus again allows for a range of responses that may not usually be seen in Easter arts.
• Create a visual representation of a quote. Find an abstract quote about Easter and have them communicate a similar idea visually, without the use of words. For example, "Easter is very important to me, it's a second chance." - Reba McEntire, or "Easter says you can put truth in a grave, but it won't stay there." - Clarence W. Hall, or "It is the hour to rend thy chains, The blossom time of souls." - Katherine Lee Bates. Google will soon give you more results. Encourage the students to think figuratively as well as literally in order to provide more possibilities.
• Design or create the ultimate Easter basket. Encourage them to write a list of requirements before starting. What is important for them? Should it be colourful, shaped like a rabbit, soft, and easy to carry? Is it preferable to be strong, large, close-able, lockable and come with an inbuilt 'chocolate detector' attached to a robotic arm? If they have a robotic arm, is it automatic or controlled and is it a thief? Don't forget you have boys in your class and their creative responses should also be accepted and encouraged.

This concludes my list and brainstorming for now. Can anyone else add to my list? Have you found an open-ended project that Google didn't show me? How do you feel about open-ended vs. closed art projects for special occasions like Easter?