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?

Wisdom Wednesday - Empowering children for life

Why do children need an education?
My answer: to prepare them for life outside of school and after school.

I have found that the more relevant and explicit this link is for children, the more readily they engage, especially if the content is linked to something they care about outside of school.

For example, which would you think your children would get more excited about - learning decimals or working with money or learning how to become rich?

What? Learning how to become rich? Yes, working with money is more motivating for students, but if you amp it up even more, dramatise it a bit and attach a tangible reward, the investment, excitement and motivation in the lesson is amplified as well...

So, what bits of wisdom can you offer your students?
I just completed the planning of a whole day of teaching the children how to be rich. In fact, when I plan for relief around a theme, I tend to plan broadly for a range of activities for a range of subjects, so I could teach multiple grades over multiple days on the same subject. Basically, the idea is to take a topic of interest, amp it up, and teach skills or wisdom in that topic.

For example, on the topic of being rich:
Literacy - Learning to write a business plan, USP, persuasive letter to a client, news release to a reporter, marketing material, or a persuasive text on how your business will succeed (with points to consider provided).
Maths - Working with calculations to decide which is a better business choice, calculating returns on investments, calculating how long it takes for small sums of money to add up to large sums.
Social studies - Responsibilities associated with being rich. Plan as a class to take action on an issue now and execute in coordinated small groups.

Basically, I am working within the curriculum, but adding in relevant themes and wisdom they might otherwise never hear. How many of us learned about USPs while writing persuasive texts in literacy? Yet well written USPs can make the difference between being unknown or successful. While we all learn about calculating monetary sums in class, how many of us were taught how to handle that money and make wise decisions? My husband had to teach himself how to budget, and as a result of this, he is one of the few in his family who handles money wisely. Teaching our students such skills may be woven in naturally to the curriculum and give them an advantage they may not otherwise receive.

As a relief teacher, I am constantly reminded that my time with the children is limited, so I cannot continue such a large theme across a long amount of time usually. This leaves the children without the whole picture. However, I believe that even with one day, a difference can be made, skills can be taught, a passion can be sparked, a journey can begin, and the influence can last much longer. Choosing a huge topic, such as being rich, and starting with small, practical goals can be exciting enough to become a memory that pushes them to greater things. As a child, I hated the news, but I there are single news stories that impacted me, which I will never forget, and that was in a fifteen minute time span, but we have hours with the children. Let's make our lessons memorable, inspiring, practical, and worthwhile!

What real-world wisdom do you have that you believe students should learn about in class?

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?