Thanks must go again to Eileen, our Family Learning Co-ordinator, for providing super craft activities for children and their families to enjoy together. Our first sessions on Friday saw Mums, Dads, little brothers and sisters have fun making lovely Christmas crafts together. We hope that their homes are now looking a little more festive with the latest additions. Hopefully, the families who are taking part on Monday are looking forward to enjoying Eileen’s crafts too.
Sophie’s Mum has left us a message to say how much she enjoyed talking to the boys and girls about Christmas in Poland:
“Had a really lovely time with all the nursery kids. Was really nervous about that but it all went very well. It was really nice trying to teach them some of our polish traditions 😉 HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL OF YOU ;-)and as we did Christmas Polish way I say it in Polish as well – WSZYSTKIEGO NAJLEPSZEGO Z OKAZJI SWIAT BOZEGO NARODZENIA 😉 x”
We would like to say Happy Christmas and thank you to Sophie’s Mum for all her help. We all thoroughly enjoyed her visit. If any of our families are looking at our blog from Poland we would like to say “Wszystkiego najlepszego z okazji swiat bozego narodzenia” to them too.
The afternoon children have been learning about Christmas traditions in Poland from Sophie’s Mum who very kindly came in to Nursery to talk to us.
We learned about the twelve dishes at their meal, the empty place at the table for any passing stranger who has nowhere to celebrate Christmas and that they eat fish not turkey for their Christmas meal. Santa visits Poland too but when Sophie’s Mum was a little girl in Poland she could not open her parcels until they had had their meal and that did not happen until they had seen the Bethlehem star in the sky.
We were able to taste the nativity wafers that they have on Christmas Eve as Sophie’s family still send them from Poland. We loved the tradition that they break a wafer with someone and apologise for anything wrong they have done or said towards that person before wishing them a happy Christmas.
Thank you so much to Sophie’s Mum for helping us all to learn about Christmas in Poland. It was very interesting to find out what the similarities and differences are between a Polish and a Scottish Christmas.
Two of our families have enjoyed our comments and photos on the nativity story:
“Some great opinions from the class.”
“Carmen and Logan look great dressed up as Mary and Joseph. She couldn’t wait to tell me. She said I had the best day ever at nursery mum I got to dress up. You made a little girl very happy. It’s the first thing she does when she comes home. She runs upstairs off with the nursery clothes and on with the princess dress or fairy dress.”
We hope that the children have developed some understanding that Christmas is not just about Santa. There have certainly shown in their play and discussions that they are aware of the nativity story.
Last week’s story of the nativity has made an impression on the children. As you can see, some of them have been recreating the story through role play and some are able to talk about it. Some of their ideas may not all be exactly how we told the story but you can see that they have understood much of the detail.
Brogan: baby Jesus slept in the hay. A queen came to see him.
Archie: well what happened was this … they couldn’t find a hotel so they had to go to a farm. A king came to see him.
Ava V.: there were wise old kings in the story.
Bethany: Jesus had a manger not a cot. Mary is his Mummy.
Sophie S.: Joseph was the Daddy. Mary was the Mum.
Zachary: Jesus was in the story and three wise men.
Riley: Jesus got born in the hay.
Freya: Jesus’ Mummy was Mary.
Simon: baby Jesus never found anywhere to sleep. He had to sleep in the hay.
Jayden: he slept in the hay ’cause there was no beds for him.
Amy-Leigh: baby Jesus was born on his birthday.
We would like to remind you that Eileen, our Family Learning Co-ordinator, has arranged activity sessions to make Christmas decorations with your Nursery child and younger siblings. In the past lots of parents and children have enjoyed doing this together and we are grateful to Eileen for providing the opportunity again this year.
You can join in the fun with glitter and glue on Friday 13th December and Monday 16th December. There are still some spaces left – just add your name to the list on the Family Learning board in the corridor.
Carmen’s Mum enjoyed seeing her busy with Christmas crafts:
“Carmen loved making the Christmas card. She said I’ve made it for you mummy. She loves doing crafts.”
Lots of children have been particularly enjoying the craft area this week. As well as cards and decorations, some in the Rainbow Room decided to make table decorations. We hope that those families are happy with the wonderful designs the children produced from a selection of boxes, beads, tubes and, of course, lots and lots of glitter. They may not have the style of some shop bought design but they are certainly original and made with love.
Christmas is officially the talk of Nursery as the children are beginning to get more excited with tales of trees going up at home, letters to Santa and visits to see him at various places.
We have talked about the story of the nativity this week and hopefully the children are beginning to realise that Christmas is not all about Santa. With our calendar orders now complete, lots of children are enjoying making Christmas cards and decorations and there seems to be a sparkling carpet of glitter everywhere we turn.
With the school Christmas Fayre on Thursday of this week, we have been making chocolate Christmas shapes to sell on our stall. Predicting what would happen when we put chocolate in the microwave then the fridge produced some thoughtful conversations. We also used numeracy skills to count the squares of chocolate and the number of moulds we had to fill, as well as reading the dial to set the microwave so there was a lot of learning going on as we prepared our chocolate shapes.
We hope that lots of Nursery children and their families will be able to come to the Christmas Fayre on Thursday (6.00 – 8.00). We can recommend the chocolate shapes to anyone who has a little money to spend – they were certainly made with lots of tender loving care.
At the end of last week some of the children started making Christmas decorations from bread. They looked so impressive that they made a few extra to sell at the school Christmas Fayre on Thursday. Here you can see some of the team in action.
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