Wiggly Nativity

This half term the children will be learning the story of 'The First Christmas' in preparation for their Christmas Nativity. We will be taking part in lots of fun, learning new songs and dances as well as learning new art skills, map skills and understanding cultures and celebrations.

Keep an eye on our website to find out what happens when the children meet Angel Gabriel and are introduced to a very special book.

This week we are reading... Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson.

The children enjoyed listening to the story and joining in with the rhyming words. We then drew a cat, dog and hat and had a really good try at listening to the sounds in each word and writing cvc words. 

This week we were very excited to meet a shepherd who was searching for his sheep. He told us the story of 'The First Christmas' and asked us to learn the story and tell the story to everyone so they understand the story and know why Christians celebrate Christmas and why it is such a special time of year.

The children drew a character from the story and ordered the beginning, middle and end of the story.

We have enjoyed listening to the story of Christmas and finding out who Mary, Joseph and Jesus were.

We've looked at lots of different Bibles and talked about the reasons why it is such an important Holy Book to Christians. 

We know that Jesus is a very special person to lots of Christians. We talked about who is special to us and wrote it down. We then drew a picture of them.

Today, we looked at Churches and talked about why they are important to some people. The children pointed out that all the Churches that they saw had a ‘tower’ which they later found out was called a steeple. They also noticed that there were lots of windows that weren’t a normal shape and some had a clock outside. Some of the children decided to make a Church out of our junk.

This week we are learning about Advent and what this means to Christian families. Advent is the time between the 1st of December and Christmas Day and is a time when Christians prepare for Christmas. We often symbolise this with an Advent Calendar. We have looked at different Advent Calendars and designed our own! 

Today we thought about syllables in words and made our own clapping patterns. We used insects with different syllables such as butterfly and bee and then we used the children's names too.

The children have been making us incredibly proud with their fantastic singing and dancing throughout their Nativity Practise. We are familiar with the story of the first Christmas and have been enjoying telling the story through songs and dancing! 

We have designed and made our own Advent Calendars and will use them from the 1st of December to count down to Christmas.

The children received a letter from Elfie and Evie explaining that they want to land their magic sleigh in a big space near our school. We decided the field would be a good place but the elves needed a map to follow so they could get to our classroom safely. The children drew on the map a trail for the elves to follow.

The children made a magic mixture to trail on the floor for the elves to follow as well as the maps. They had to use their pouring and mixing skills.

This week we met an artist who asked us to design and create a loose parts sculpture for his new Christmas card designs. The children loved listening to what the artist did and how he created his sculptures. We looked at different sculptures and then thought about our own ideas.

Today we met artist and sculpturist Andy Goldsworthy who had a challenge for us.he needed a new design for his Christmas cards and has asked to design and make them for him. We looked at his work and learnt that he makes sculptures using natural objects.  

Christingle

This week we have  been invited to the church to take part in a Christingle Service. We have talked about what a Christingle service is and why it is important to those who follow the Christian Religion. 

We had a great time at the church making our Christingles. We remembered the parts of the christingle and what they symbolise.

red ribbon - Jesus' love

candle - the light

4 sticks with sweets - the 4 seasons

orange - the earth