Room 3 – What is Christmas?
Three weeks ago, Room 3 started exploring the question ‘What is Christmas?’ as part of our Winter Festivals theme and as you will see from the photographs…we have certainly tried our hardest to answer it! We have been building on our prior learning and have used means of learning which are motivating to help us discover more about Christmas.
We have participated in many music sessions where we have used Christmas props and have been practising our Makaton signing – we look forward to performing some of the Christmas songs to an audience at the show tomorrow.
Exploration of a wide range of objects has happened through Sensology sessions as well as focussed turn taking games as we continue to develop our awareness of each other – Christmas pass the parcel was a lot of fun and we did so well at sharing what we found inside with our friends. We have explored exchanging money as part of a Christmas counting song where we bought mince pies at the bakers shop.
During free play we have explored a wide range of Christmas items and found some of them very interesting. One boy found it great fun to knock bells off his standing frame, meanwhile another young lady was delighted to find a chocolate coin hiding in the Christmas exploration bowl as you will see from her selfie! There have been many Christmas activities set up including festive playdough which we made together and our favourite exploration tubes which we have been motivated to request through vocalising or move towards by crawling or in our equipment.
There are so many lovely Christmas stories and poems and we particularly enjoyed learning about the ‘Old Lady Who Swallowed A Bell’ – there was much hilarity as she swallowed bows, parcels, a sack and even a sleigh which we made fly across the classroom! We learnt about the Christmas story and joined up with friends in Rm 2 and 8 for this – we took on different roles, dressed up and acted the story out.
We have loved exploring Ian Bean’s online Advent Calendar with a daily activity we could do using the switch or eye gaze machines. The Christmas tree lights have been a real motivator to press the switch for too.
A real highlight was the sensory 12 days of Christmas…unfortunately there was so much fun and hilarity that it was tricky to get still photos but the classroom was very animated as we anticipated each item coming back – one boy was beyond excited about the 5 gold rings which he shook with gusto each time! There were lights flying, crackers cracking, tooters tooting, Christmas puddings and a beautiful dancing snowflake which sparkled on the tree.
We have been busy doing lots of crafts including using the salad spinners to make pictures for each season – this is definitely one of our favourite art techniques! We posed to take a picture for our Christmas cards and have done lots of crafts in art with Diane too. The room smelt amazing when we made jam to take home as a little Christmas gift.
We all looked fantastic today for our Christmas party before going to visit Santa and having a wee sing song with him.
Is it any wonder everyone is tired?! Yet another busy term in Room 3 with so much hard work. Enjoy your well deserved holiday and we look forward to what 2020 has to bring.