If your class is anything like mine right now, the excitement for Christmas is fully here! The next day and a half will be filled with Christmas related activities, games and fun with a little bit of quieter work such as games and puzzles thrown in (in a fun way) – the reason for this is because it will keep things a little bit calm(er) – otherwise things can get out of control very quickly.
Puzzles
Word searches, crosswords, tables challenges, ding bats and more. We’ll do a mix of ones I find online and creating our own too. We also have the Christmas annuals from Folens so we’ll do these too!
Radio Games
There are some really fantastic games that are played on the radio such as 5 words to a fortune and Panic! (Both from RTE 2FM)
5 Words to a Fortune
I choose 5 words (or get the children to choose 5). One child leaves the room. Another child is chosen to say the first thing that comes to their mind when I say a word. (Example below)
List of words:
Candle – Light
Tree – Christmas
Friend – Fun
House – Home
Cup – Cake
The other child returns and they are given the same list of words (candle, tree, friend, house, cup) and they say the first thing that comes to mind. If they get all 5 they win. (My class LOVE it)
Panic
A letter of the alphabet is chosen. One child is chosen. A timer for 20-30 seconds is started. The child has to say a word beginning with the letter of the alphabet for each category.
Boy
Girl
Food
Drink
Animal
Place
Famous person
Car
Colour
Football club
Body part
Random word
Christmas Movies
We’ve already decided (after a vote on Friday) that we’ll watch Elf and The Nativity on Monday and Tuesday. If you’re not sure which movie to watch – check out the list of Christmas movies suitable for school below.
Hot Chocolate
We’ll be having hot chocolate tomorrow (Monday) and treats. I always do it before the last day as otherwise the last day can be really stressful and chaotic with trying to get everything organised.
I cook the hot chocolate in the slow cooker. I don’t have an exact recipe – but it’s approximately 6 litres of milk, 2 big bars of chocolate broken up e.g. dairy milk, and a tub and a half of hot chocolate (I buy the big 500g tub).
Alternatively you can heat the milk in the microwave and then add the hot chocolate or heat it in a saucepan if you have cooking facilities in school however this can take a lot longer and you’ll need someone else to help as someone will need to supervise your class. You can also just use boiling water and add some cold milk on top.
P.E.
Tomorrow is our P.E. day (thankfully) so our P.E. lesson will take up 30-40 minutes in the morning. We’re currently doing Basketball but last Friday as part of the Advent calendar the children had an extra P.E. session. Half of the class wanted to do football and the other half wanted to do Basketball so I set up the two games and the children refereed themselves and had a great time so I think that could be a good option for tomorrow morning too.
Christmas Advertisements
We’ll watch some Christmas advertisements together and have a chat about our favourites. We watched some last week and then created our own advertisement based on Between the Covers of a Good Book’s resource which was great fun and the children really enjoyed it.
A big tidy
This is something I always do before the holidays – a big tidy! Two children will work together at different areas around the room e.g. library, Maths boxes, book cupboards etc. and everything will be clean and ready for January! The children will also tidy around their own desks and their boxes too.
Art exhibition
So far this year, no artwork has gone home and it’s now in a giant pile in the classroom so I’ll hand that out tomorrow and the children can bring some of it home. We’ll also use either our folder or Scrap Book to document some of the artwork that the children have really loved so far this year. We can then look at different pieces and choose our favourites.