I love the Christmas season, especially as a teacher. The excitement that the kids bring, and all the fun projects to be done; and above all exploring the true meaning of Christmas.
In the busyness I didn't get too many pictures taken, but I did manage to snap a few on our last day when we made Graham Cracker houses and snowmen ornaments with the grade five class. After my first year where we did houses with over 25 kids I thought, never again. But with 6 I thought we can handle this. Afterwards I wondered how I ever managed to do it with 4 times as many kids! It is a messy business but well worth the mess!
Our Christmas Concert was kept quite simple this year with just a few songs and a Bible verse.
We did have Santa come to visit and had a photo taken with my class and some of our homeschoolers that come for PE and Art classes. It was quite humorous to watch their interactions with "Santa."
The Dutch celebrate on the 5th of December with Sinterklaas; so when Santa asked my Dutch student what she would like for Christmas she matter of factly stated, "we don't do presents on Christmas." My other student knew that Santa was really one of our teacher's husbands and was not really into playing the game of what you would like for Christmas. "I know who you are, you're Mr. Corpus!"
Indeed for my students Santa is as real as a Disney character; for fun but not what Christmas is all about. I really enjoyed our times discussing the Bible story and exploring with them how long it would take to get to Bethlehem from Nazareth, what it would have been like to be a shepherd in the field and what does the Bible tell us, and what have we interpreted ourselves. We had an all school Christmas chapel where we had a game with Christmas Trivia. When it came to the question what did the inn keeper tell Mary and Joseph we had to review what the Bible said, only to discover no inn keeper! It is neat to watch them discover what parts of the story have been our own interpretations and what the Bible truly tells us. But taking away all the details we go to the heart of the message. Jesus came to save.
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