Christmas the Ladybirds way!
It’s finally here! The countdown to Christmas is underway at Ladybirds and we have the children working like busy little elves to get ready for this wonderful celebration.
The 1st of December always brings joy with the start of advent. We love listening to the children’s different experiences, whether they open pictures in their advent calendars, get treated with chocolates or have a pesky elf getting up to mischief – it’s another great opportunity to encourage conversation about home and to understand how different families get ready for their special celebrations.
The children adore decorating the Christmas tree each year – it’s a wonderful opportunity for them to make and create their own decorations! Although there are many beautiful crafting ideas around, we always let the children use resources in any way they like to create decorations. This year they chose to use some card, hole punchers and pipe cleaners, tags and stick on gems to give the tree some sparkle and shine! They proudly put their marks to represent their names on their decorations and hang them on the branches. It is their tree and they love it!
The children are taking turns to gift a present each day for the West Berkshire Food Bank, placing a numbered gift under the tree for us to donate at the end of term. We also have our tree in the home corner – placing a numbered bauble each day to decorate the tree for Christmas. These are great activities for turn taking and community membership as well as offering some more numeral recognition and counting practice!
Of course, the main event in our Christmas build up is our wonderful Christmas Play! Some wonderful artistic skills have been demonstrated as they painted and decorated frames for their gorgeous photos, lots of colour, love and, of course, tons of glitter! The children know these are presents for their families and it is lovely to hear them making choices for others. “My Mummy will love this, her favourite colour is red!” “Here is a star for Mummy and a star for Daddy and a star for me!” “I need more glitter, my sister love glitter!”
During group times we have been practising our storytelling and singing – learning new songs and actions are such great activities for expressive arts, listening, attention, communication and language development as well as being great fun! Our little ladybirds love being part of this special event – although we once again are unable to have a ‘live’ performance, performing their songs for the camera helps develop their confidence and role playing the different characters in the story is wonderful for their imagination! It is also a great community event that promotes teamwork and a collective feeling of achievement when we watch the performances together. As we near the date of this year’s performance we know many of the children are practising their songs at home, teaching their family members and again strengthening the links between school and home.
The play performances were fantastic and the children were so engaged with the day of filming and dressing up - seeing themselves on the video camera is always a highlight "Look, there's me!" The baby Jesus was visited by T-rex, the King of the Dinosaurs and Lightning McQueen at the Ladybirds Nativity - how fabulous - but unfortunately the disruption of coronavirus hit hard just as we entered our final two weeks of term. We missed all the children who were unable to attend but they were still very much part of our Christmas celebrations and I'm sure will continue to share those songs at home for the rest of the year!
Although our final Christmas countdown ended early, we head into the Christmas holidays so full of joy and thanks for our wonderful little people and their families - we cannot wait to welcome everyone back for a fabulous 2022!
