Let's Celebrate!

Rationale: This project focuses on celebrations from around the world and will include Birthdays, Diwali, Hanukkah, Advent and Christmas. It will provide the children with a chance to share their family's celebrations and traditions. The children will be immersed in stories, music and traditions from each celebration. As a special focus they will explore the theme of light that runs throughout each celebration. We will use what we find out to plan our very own 'Light Festival'.

Hook: Reception find Austin having a birthday party. The home corner has been decorated for his party and there is a cake with five candles, birthday cards and presents. Reception join the party to celebrate Austin's birthday.

Birthdays

Reception came back from lunch to find Austin having a birthday party! We worked out that he must be 5 today as he has 5 candles on his cake and the icing had the number '5'. We also spotted he had cards and presents.

We celebrated Austin's birthday with him by joining his party and dancing.

Some of our friends made Austin birthday hats.

One friend took Austin's photograph at his party because her family take photos at parties.

Bonfire Night

We learnt about bonfire night and painted pictures of fireworks.

Remembrance Sunday

We have found out all about Remembrance Sunday and why it is commemorated. We watched parts of the Festival of Remembrance and took part in our school service. We made a class wreath out of painted cups and tissue paper.

Diwali

We learnt about the festival Diwali. One of our friends shared how he celebrates Diwali at home and sung us some Hindi songs. In exploring time, we had Diwali parties.

We used rice to make Rangoli patterns.

We made Diyas out of clay using our hands and tools.

When they were dry, we painted them.

Hanukkah

The next festival we learnt about was the Jewish festival of light called Hanukkah. We found out about the eight nights of Hanukkah and the special menorah called a Hanukkiah.

We played with the dreidels.

As well, we used our hand prints to paint Hanukkiahs.

Advent

We learnt about Advent and how it is a time for getting ready for Christmas. We read the nativity story and acted out the story using figurines.

We made paperchains to decorate the classroom.

We have been using the Diocese's advent calendar each day and reading the daily Bible passage. We also went to an Advent Service with Revd Stephen.

We learnt about the meaning of the Christingle and made our own ones.

We joined the rest of the school for a Christingle service.

As a school we went to the Advent Festival at Church. We found our picture in pride of place on the altar. We enjoyed looking at all the other Christmas carols, hymns and songs represented around the church.

We saw a giant Christingle at Church too.

On the way there we looked for signs of Christmas. We saw Christmas trees, lights, wreaths and hanging decorations. We also saw Advent candle bridges and made our own at school.

Christmas

Our final festival was Christmas. The classroom was already decorated from our week about Advent and we made some hanging decorations.

We also made reindeer decorations.

We wrote Christmas cards and decorated the front with Christmas trees.

We mixed icing that we used to decorate biscuits.

We performed in the Infants Nativity.

And watched a panto.

We also had a yummy Christmas lunch.

Outcome

We held our own light festival and shared our project with Year 1/2.

Home learning

For our home learning we wrote about our favourite festival that we celebrate and drew a picture. We put them together to make a 'Book of Celebrations'.