Christmas is all around us. During our last week at school the Christmas spirit usually pervades our classes and so we talked a lot about the symbolism the Christmas holiday carries and the meaning of love and caring it conveys to all of us.

Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer, is a very familiar character, popular among students. With my fourth graders we watched the video and analysed the story. The young hearts came to the right conclusion without any hesitation: anybody can be a leader in a given situation just by putting to use their unique and individual trait. In the end, we all had so much fun when we sang the song and acted the story out.

We also watched the following video which stresses the importance of friendship as seen through the eyes of a child. We can be friends with someone no matter how different we are.

Christmas is celebrated all over the world and we talked about the many different aspects of the holiday. We ended up playing a Christmas quiz and a memory game in order to practise all those vocabulary items we had mastered.

Just a few days before the Christmas holidays, everybody at school was in a festive mood. The couple of university students who were attending our english classes in December acted out as Santa’s messengers. My fourth graders wrote their letters to Santa and Santa’s “helpers” put them in a mail box and promised to post them as soon as possible. The students also played bingo and many vocabulary games and they kept begging for more. Seeing the sparkle in their eyes and hearing their laughter in the midst of the pandemic was so refreshing and rewarding.