This time of year the highlight is always the Nativity.
What is so lovely is the journey from start to finish. We begin after the half term and it is very early days and December seems quite distant. It seems almost wrong to be wishing the time away singing We wish you a merry Christmas at the beginning of November.
Indeed the journey we all take can be likened to the famous one when Mary, Joseph, and the donkey travelled towards Bethlehem. One step after another they got there.
When we start the children are not familiar with the story or the songs and gradually, as time goes on, they learn the story. First we read the story of the first Christmas and then the following week we brought a nativity set into circle and told the story using the little wooden figures. The children then enjoyed playing and doing their own versions of the story in the classroom. At one point we even had flying donkeys and flying kings!
The children, through repetition, soon got to know the whole sequence of events. During this time, we interjected the story with songs which will eventually be in our play. Gradually we have begun to see how the nativity is starting to take shape. We are definitely en route to Bethlehem! Two more weeks to go...
After having sung the songs for a few weeks the children are now confident, enjoying their singing and getting stuck in. So I’m going to leave you with two little excerpts of two of the songs in our play:
What is so lovely is the journey from start to finish. We begin after the half term and it is very early days and December seems quite distant. It seems almost wrong to be wishing the time away singing We wish you a merry Christmas at the beginning of November.
Indeed the journey we all take can be likened to the famous one when Mary, Joseph, and the donkey travelled towards Bethlehem. One step after another they got there.
When we start the children are not familiar with the story or the songs and gradually, as time goes on, they learn the story. First we read the story of the first Christmas and then the following week we brought a nativity set into circle and told the story using the little wooden figures. The children then enjoyed playing and doing their own versions of the story in the classroom. At one point we even had flying donkeys and flying kings!
The children, through repetition, soon got to know the whole sequence of events. During this time, we interjected the story with songs which will eventually be in our play. Gradually we have begun to see how the nativity is starting to take shape. We are definitely en route to Bethlehem! Two more weeks to go...
After having sung the songs for a few weeks the children are now confident, enjoying their singing and getting stuck in. So I’m going to leave you with two little excerpts of two of the songs in our play:
