This week we began our new mini-inquiry: Christmas Around the World, and our first stop was Germany. We learnt that Germany has a long tradition of baking beautifully decorated gingerbread, known as Lebkuchen, and that gingerbread houses became popular after the Brothers Grimm story 'Hansel and Gretel', a tradition that has now spread across the world. After looking at real gingerbread houses and their icing, patterns, arches, and snowy rooftops, the children used these ideas to inspire their own 3D gingerbread house models. Using boxes as the base, they decorated them with collage materials, buttons, paper shapes, white pen “icing,” and plenty of pretend snow. 

In literacy, we began our 'cold task' for instruction writing. The children independently wrote instructions on how to make their gingerbread houses, drawing on their previous recipe-writing skills and using bossy verbs and time connectives to organise their steps clearly.

Our enhanced provision areas have also been full of Christmas Around the World learning. In literacy, children have been writing cards from around the world, choosing different countries and thinking about the kinds of messages people might send at this time of year. Our digital challenge on Seesaw has been to create a winter or Christmas-themed picture, with the children experimenting with colour, shape, and digital drawing tools.

In construction, the challenge was to design and build a 3D Christmas tree inspired by traditions from two or three countries, explaining how each part of their design links to those cultures. The creativity on display was brilliant. In the creative area, the children made mixed-media winter landscapes, experimenting with texture and layering. In the investigation area, the children created winter or Christmas decorations using natural materials, taking inspiration from traditions from different countries. In our small world area, the children worked together to build a village from a chosen country, imagining what it might look like at this time of year.

Our classroom has been buzzing with excitement and curiosity, and this has been such a lovely start to our Christmas Around the World adventure.