Teaching Christmas
The festive spirit that's so prevalent in December can't fail to seep into schools, so here's your one-stop shop for online inspiration from around the world. Whether you're looking for lesson plans, international resources or stuff that's just fun, there'll definitely be something here to suit.
Starting points
The Children's BBC website Christmas section is packed with seasonal ideas to help children celebrate. With links to all the CBBC favourite programmes' websites, there's the Newsround static advent calendar, makes and bakes from Blue Peter, and art tips for making a pantomime scene to name but a few. This site covers Christmas from just about every angle and is well worth searching for ideas.
There are plenty of free downloads on the Christian Aid site, along with free worship resources, and don't forget that a search on the National Grid for Learning site will offer many more ideas to peruse.
Lesson plans
There's a ready-made online lesson plan on the history of Christmas trees and seasonal celebrations that have always taken place at the time of the winter solstice. The plan includes a reading resource, teaching suggestions and possible questions to ask pupils.
Or try The Lesson Plans Page, an American site with a vast collection of age-specific lesson plans. Subjects vary, but the theme here is most certainly Christmas.
Northpole.com has an incredible amount for teachers to do with their pupils, from simple art activities to stories, letter-writing, vocabulary, sound-recognition and much more. While there's plenty to slot into the curriculum, there's also a section entitled 'Just for Fun'!
More fun
Wicked4kids is a fun, interactive site for children, aimed at helping them think, create, laugh, play and talk. It contains Christmas quizzes, crosswords, jokes, crafts, decorations, recipes and much more. There are even Christmas greetings in eighteen different languages!
Family Internet Christmas offers many ready to use resources for your end-of-term celebrations, from Christmas word-searches to mazes and crossword puzzles, from carols and music to crafts, facts and stories.
Edhelper Christmas is another American site with a Christmas-themed unit including reading comprehensions, Christmas maths worksheets, colouring, and crafts and puzzles.
RHL school has a printable crossword of Christmas songs. A to Z teacherstuff contains Christmas printables such as word searches, colouring pages and Christmas countdowns. Merry-Christmas.com has games, interactive stories and poems, activities and much more.
An international perspective
For a truly global view of mid-winter festivities, Kids domain offers information about the traditions of the USA, Canada, UK, Germany, Ireland, Mexico and many more.
DLTK contains ideas for marking Christmas, Hanukah and Kwanzaa, as well as Winter itself. There's a huge range of crafts, plays, decorations, art activities and so on to be found here. Santa's Net has information about festive traditions and celebrations from all over the world - Sicily to the Ukraine, Nicaragua to Greenland.
Books
Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without Dickens' A Christmas Carol and among the goodies on Andrew Moore's English-teaching site you'll find a self-contained study guide for Key Stages 3 and 4.
If you'd rather have a good old fashioned book to work from, Clickteaching.com has a comprehensive list of Christmas titles to tempt.
Season's greetings!