The Advent seasons ends and Christmas break begins

We had a wonderful December! We enjoyed our "Christmas Around the World" unit. We were able to look at the Christmas traditions from 5 countries. We visited: Mexico, Italy, Germany, Sweden and the Philippines. We learned how to say Merry Christmas in each language. We learned about the holiday foods and practices. We are able to locate the country on the map and identify its flag. You may have looked at our previous posts to see the ornament we made for each country. Each country had a "tree" outside our room. As we prepared to leave for the Christmas break, we each made our own tree and put the 5 ornaments on it. This way we could take them home. Here is what some of them looked like.

We also worked on nativity scenes this week. They turned out really well! Here are some:

The Nativity figures came from The Daughters of Saint Paul.

We would like to wish you all a very Merry and Blessed Christmas!
As our German friends would say: Frohe Weihnachten!
As our Swedish friends would say: God Jul!
As our Mexican friends would say: Feliz Navidad!
As our Italian friends would say: Buon Natale!
As our Philippine friends would say: Maligayang Pasko!

To all of our readers, we will see you in the New Year!

Christmas in Italy

We learned a lot about Christmas in Italy. We learned that the nativity scenes were started by St. Francis in Italy. We also learned that Shepherds come down from the mountains and play bagpipes around Christmas. Here are some more things that we learned:

Christmas Traditions Around the World and Our Lady of Guadalupe

The students wrote and recorded our news update.

We continue to learn about Christmas traditions around the world. We visited Germany to learn of German Christmas traditions. Here is what we learned:

After going to Germany we traveled (virtually) to Sweden. In Sweden this is what we learned: We also had a visitor come in and share with us her Swedish Christmas traditions. She showed us the following ornaments.

Then we went back to Mexico on December 12th to learn about Our Lady of Guadalupe. Stay tuned to learn about Christmas in Italy and the Philippines! (St. Lucia doll came from the Paper Dali.)

Weekly Highlights

This week we thought we would try something new. We worked in teams to create four news reports. The reports are about one thing that we learned this week. The week was exciting. We began our Christmas around the world unit. We learned a lot about Advent and St. Nicholas. Here are some items that we found interesting.

Questions for our readers: Have you ever been to Mexico around Christmas time? If so, what was it like? How do you celebrate advent? Have you ever read Imogene's Antlers? If so, did you like the book? What special things do you do to get ready for Jesus' birthday?