Post Advent Festival and Magical Counting Gnomes

The Advent stars help in the countdown to christmas. The class is decorated with a new piece every day and Tracy has siad that the magic elves come and decorate them every day. The straw stars are some things which the elves brought with them.




The seasons and year book, now opened to December.

Mid December. We had recovered from the Advent Festical, which despite the horrific weather had made almost £5,000, which was slightly up from last year. Hopefully when all the cards, calendars and craft sales are added up, we'll be nearer the £6,000 mark. Funds are of course always needed and the Advent Festival Fair is one of the most important ways of raising the funds. But it is more than just about money maing - if that was the case, everyone would just donate a few bob. It's also about the spirit of fesating and festival. I, of course, had stupidly forogtten to bring my camera, so i missed out on taking the most amazing pictures of the walnut boats, crystal forest, the bell ringers, the lighting of the Advent wreath, the singing of the Holly and the Ivy and the choir concert at the end of the day.





So we move straight into last week where the main lesson was Maths again - and it will be until the end of the semester which will be this week. It's all about stars and light of course now that we're approaching Chirstmas/the winter solstice. The children count the days to Christmas. Oisin told me that he was learning to count in German. And Tracy had been getting them to pretend they were gnomes and work with tealights that they had decorated - adding, subtracting, taking away. I have this image of our kids standing in circles like the little gnomes that light the way at this time of the year and learning how to add, multiply, divide and subtract.



And so we look forward to the break, but not before the Christmas play. As always, it's done slightly differently here. In Margaret's class, they'd do the song Mother Mary gently walking, through the stars she makes her way. As the mothers chatted with the kids today, on the Santa Train - that's a whole different story - it turns out that there is an Earth, a Sun and a Star. And Mother Mary, of course.