Teacher Discussion Forums

We are going to have a big Xmas party at our school on 17th! about 40-60 kids are coming. Does anyone have any Idea of super fun things to do?We have a big garden but It might be coverd in snow on the day...

At our school we used to have several different craft centres set up that the kids could rotate through. One for making cards, candy cane reindeers, stars and bells, paper Christmas trees, decorating cookies etc. This keeps the kids positively occupied for quite a while. You just need a couple of volunteers for each activity station. One could be singing Christmas songs if you have someone williing to lead it, even use CDs if you have no one willing to lead the centre.

http://www.pamseslclassroom.com FREE 17 song CD. ESL rhymes, action songs and singing games. Lyrics, worksheets etc. Great music for ESL kids. Engage your younger students.

Maybe you could find someone to come in dressed as Santa Clause to come in and give cookies or lead a group activity.

Hey,
Our school is currently preparing students for a Christmas party. Our ideas are singing and acting simple christmas songs. May be not as sophisticated as what you may want to do. In our teachers workshop someone brought up the idea of acting a simple Christmas play but we did not accept it for fear of some students not turning up on the day of the show and screwing up everything. But if you do not have this problem, acting a play will be good.
If you settle on the idea of using songs, choose the songs and prepare them by letting them playing games of musical chairs with the songs. When they go around playing musical chairs let them do actions that will be in the song. Prepare lyrics with the songs with a few blanks. When you teach them the song as them to listen and fill in the blanks.
When they have heard it many times, it is a lot easier teaching them how to sing. After singing, putting the actions is next.
It is working in my class. I taugh jingle bells and we wish you a merry christmas to kids without a problem.
Also please visit this website and download Christmas worksheets for your class. http://www.english-4kids.com/index.html

Good luck and Merry Christmas

One of the stations could be the Christmas gift game. You need a chocolate bar wrapped as a nice gift, a fork, knife, wool hat, mitts, scarf and one die (DICE). The students sit around a table that has been covered with a thick cloth if you don't want marks. The first person rolls the die and tries to get a six. If they don't, they pass it to the right and the next person rolls and so on until someone gets a six. Get them to roll quickly and pass it quickly. When someone gets a six, that person passes on the dice to the person on the right and the group keeps rolling until anothe person gets a six. However, the person with a six can now take the gift and put on the hat, the scarf and the mitts and with the fork and knife try to open the present and get a piece of chocolate. They can keep at it until another person gets a six but then must immediately stop and pass over the gifts, hat, scarf, mitts, for and knife to the next person. It gets quite hilarious and it is amazing how much that six comes up. The person who is eating must completely eat their piece before they can try to get another and you can specify that it must be a small piece.

It is fun to wrap a gift that can be shared with everyone in a group of ten or so in a small box and then bigger and bigger boxes or with many layers of wrapping paper and pass it around like musical chairs. When the music stops, the person holding it unwraps a layer or opens a box until the last person gets the gift and shares it with everyone.

You can play Christmas Bingo with the whole group.

It sounds like it is cold there so you could freeze things - pans of water in different sizes, rubber gloves filled with coloured water, bowls, cups, etc. and have the children make things out of the frozen shapes - castles, cars, trains, reindeer, Santa, etc. You can play Duck, Duck, Goose in the snow or have a treasure hunt with something hidden under the snow.

If you are going to divide them into stations, you might want to have different Christmas hats for each group in a different colour so they know their 'team" and they can name it, practice a song to sing to the whole group, make up a short play or dance.