KS1: Why does Christmas matter to Christians? Autumn 2 and Spring 1

Why does Christmas matter to Christians?

This is our second question of the year.  We started this enquiry before Christmas and continued it until February half term.

Year 1 began their enquiry by looking at signs of Christmas and then at a picture of baby Jesus, they talked about what the picture tells them about Jesus.

Year 2 began their enquiry by looking at pictures of 3 different children and talking about what these children are good at.  They realised that we couldn't say what the children are good at as we do not know them, they also talked about how baby Jesus did not look special on the outside.

Christians believe that God came to Earth to be with His people and show them how to live.  Year 2 learnt a new word called 'incarnation', this means 'in the flesh'.  Jesus was God in the flesh.  Not everybody knew that Jesus was God in the flesh, we made a list of people who did know.

The children had great fun pretending to be a character from the nativity story and being questioned by the class.

Jesus was a king but He did not look like the sort of king we imagined and He was not born in a castle.  He was given special gifts from the 3 wise men which show that they knew how special He was.

In year 1 the children listened to the story of the nativity and compared their ideas of a bedroom for someone special to where Jesus was born.

Botticelli painted a fantastic nativity scene which is called 'Mystic Nativity'.  The children used a 'window frame' to look at parts that they found interesting, puzzling or important.

Look at how amazing the picture is:

The nativity is celebrated around the world.  We looked at 3 different crib scenes and compared them.  We noticed that although they are slightly different they all have the same people in them.

We really enjoyed pretending to be the people and animals from the nativity again and wrote down what we think they would have said.  Some of the children thought that baby Jesus would have said "Why is everyone crowding me?"

There are lots of different carols that are sung at Christmas and these tell parts of the story of Jesus being born.  In groups the children read some carols and highlighted the parts that tell us about the nativity.

One carol is called "In the Bleak Mid-winter".  This carol tells us that even though people are poor they can still give Jesus something special and that is love.  The children illustrated the carol to show the different parts that it is saying.

We realised that we all have special gifts to give others and everybody had 5 things written in a hand to show what other people think some of  their special gifts are.

To finish our enquiry we thought about what we can do to be kind to others not just at Christmas.  We made a list of places or people that we can help and chose one of these for our fundraising during Lent.