How can we celebrate Christmas as a time of love, compassion, and sharing for our students, while also making it a meaningful part of their development?
This is actually a question that doesn’t stand alone only for Christmas. Should it not always be important to consider how every moment can be made the most meaningful for them?
Following an idea from a colleague, this year I organized a ‘Secret Santa’ activity with my class. This was not about buying, however. They chose to make their own gifts.
After we outlined the nature of the activity, they excitedly lined up outside the classroom and came in one at a time to choose a name. Luckily, no one chose themselves. Beautifully, there were two pairs of students who had each chosen each other. During the three days leading up to Christmas, they all got to work.
Many wonderful things came from this. For one, a boy who has been continually opening up more and more in recent months made five different detailed drawings, each telling a story, for his friend. He continually told me that he wasn’t finished yet and needed to make one more. Here we saw passion, and ongoing initiation and implementation of new ideas—something that will always support a person in their creative work in the future.
Second, for two days the room was full of passion, ownership, and responsibility, as every student showed enormous intrinsic motivation to spend time on work involving drawing, clay, and loose parts.
Third, a boy followed a progression of steps to create a gift for his friend. He showed great responsibility, wanting to ensure he prepared something appropriate, but not being sure what this could be. While trying to remain subtle, he took the initiative to ask his friend directly what he wanted. This led to undertaking the task of preparing a 3D gift from paper—a small box. Despite difficulties and challenges, he persevered to the end. Planning, conscientiousness, and determination were developed.
When we reached the time of sharing itself, I tried an addition to start the process. I reminded students that Christmas, and every day, is about loving everyone. We returned to our popsicle sticks, each with the name of one student on it. We went around the class, and each student chose one popsicle stick. They then said something they loved about the friend they had chosen. Despite the natural conflicts that happen throughout the day, all students embraced this with open arms. We heard many ideas shared: “we often play together,” “we have finished a puzzle together many times,” and “she makes me smile.”
Moving to the Secret Santa sharing, students accepted and expressed thanks to their friends.
What conclusions can we draw from this?
It really shows the impact that full autonomy, ownership, and responsibility can have on motivation and maturity. The students are five and six years old, but age meant little here. Allowing freedom and space for ideas and creativity to be formed and implemented enabled students to fully express themselves and created opportunities for skills to be developed.
Love, compassion, respect, appreciation, and gratitude are beautiful human qualities. Their expression, at least, may need to be nurtured. This is something we have been helping the students with over time. Providing clear and purposeful opportunities to practice them can certainly be of huge benefit.
Merry Christmas!
