Hondurans don't typically don't do things lightly and Christmas, is no exception. As a result, the final three weeks before Christmas at school were absolute insanity. Filled with dress rehearsals, play practices, song singing, Christmas decorations, card making, Advent Angels, and much more. Oh I forgot learning, probably because that was put on the back burner due to all the Christmas activities and the insanity, hyper-active nature that comes with being 6 years old the week before Christmas.
We busied ourselves in first grade making Angeles and reindeer for our families. We also did an Advent Angel project, which is one of my favorite things to do with a class. Its kind of like a Secret Santa, except that you're supposed to do acts of kindness for your Angel. During the last week of school we celebrated by making our own Advent Angel gifts and then sharing them with our Advent Angel on the last day of school. Now out-of-the-box creativity, critical, and individual thinking is not always common in a Honduran classroom where students are often found repeating answers, chanting, and copying from the board. In English especially, my kids are always just wanting to copy from the board and do things exactly as I do. I have be very careful when modeling, because I will always just get an exact replica. So asking my first graders to make their own gift was very challenging and a high-anxiety situation for many. I had many kids running up to me and saying but, but, but Miss what do I do???? I was glad to have such an open-ended project to get them thinking creatively. Some came prepared with some real cute craft ideas from home, like a popsicle stick pencil holder and a blown egg Santa Clause. Their projects turned out real cute and they really enjoyed sharing them with one another.
Advent Angel gifts.
Advent Angel gift giving.
My lovely bunch of first graders.
Mis amores
Advent Angel party
Giving out gifts.
Besides the stressed of managing pre-Christmas behavior, First Grade was a pretty stressful place as I struggled to teach them their English Christmas songs in one week. Let me tell you trying to teach 50 English Language Learners "Away in a Manger" and "Angels We Have Heard on High" equals a teacher with no voice left, 50 confused kids, and one worn out teacher. I tried to channel my inner Bill Berg from my Joyful Noise choir days, but it was a difficult battle since my picture clues didn't really help jog their memory as they had no comprehension of what they were singing about. Oh well we did our best. All my kids survived, no one died from hearing my sing acapella all day long and I managed to survive the challenges as well only to discover we learned the wrong songs for the pageant, waaah waaaaaah. Oh well, the songs they did have to sing were super easy and they learned them in Kinder and Prepa so it probably turned out for the best.
The Christmas pageant was absolutely ridiculous and so awesome. We stayed after school working so hard on decorations. Styrofoam, glitter, painting, glitter, snowflakes, glitter, styrofoam, glitter, painting, glitter, snowflakes, glitter, yadda yadda, yadda. We spent an entire afternoon decorating the entire gymnasium for the pageant, when we finished, DANG. It looked awesome, we totally transformed the gym. I worked on the styrofoam/door entry way committee aka hanging crumpled brown paper and putting doble pega on styrofoam cut outs of Santa, Angels, Bells, Snowmen....... The stage had a large nativity, tree, a beautiful painting of Bethlehem, twinkle lights, and a Merry Christmas sign. The ceiling was adorned with snowflakes. It was amazing.
The gym.
The show itself, surprisingly after a rough dress rehearsal, pulled itself together. It was a bilingual show (yay!) that acted out the birth of Jesus from the way beginning aka in traditional Honduran fashion it was nice and long :-) In between the narration, each class did various acts for Christmas. We sang carols in Spanish and English and fyi most Honduran carols are sung to the tune of Jingle Bells (there are 3 different ones). Kinder sang a song and Prepa read a poem. Second grade had a dance for the girls, 3rd grade also did a poem. 4-6 performed in English. Catie's 4 th graders did a fantastic acrostic poem spelling out Merry Christmas, the 5th graders sang rockin' around the Christmas tree, and the 6th graders did a number to Must Be Santa. The first graders with the lovely Profe Rosita always steal the show. My kiddos did a great dance number with the girls dressed like genies and boys like elves, they were so precious. Other 1st graders where angels and shepherds.
Must be Santa Dance
Pageant-ing
The best part though was the arrival to Bethlehem, when Mary came in, riding a, yes, you guessed, a real live donkey. It was crazy a real live donkey! During this procession the song Mi Burrito Sabanero played and is now my favorite Christmas song. Hahahah. In addition there was also a real live baby to be Jesus and yes he laid in a manger and survived (shockingly). After the pageant, us teachers served roughly 1000 nacatamales to the families. It was insanity, but they were sooooo good.
The Christmas pageant was so much fun. A lot of work? yes. A lot of glitter? yes. But, it was so great to see the teachers and parents working sooooo hard to make something so incredibly special come together. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have verrrrry high standards for any Christmas show I encounter in future years, jajjaja. Love it!
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