In the English school we had activities related to Christmas. As Christmas is an event uniformly celebrated in all the participating countries, we learnt about lots of similarities and differences in the ways of celebrating.
On the first day we learnt a lot about school regulations – registration in the morning, wearing school uniforms, having lunch together/or having a packed lunch. As a project group, we discussed the meaning of Christmas and the reasons of celebrating Christmas. Ice breaker activities were carried out. Next there was a workshop of baking Christmas biscuits – each country had brought one Christmas recipe with them. So students and their teachers prepared Christmas biscuits. Estonian students prepared a carrot cake and ginger breads. The last task on that day was making questions about Christmas celebrations in each country.
On Tuesday, 10th of December Weald and Downland Museum in Singleton was visited. Students were involved in two workshops. They learnt about people’s daily life in the countryside in Elizabethan times – their clothing, eating habits, works, apothecary. Back at school students experienced British Christmas lunch with crackers and traditional Christmas food. Later, „Silent Night” was practiced in each participants’ mother tongues. The singing was recorded.
On Wednesday, 11th December there was a trip to Winchester. The trip involved visit to the Winchester Cathedral, Christmas market, ice skating.
On the fourth day, 12th December there were workshops at school. Students made minced pies and Christmas crackers. Also, presentations to introduce Christmas traditions in each country were presented. As one part of the project is using digital tools, students made an online recipe book, an advent calendar, Kahoot! game with questions about how Christmas are celebrated in different countries. In addition, a digital advent calendar tutorial was written. Furthermore, newspaper articles about Erasmus+ meeting were written. In the evening there was a Christmas dinner for teachers and students at the local restaurant and later, a Christmas concert at school.
The last day of the meeting, 13th December, was a day of National Christmas Jumper wearing day at school. On Friday there was also a trip to Portsmouth to the King’s Theatre to see a typical musical comedy stage production, developed in England and mostly performed during Christmas and New Year season. This year there was a panto – Aladdin. After that students and teachers visited Commercial Road and enjoyed Christmas market.
Each day and each activity contributed to reaching the project’s objectives which were to learn about and introduce each country’s Christmas traditions and to learn about and use digital technology.
