The time has come again for the festivities to commence here at PCIS. I should clarify that by “festivities,” I actually mean it’s time for the male foreign teachers to trek over to the back of the gym storage area and haul over the many disconnected Christmas tree pieces and gaudy decorations, followed by the female foreign teachers sifting and sorting through it all (yes, here in China, there are still traditional sexist roles of men doing the schlepping and the women doing the sorting). Eventually everyone was doing the sorting, putting together tree pieces, and hanging the decorations.

Aside from decking the halls with bows of holly (or just giant balls, random banners, and plastic garlands with snow paint flaking off), the other way the school celebrates Christmas is to have all the grades each come up with some kind of classroom activity. In our class, I had originally thought of having the kids make stockings, but as the clock ticked on and the school resources were becoming more and more scarce, I decided to have them make Christmas cards. I made a power point slide to show different iconic Christmas images and wrote some sample words and sentences on the board, along with playing some ESL kids Christmas tunes on the TV. Overall, it worked out fine. These are some of the results below…

Of course, it wouldn’t be a true craft activity without at least one kid making reference to a gun.

(You better be good, kids, or else Santa will dispatch his army of snowmen, who aren’t just packed but also packing).

It also wouldn’t be a true activity without at least one kid deciding to be creative or goofy and think outside the box.

The infamous Justin, with his characteristic look of his shoelaces not being tied and a look of glee when having the chance to be creative, (A great “east meets west” statement with his hat.).