This is my favourite time of Christmas. With the exception of fresh food my shopping is done, cards have been posted, presents wrapped and delivered and we have finished for the Christmas break. Its been a week of Christmas concerts and parties in schools, a much needed night of adult company in a cosy pub and a week of long days and late nights.

Little Man had his Christmas concert on Wednesday morning and his class sang Sparkle and Shine from Nativity with lots of actions and all wearing sunglasses. It was a delight! The concert was at a local church and it was an exceptionally good concert, setting the right tone with a nice variety of carols and songs, mixing modern and traditional, some for the children to perform and others for all to sing. I felt that lovely Christmas magic as I left. Fortunately this continued as I returned to my school (all teachers get time off for Christmas concerts) and we had our Christmas dinner. I was also out with my friends in the evening so it was a lovely day, if not a little tiring.

I do love the special Christmas moments at my school at this time of year. It means a lot of variety and extra work in my role, Co director of our concert, party planner, waitress, lighting rigger, it’s a mad, crazy week and of course one of my favourite weeks. The photos above show our Christmas card design for this year and the wreath made by one of our enterprise groups now sitting proudly on our front gate.

This week I would like to mention our Christmas book for 2019, The Christmas Journey. It was a recommendation on Twitter and has been our perfect read in December. It’s a very clever book, blending the Christmas story of a pilgrimage with a tale backwards through time and a magical advent calendar linking to modern times. It’s much simpler to read than to describe and we are hooked and can’t wait to read how it ends. I love to have a Christmas book and read a chapter aloud to the children each evening in December, it’s a moment of peace and togetherness.

Now all the jobs are done, I like to spend the last few evenings before Christmas by watching some seasonal shows or films. Inspired by Little Man’s class song I watched Nativity for the first time, what a gem of a Christmas movie. Although The Muppet Christmas Carol still is my number 1 Christmas movie. I feel Nativity is a contender for my top 5!