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Past Themes - A Geographical Christmas
Updated for Christmas 2007
Even those who try hard not to notice Christmassy things in the shops in September, will by now recognise that the theme of Christmas is all around us, and family and friends are mentioning things like ‘What are we doing for Christmas?’ or ‘What do you think we should buy person X for a present?’
So this article aims at giving you some different and unusual ideas of what you might give to your nearest, dearest and the rest over the seasonal holiday!
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| Understand and Make a Stand |
Giving presents makes a good topic to discuss with your class or as an assembly theme. Children of all ages are bombarded by advertisements and general talk about presents, mostly receiving rather than giving, often with little thought as to costs involved and the actual need for them.
We all recognise the growing commercialism of Christmas but how much do we really do about it? Perhaps we need to be big and brave and make a stand on the issues of present giving about which we may have misgivings, but have not had the energy or the time to do something about.
We need to help youngsters understand the reasons as to why we give presents to each other and what it all means. In Christian terms we traditionally give presents to celebrate the significance of December 25th, and even if we do not hold similar religious beliefs we recognise the reasons why the date is significant to so many people.
We spend much of the year discussing disasters, poverty, environmental issues and other topics so it makes a lot of sense to talk to children about how we can still celebrate Christmas, and the idea of giving and receiving, whilst also remembering the issues we discussed earlier in the year and possibly even raised money for!
You may decide to give a present to people in countries where life is hard for them and the class or school could decide to club together and buy something unusual or worthwhile rather than give each other lots of small but often expensive gifts. Several charities offer you a chance to buy alternative gifts such as a cow, a toilet or a Christmas meal for 70 children in Kenya!
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What about helping farmers to look after their alpacas this year? 'It's haughty and looks down its nose at you it, but it's very woolly, cuddly and it's a great gift!'. Oxfam Unwrapped has a whole variety of 'funusual' gifts - after all who could resist an alpaca for £24? The recipient receives a card and voucher to explain how the gift is used to help people overcome poverty, a great reminder on the classroom wall for many months to come.
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Christian Aid also provide the chance to buy interesting gifts such as a flock of sheep (very seasonal!), a chorus of cows, a watering can for £10, or a sewing machine for £42. Visit their Present Aid website to view the full range.
If you would like to consider something closer to home why not support St Tiggywinkles hospital near Aylesbury where they look after many orphaned and injured animals throughout the year. Where else can you adopt Vanessa the Hedgehog for £42 or Sunshine the Stoat for £37? The adopter gets a colour picture of the creature and a certificate of adoption as well as newsletters and fact sheets. This kind of present will also be excellent for members of your family as the pictures look really good framed. St Tiggywinkles also has now a Visitor centre, ideal for a class visit.
The RSPCA also has animals to support and 'adopt' by a proxy scheme. Take a look at their Christmas Gift Box website for ideas. The stress ball and wacky farmyard mugs will make good stocking fillers!
Children can visit these sites, carry out some research and present the options for choice to their class, year or school. They will have also knocked off some ICT activities in the process!
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Finding the right present for friends and family can be a trying experience, as we all know. Most people seem to have what they need, so often we are left trying to find something that we hope they will like and use at the same time. Time to think about recycled gifts perhaps?
WWF have on offer some intriguing products - a recycled tyre mouse mat, re-cycled yoghurt pot coasters, as well as an array of recycled pens, pencils and eco-friendly sellotape (most useful as wrapping paper cannot be easily recycled if covered in standard sellotape).
Amnesty International offers a wide range of products which are based on the fair trade concept and in particular this year they are offering newspaper bags made in India from old newspapers, and a wind up torch which needs no batteries - a 30 second wind up gives 20 minutes of shine time. It can also be recharged on mains electricity for longer adventures.
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Traidcraft has a variety of interesting gifts but a memorable one is an elephant poo writing paper set for £5!
Something different for those hard to please people on your list is the purchase of a tree or a named section of woodland - this can be in the UK or abroad. They receive a certificate and you can present this in a frame with a woodland picture. Visit the Woodland Trust website for more information.
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Children’s toys always feature at Christmas time but many of us have niggling concerns about the fact that many of the main toy companies source their products from countries overseas where the working conditions are often poor and child labour is a worry. Ethical Consumer is an organisation which allows you to check out the ethical qualities of companies dealing with toys and products such as MP3 players and other gadgets.
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So now its post Christmas and we need to think about the recycling we can participate in. Apparently we send over 1.7 billion Christmas cards each year and that’s about 200,000 trees worth. Both Tesco and WHSmith run card recycling schemes but it is easier if you encourage children to take them in themselves as collecting them in schools provides you with a lot of cards to shift! Encourage them to cut some up into present labels for next year or make new cards using the front pictures. Create 'stars' from old cards to decorate rooms rather than buy expensive decorations.
Make sure anyone who has a tree recycles it through the Local Council – they will either collect them or will have a shredding unit set up at the local tips to deal with them.
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Many children will have received a new mobile phone or computer as a present at Christmas. Old mobile handsets are worth about £5 if recycled and websites such as ActionAid and Oxfam give information about the type of things we can recycle which also include foreign money and toner/ink cartridges. 54 million inkjet cartridges are thrown away each year and it takes 1000 years for each one to decompose in a landfill site!
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Cartridges 4 Charity also provides lots of ideas for recycling all those items which might well be replaced at Christmas.
One of the big issues for this year, which will be also important when we do our Christmas shopping, is that of plastic bags. What should shops do about them? How can we all be persuaded to re-cycle them? Should we be charged for them as in Ireland? One activity you can engage your class or family in 'knitting' a new bag from plastic bags - find instructions in this this article.
The message is clear for all of us. We probably all agree about what we should be doing but we have to take responsibility and actually do it. So as you sit down and tuck into your Christmas dinner you can pose the question 'Now I wonder how our alpaca's getting on?'.
Have fun!
Updated 03.12.07 |
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