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Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Friday, December 20, 2013
Monday, December 16, 2013
Three Wise Women
Due to the Christmas season, school ends tomorrow for a three week break! Students are happy but teachers still have a lot of paperwork until friday! So, to light things up, I will be publishing funny stuff about Christmas, so that I can keep up with this week's tough agenda!
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| Picture via Pro.T - Professional Development Conferencefor English Teachers (FB page) |
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Tuesday, December 03, 2013
John Lewis Christmas Advert 2013
John Lewis this year's TV advert tells the delightful animated story of Bear and his faithful friend Hare. Set in a beautiful forest, poor Bear is the only animal that never gets to celebrate Christmas because he has to hibernate every year. However, this year is different. This year Hare has a brilliant idea. The commercial uses a unique animation style that combines traditional 2D hand-drawn animation, stop frame, and 3D model made sets.The story is set to a cover of Keane's 'Somewhere Only We Know' performed by Lily Allen. Source: Youtube (adapted)
If you want to know more about John Lewis and this video, click HERE.
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Thursday, December 20, 2012
UK Christmas Cooking Customs
MINCE PIES
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| Photo Elaine Lemm |
Mince pies are the first sign of Christmas in the UK. These tiny tartlets, often served with mulled wine, start popping up everywhere, from workplace canteens and coffee corners to the local Starbucks. Shops advertise late opening hours and fashion shows accompanied by mince pies and mulled wine, Every pre-Christmas gathering, cocktail party and tea party will have a supply. Newspapers usually have features rating this year's supermarket and packaged variations. It's supposed to be good luck to eat a mince pie every day of December and most people don't turn them down when offered. So, by the time the holiday season is over, most people are well fed-up with mince pies. But whether they like deep or shallow mince pies, or simply can't stand them, most Brits know it's Christmas from their first mince pie of the season.
TURKEY
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| Photo via Britain on View |
Smoked salmon, served with buttered brown bread and a slice of lemon, or wrapped around some prawns, is a typical festive starter. Turkey long ago replaced goose as the most popular main course. But it is what the turkey comes to the table with that make it especially British. The accompaniments include: chipolatas (small sausages) wrapped in bacon; roasted root vegetables, especially roasted parsnips which are sweet and moist; brussels sprouts, often with chestnuts or bacon or both; bread sauce, a mixture of bread crumbs, milk, cream, onions and seasonings.
CHRISTMAS PUDDING
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| Photo: RFB Photography |
The traditional British Christmas pudding is a bit like a cannonball made of dried fruit,nuts, flour, eggs, suet or butter, spices and loads and loads of alcohol. It comes to the table sprigged with holly or winter cherries and flaming with brandy. Rich and heavy, a little bit of Christmas pudding goes a long way. A good Christmas pudding is started months before Christmas, steamed for several hours, then tightly wrapped and left to age. Whisky or brandy are used to plump up the dried fruit and are added to the cooked pudding from time to time. On the day, the pudding is once again steamed for a few hours. Then hot brandy is poured over it and set alight. Traditionally, a three-penny (thruppence) or six-penny (sixpence) coin, both long out of circulation, is baked in the pudding. Finding it is considered good luck. In some families, silver or porcelain charms are kept for this purpose.
CHRISTMAS CAKE
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| Photo via Sainsbury's |
Like the Christmas pudding, the traditional British Christmas Cake is started months before the holiday. It is a very rich fruit cake which is 'fed' with brandy or whisky - a few spoonfuls at a time, every few days for weeks. Before Christmas, the cake is wrapped in a rolled layer of marzipan and topped by a thick layer of rolled white icing. Then the whole thing is neatly wrapped in a red ribbon and topped with a holiday motif. In effect, the cake is sealed, airtight, in all that marzipan and icing. That, plus the amount of alcohol it has absorbed, should make it last a very long time. And, kept in a biscuit tin or a plastic food box with a sealable lid, Christmas cakes have been known to be edible for months, even years. The Christmas cake is not usually part of Christmas dinner but is kept to be offered at tea time and for snacks during the holidays.
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Wednesday, December 05, 2012
ELT resoursces for Xmas - part II
Larry Ferlazzo presents on his website an endless list of resources to teach and learn about Christmas. Among his suggestions, I found particularly interesting this slideshow on how Christmas is celebrated around the world, by The New York Times. The Watshington Post presents this fun video on Decorating For Christmas using time lapse photography. Santa Gone Wild is a fun slideshow from Time Magazine that shows peolpe who dress up like Santa Claus and make fools of themselves. MES Games has an online Christmas vocabulary learning activity and game. Oxford University Press has another Christmas vocabulary game. What’s Christmas without music? The British Council has a Christmas Song. And, of course, don’t forget about Jingle Bells! Larry suggests many other resources. You can read the full article HERE.
Busy Teacher has gone wild and has 135 free Christmas worksheets at your disposal. From the story of Rudolph, the red nosed reindeer to the song worksheet Last Christmas by Wham and storytelling the Christmas story 'The Night before Christmas', all these materials are free for download. If you have great worksheet about Christmas, busyteacher.org asks you to tell them about it and become a BusyTeacher contributor.
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| Picture via Google Images |
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Monday, December 03, 2012
ELT resources for Xmas
If you teach kids, or simply have them at home, I would suggest you a visit to the North Pole. I mean, to www.northpole.com! 'Enjoy Christmas with Santa Claus at the North Pole' is an award-winning Christmas website, which you can join for free. You can send a letter to Santa Claus or a Christmas card to a friend; chat with some of Santa's elves or read stories about your favourite North Pole elf; enjoy reading children stories about the elves' adventures in the workshop in Santa's Secret Village; choose any of the online games and activities which include checkers with Santa, Trim the Tree, crossword puzzles, word search, concentration, mazes and dragging decorations onto the tree to make the tree beautiful. This website also features yummy recipes, Christmas traditions around the world, activities both for parents, teachers and students, and especially, loads of fun for kids, as there's always something fun to do at the North Pole!...
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Friday, November 30, 2012
Thursday, November 29, 2012
A virus named Christmas...
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| Tânia Sousa, 11th form student Tânia would like to pursue a career in physiotherapy |
At
Christmas, adults indulge at the mall trying to find not only the
perfect, but also the ideal, not to mention the best wonderful Christmas
present. During this season, adults become children once again. We see them singing carols, playing cards with the kids, drawing with the children… Basically, we see them doing things they
usually don’t have the patience to do in their everyday lives. We see grandparents taking a nap, while
sitting at the Christmas table, men serving their best wine to the guests,
women exchanging recipes... Adults are
more aware of society problems and become more helpful and thoughtful,
especially when it’s about trying to bring some comfort to people that are at
the hospital with rare diseases. At Christmas
everybody helps everybody and promises become reality. People stop drinking or
smoking, especially after New Year’s Eve. Christmas
is a magical time but once it’s over, adults become adults again, and nothing
changes.
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Tuesday, November 27, 2012
The history of Christmas Trees
The first Christmas tree was the centerpiece of holidays festivities in fifteenth century Latvia. Young men and women danced and sang around the tree before setting it on fire the last night of festivities. From those early traditions, to the first American tree in 1816, and into the present Christmas season, Christmas trees have been the focal point of holiday cheer. The following infographic takes a look at some of the significant moments in the modern history of the Christmas icon. May I suggest this timeline as a possible resource for one of your lessons about Christmas. I've found this information in Visual History of Christmas Trees. Due to the dimensions of the infographic, I only present a print screen of the timeline. Just follow the previous link to access the timeline in full size.
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Thursday, December 15, 2011
Xmas last minute resources...
In case you're looking for some Christmas last minute resources to use in your end of the term last lesson, here goes my suggestion...
'Christmas, my child, is love in action!...
Everytime we give,
everytime we love,
it's Christmas!...'
everytime we love,
it's Christmas!...'
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