December 2021

This Christmas we decided to create a Christmas village as our Christmas project.

In order to stick to our pods, we decided that the safest plan would be to create 5 different areas which could then be brought together at the end. 

Linking in with our maths lesson looking at shapes that tessellate, we decided to use hexagons as they would fit nicely together.

 

 

 

 The first job was to come up with an overall design that worked for everyone. We all came up with an idea and then each pod pitched their overall plan to the group.

    

Finally, after some discussions, we agreed what needed to be done. We decided where the train track would run and marked this out.

   

Then each group agreed which hexagon they would take and the work began. Meanwhile a specific group designed and created a beautiful background which would go behind the village.

  

Each group had particular roles to play and without every group working together, the project would not have worked. One group’s task was to create a mountain with a tunnel that a train could go under. This required a lot of thought and planning as can be seen below.

One group decided to light up their building using an electrical circuit. They had built a church and castle to go into their pod and then used the circuit to light them up. They also built a forest and a sports ground.

The third group created a village market with an ice rink and the village Christmas tree. They used many materials to build the market stalls, the rink, the people and the Christmas tree. They then decorated each to match.

The fourth group had a river in their hexagon and they decided to use the extra space to create a fairground. This included a circus tent and they hoped to also have a working ferris wheel. This again involved a lot of planning and problem solving as many attempts had to be made to get the wheel to stay up while it was turning. Eventually we got there!

The final group had to build the village houses and the train station along with the people involved. The also painted the roads and railways along with creating trees for a forest.

Bit by bit everything started to come together. As each pentagon was added, the village began to take shape.

Once we had all the hexagons in place, one group had the job of fixing the railway track. This proved very difficult as some of the cardboard had curled up after being painted. Many felt it would never work but one or two dedicated children kept at it and using sellotape and glue they eventually managed to get the train running smoothly around the track. Finally we used some icing sugar to create a snow effect and this gave us the final Christmas Village.

We were really happy with our efforts and children from lots of other classes came to see the village.

Below is a video of our finished product. Happy Christmas!