On December 10, 2015, JESIE held a special Christmas Open Day for grade 4 students at Nanfeng Primary School in Wuxi. Although Christmas is a topic Chinese students already know, they never get tired of it! Teachers James and Julie kept the students entertained during 40 minutes, learning new vocabulary and playing fun games. With James, students talked about what people do for Christmas: have a big dinner, give presents, give Christmas cards and visit their family. 

They also played a fun treasure hunt game: two students were invited to play rock-paper-scissors and the loser had to close his or her eyes while the winner hid a flashcard somewhere in the classroom. All students then guided the student who had to hunt for the treasure flashcard by saying "presents" louder and louder as he or she got closer to the treasure and quieter if they were going away from it. 

To conclude the lesson, the students really enjoyed making pretty Christmas cards, filling the classroom with the Holiday spirit.

Meanwhile, Julie taught her students that Father Christmas is also called Santa Claus. Students then played "Santa says", a game in which the students had to stand up, sit down, clap their hands or laugh, only if Santa said so. After this fun warm up, they learned a few Christmas related vocabulary, the class was divided in two teams and students were shown a flashcard that they had to name as fast as they could to earn points.

In the following activity, each team was divided in three and given an envelope with scrambled letters inside. The first team to unscramble all three words won the game. Then 9 or 10 students from each team were given a letter from a word they had learnt. They had to stand in order to spell the word correctly.

The students -and the teacher! --really enjoyed the last activity which consisted in throwing a wet tissue at the snowman drawn on the board, which slowly melted. Teams earned 10 points if they hit the head, 5 points for the belly and the hat, and 3 points for the bottom of the snowman. In order to get the points, they had to correctly identify a flashcard chosen by the teacher. 

The Christmas cards and the snowman attack were a perfect ending for this festive JESIE Open Day in Wuxi.