Rawai Montessori Christmas celebrations.

by Mr. John David Mood
Upper Elementary Teacher

As a Montessori based school we believe that our school takes a different perspective when it comes to celebrating Christmas for children. These celebrations are based on certain core principles.

First and foremost is that we encourage all children to perform to the best of their ability without introducing any element of competition among the students. In the Christmas performance we emphasis a quiet simple approach, where students can enjoy performing in a spirit of cooperation, and can demonstrate their uniqueness to the audience in a non intimidating environment.

We also have a Santa’s grotto where gifts are presented to the students by Father Christmas. The gifts are provided by the parents but are not selected for their own children, but distributed to the children in a random manner. Each gift only being identified by gender or gender neutral. The cost of each present is limited so that there will be no jealousy engendered by one child receiving a lesser gift than another student.

In general we use the seasonal celebration to encourage peace and harmony within the school. For example each student can join in Secret Santa where a student picks out of the hat a student which they then must be nice to, and provide a small present at the end of the week.

We integrate the Christmas celebration with the Montessori philosophy with the aim long term of development of the whole child.