Get in the festive spirit with this MFL Christmas lesson which explores how children in other countries celebrate.
This lesson also involves singing Christmas carols in other languages, providing an excellent way of practising pronunciation.
The download contains the lyrics to Silent Night in French, German and Spanish. Perhaps your children could sing a multilingual version in the school’s Christmas concert.
MFL Christmas lesson learning objectives
- Learn how children in other countries celebrate Christmas
- Sing a Christmas carol in another language
- Research how the new year is celebrated
Starter activity
Bring in a clean boot or shoe (Wellingtons work perfectly) containing wrapped sweets and/or chocolates, chocolate coins, oranges or small toys.
Ask children to guess what’s inside. Tell them what happens on the evening of the 5th December in France, Germany and Spain. (Children leave a polished shoe outside their front door, and if they’ve been good Saint Nicholas fills it with goodies for them to discover the following morning.)
In your target language, stick a Christmas-themed word or phrase – reindeer, angel, Christmas tree – to each treat before placing it in the boot.
Children take turns to choose one and read out the attached word. The rest of the class can help them to work out the meaning.
The words can then be stuck on the board and copied out by the children. You can find Christmas vocabulary lists in various languages online.
Alternatively, ask children to say a foreign language word or phrase they’ve remembered from previous lessons and / or say ‘Happy Christmas’ in the foreign language before they’re allowed to take a sweet:
- Frohe Weihnachten
- Joyeux Noël
- Feliz Navidad
Dr Amanda Barton is a freelance writer and educational consultant who has taught MFL in primary and secondary schools. She is co-author of Teaching Primary French and Teaching Primary Spanish (Bloomsbury). Browse more Christmas activities.
