Festive Fun at Cusworth Hall, 21st December 2009

Around 30 hardy pupils braved the snowy conditions (thanks to parents!) to attend the DBA Christmas Workshop at Cusworth Hall Museum on Monday 21st December. The setting was beautiful and we were feeling very festive as the day began, led once more by Dave Cryer who based the fun-filled day of activities on Christmas literature. Thanks go to Dave for managing to get through the snow from Huddersfield!

Pupils came from Mexborough Montague Primary School, Saltersgate Primary School and Hexthorpe Primary School were mixed up into 4 teams and throughout the day teams could earn points for the drama they produced and for answering questions.

To get us all in the mood, Dave read a poem from ‘Read me and Laugh’. It was called Bird Table Blues, by Clare Bevan. He then told us a silly tale of his own haunting by the Ghost of Jacob’s Cream Cracker and the Ghost of Christmas Pasta! The next task was for each group choose a Christmassy word or phrase as their name and to present it as a still or moving picture - as you can see from the pictures, everyone was very creative and we ended up with Snowflakes, Santa’s Little Helpers, Stocking Hangers and Santa’s Little Sleigh.

Dave then read us the opening parts of ‘A Christmas Carol’ and talked about the story. A group task to recreate Dickens’ description of Scrooge followed. Groups then split further into pairs or threes to look at a choice of scripts: one where Scrooge’s nephew visits him and one where Cratchit asks for Christmas day off. The pupils worked brilliantly together and produced some very impressive results. Dave kept us informed of how many points each group had earned at various points through the day.

By this time we had earned a break and enjoyed the lovely packed lunches provided by Cusworth Hall Tea Room. Feeling suitably energised we then moved on to another Christmassy story with Dave reading Chapter 1 from ‘The More the Merrier’ by Anne Fine. Pupils worked through a set of questions to make them think about the different characters in the Mountfield family. The groups then had to improvise a scene where they showed either what led up to Ralph’s being sent to his room on Christmas day, or what happened when he was allowed back down again.

Another Christmas poem from ‘Read Me and Laugh’, Christmas Pudding by Charles Thompson, was read out by Dave. There was then a choice of final tasks: retelling the whole story of ‘A Christmas Carol’; acting out Fergal and his mum in the supermarket when Fergal buys his first tin in the book ‘Tins’ by Alex Shearer (not Christmassy, but a brilliant book!); recreating The Cheese Touch scene from ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’ by Jeff Kinney; or recreating some of the cartoons from ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid – The Final Straw’. All the pupils worked really hard and the final presentations were superb!

Finally we had to find out which group had the most points and we could not believe the results (Dave assures us it was not fixed!). They were:

• Snowflakes – pink: 159
• Santa’s Little Helpers – green: 150
• Santa’s Sleigh – blue: 159
• Stocking Hangers:159

Instead of prizes every pupil went away with a goody bag of DBA stationery and delicious Christmas biscuits from Cusworth Hall. It was a really lovely day, putting us all in a festive mood ready for Christmas. Well done for all working so hard and thank you to the welcoming staff at Cusworth Hall!

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