St Benild School enjoy Advent activities
The Season of Advent started off with a special online assembly put up by one of our Grade 2 classes. Moreover, our school Advent wreath was blessed, as well as all the wreaths, hand-made by our pupils in class. Every week, a candle in our school Advent wreath has been lit up during an online school assembly. The meaning of each candle was explained to the pupils, followed by the singing of our school Advent song.
Advent is traditionally a time of preparation for Christmas and is an ideal moment to think of others who will not have the sort of Christmas most of us take for granted.
With the number of ever-increasing needy knocking at their door, a local food bank in Malta has urged schools to put together a food parcel throughout Advent. St. Benild School has taken up the mission of course!
A personalised Advent calendar has been prepared and was hung up in each class. The staff also contributed towards this mission, on a daily basis. Instead of taking a daily treat from an Advent calendar, the children were encouraged to add an item to a box. By December 25, they will put together an emergency food parcel for people in need. Each child is encouraged to bring in only one item.
Apart from this initiative, pupils were also encouraged to donate a small amount of money from their own money box towards a national Piggy Bank Campaign run by the Malta Community Chest Fund.
On the Feast of St. Nicholas, our pupils dressed up in their Santa suits or Christmas jumpers. They shared their joy and cheer with the elderly by carol singing, playing online bingo and posting cards to different homes of the elderly around the island. This encounter, despite the many covid restrictions, was still a very meaningful one during which the educators further instilled the values of service and community.
Throughout Advent, our pupils have been preparing the manger for Baby Jesus by working hard to achieve a ‘good deeds straw’. Such yellow strips of paper, indicating the good deeds performed by the child throughout the school day, are slowly but surely preparing the manger for the coming of Baby Jesus. What a joy it will be when the children look at the manager full of ‘straw’ on their last day of term!
