On Monday Hannah visited us from ‘down under’ to tell each year group how she celebrates Christmas in Australia! She showed us the flag and where Australia is on the globe. She is visiting her family this Christmas and explained that it took her 24 hours on the aeroplane to travel all the way to the UK!

Hannah shared with us a super presentation describing the opposite seasons and told us that Christmas actually happens in the middle of their Summer Holidays! Imagine how hot it is right now?! Rather than keeping warm, the Australians keep cool at Christmas – can you remember how?

We learnt about the lifeguard tradition of decorating a Christmas tree on Bondi Beach. Can you remember who t the surfers dress up as? Can you remember what people build on the beach?

Some of us weren’t too keen on the thought of fresh seafood instead of our traditional Christmas turkey dinners… but that barbeque sure sounded yummy! Hannah told us about the competition for the best decorated house in lights and hinted that we decorate Christmas trees a lot better in the UK because it’s too hot to spend time doing it in 40C! We were shown some traditional Australian animal tree decorations – a koala and a kangaroo and an alternative box of chocolates to our Celebrations and Heroes called Favourites.

Hannah even got us all singing the Australian version of the Twelve Days of Christmas which I’m sure you could sing at home…

On the 4th day of Christmas

my true love sent to me

Four Koalas cuddling

Three Kookaburras laughing

Two pink Galahs

and an Emu up a Gum Tree!

We really enjoyed hearing about the similarities and differences between the traditions in the UK and Australia and found the Christmas cards really funny – Santa sunning himself in his red shorts on the beach!

The children asked Hannah some really interesting questions which included ‘Do you have Advent calendars?’ and ‘Does it snow in Australia?’

Thank you for visiting us Hannah – Happy Christmas!