Lesson video

Hi team, it's so nice to see you again.

Welcome back to another lesson with me, Mrs. Garrard.

Now in today's lesson, we're going to be thinking about how Christmas traditions have changed, how things are different from the past until now.

Let me share my screen, and we'll work out what we're going to do first.

So the first thing we'll need to do today is gather some resources.

Then, we're going to look at Christmas traditions in the past, and Christmas traditions now.

Then, we'll look at Christmas tree decorations in the past, and Christmas tree decorations now.

And then, we'll get to do the creating part of our lesson.

We're going to make a gingerbread man today.

For this lesson, you will need a mixing bowl and a spoon, some scales, a cutter, a gingerbread man-shaped cutter, and some ingredients.

If you'd like to make your own gingerbread man, a recipe and instructions are included a little bit later on in the lesson, but if you don't want to make your own gingerbread, that's okay, no big deal.

You could buy a gingerbread man at the shop and then decorate it.

So to do the decorations, you'll need some icing, your gingerbread man biscuit, and some sweets to decorate it.

Pause the video now, and find all the things that you'll need.

Come back once you're ready.

Great, now you're ready, we can start to think about Christmas traditions past and present.

So in the past, people often used to send Christmas cards by post.

They would write a message in a card and send it to friends and family.

People still like to send a message at Christmas to wish people Merry Christmas, but not so many people write cards and send them by post anymore.

Some people do, but lots of people have changed the way they send their Christmas message.

And now, they might put a status on Facebook saying Happy Christmas to all of their friends and family.

So that's a way that our traditions have changed.

We used to send cards, and now it's more common for people to send a Christmas message on social media.

Hmm, have you had an advent calendar before? I have, and I know that even advent calendars have changed.

So in the past, when I was younger, we used to open up a Christmas calendar or Advent calendar, And inside there would be a Christmas picture or a verse from the Bible.

But now when we open our Advent calendars, quite often, there's a yummy piece of chocolate in there, or maybe even a small gift.

So that's a way that things have changed.

Advent calendars used to just have pictures, and now they have chocolate and small gifts.

That's a change in a tradition.

Another Christmas tradition we have is to buy gifts for our friends and our family.

The way we buy gifts has changed over time, too.

In the past, gifts used to be bought for just very close friends and very close family, whereas today we tend to buy gifts for more people, a wider circle of friends and wider members of our family.

The gifts that we choose to give people have changed, too.

So previously in the past, children used to get toys like wooden trains and tin spinning tops and abacus.

They were smaller toys, and they were less expensive than the toys that are received by children today.

Quite often today, children receive toys that are technology-based, like the picture of the Switch that I have on the screen.

So let's think about how the way we decorate our Christmas trees have changed, too.

So we'll think about Christmas trees in the past, and Christmas trees now, in the present.

So on Christmas trees in the past, we would decorate them very differently than we do now.

Can you see on the screen, there is a picture of some popcorn and some cranberries.

So people would thread popcorn and cranberries onto string, and then decorate their trees with them.

They would also use real candles with real flames to decorate their Christmas trees.

And sometimes they would even make biscuits to hang on their Christmas tree.

This is a picture of a Christmas tree now.

You don't see any candles.

Candles were not so safe to put in a Christmas tree.

So now we use very fairy lights.

Fairy lights have lots of different colours, and they don't have a naked flame, so they're a lot safer.

We also use plastic or glass baubles on our Christmas trees, and instead of cranberry and popcorn strings, we use tinsel.

So, because in the past, people used to decorate their Christmas trees with biscuits like gingerbread men, I thought we could make our own gingerbread.

But before we do some cooking, you'll need to make sure that you wash your hands.

If you've got long hair like me, you'll need to tie it back in a ponytail.

And you'll have to ask a parent or carer to supervise you in the kitchen, because cooking involves using the oven or the hob, and we need supervision for that.

We need an adult to help us.

So if you want to make your own gingerbread, this is the recipe that you could use.

There are lots of ingredients on there.

There's flour, and salt, and bicarbonate of soda, and ground ginger, and cinnamon, and butter, and sugar, and golden syrup.

Once you've got all of the ingredients together, this is how he will make your gingerbread.

You'll put all of the dry ingredients, like the flour and salt and bicarb and ginger and cinnamon into a large bowl.

Then you'll heat the butter and sugar and syrup until it's dissolved.

Then you leave the sugary mixture for a little while to cool down.

And then you'll mix all of the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients to form a dough.

You'll need to chill the dough in the fridge for a little while before you roll it out, cut out your shapes, and cook them in the oven.

But if you don't have time to make gingerbread, no big deal.

You could get a gingerbread man from the shop and just decorate it.

Watch the video and listen carefully to my instructions.

So, this is icing sugar in my bowl, and I'm going to mix it with some water to make icing.

You have to be really careful not to make it too runny.

If it's too runny, then it will run off of our biscuit.

Can you see how I'm scraping the edges of the bowl to make sure all of the icing mixes into the water? Now, my icing looks a little bit too runny.

Let's see, keep mixing it together and we'll see.

Can you see how it was really runny? If I put that on my biscuit, it would run off of the edges.

So I'm going to make it a little bit thicker by adding some more icing sugar.

And mix it in.

Once all this icing sugar is combined, I should have the right consistency, the right thickness of icing to be able to ice my biscuit.

Can you see how it's a little bit thicker now? It doesn't run off the spoon quite so easily.

So hopefully it won't run off the sides of our gingerbread man.

Now I'm going to change the colour of the icing.

This is brown icing, this is brown food colouring.

I'm going to put a few blobs, not too much, just a little bit into the icing.

I'll mix it up and see if it's the right colour.

If it's not dark enough, I could add some more.

It's really important to add a little bit at the time, because if it's too dark, you can't take any of the colour out.

Put a little bit in at a time, because you can always add more if it's not enough.

Think that's just about right.

You see how the icing has turned brown.

Now I've put my icing into a food bag so that I can pipe it on.

You don't need to do that.

You could spread it on with a knife or a spoon just as easily, but I'm using a bag to pipe my icing.

I'm going around the outline of my gingerbread man, and then I'm going to fill in the centre.

It's a bit tricky.

Can you see how I'm filling in the centre? Can you see there are still a few gaps? Can you see? So I'm going to use a knife to spread the icing out.

This is a sharp knife.

You'll have to ask your parent or carer what kind of knife that you can use.

I'm using the point of my knife to just spread the icing into all of the corners of the cookie.

That's it.

Now I'm going to use some blue Smarties, it's a type of suite, to make three buttons on my gingerbread man.

And then I'm going to use some black icing in another food bag, like a piping bag, to make his eyes, two dots for his eyes.

And then his mouth.

Got some white icing for his mouth.

Oh, a little bit tricky.

That was one way that you could decorate your gingerbread man, but here's another way.

This one is not going to be a gingerbread man, still a gingerbread man shape.

But the features I'm going to add are a little bit different.

Can you see, I haven't gone around all of the outline of the gingerbread man? I wonder if you can get what I'm making this biscuit into.

So I'm filling in the outline.

Still brown icing that I'm using.

Use my knife to make sure that I've covered all of that part of the biscuit.

Should be all covered.

Now, hmm, this is a nose.

I wonder if you can think of somebody that we see around Christmas time that has a red nose, I wonder.

And now this might give the game away, I'm adding some antlers.

Do you know somebody around at Christmas that has antlers, antlers and a red nose? Tell the screen if you guess what I'm making.

You're right, team, I'm making a Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer biscuit! Still was a gingerbread man shape.

I just turned it upside down.

Can you see, he looks a little bit like Rudolph with his red nose and his antlers? And there's my gingerbread man.

Now you could, maybe, once the icing is dry, you could wrap your gingerbread characters in cellophane, add some ribbon, and hang them on your Christmas tree.

Or you could do what I did and just eat them.

How have your family Christmas traditions changed over time? I know that my family traditions have changed.

As my daughter has got older, we do different things.

When she was little, we always went to my mum's house on Christmas Eve, and we would watch the same movie.

And we used to go to the pantomime.

But now, my little girl is not little anymore.

She's really big, she's 19.

So the things that we do at Christmas are different.

We don't go to the pantomime together anymore, but we always have a day out.

And quite often, we'll do something like go ice skating, which is really exciting.

So we still have family traditions that we like to do, but they've changed as my daughter has got older.

I wonder if you could talk to a member of your family and see if your family traditions have changed over time.

Team, that's the end of our lesson today.

As ever, if you would like to share your work with Oak National, you could ask a parent or carer to show your work on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnWithOak.

That's the end of our lesson today.

I hope you have a really great time making your Christmas cookies, and I'd love to see them.

'Bye, team.