Festive Futures: Raise aspirations through fun seasonal resources

Give children’s aspirations a seasonal twist for the end of term with our ‘What’s My Line? Festive special’ videos! Hosted by Burgundy, Santa’s Chief Elf, children are invited to meet a suite of volunteers who are working very hard to bring us festive magic, and use clues to guess their jobs.

In the activities, children will meet:

KS1 (c. 20 mins): Pia the Christmas decorator, Sarah the theatre worker and Shaun the chef at Buckingham Palace (plus a mystery guest from the North Pole who is VERY busy this time of year…)

KS2 (c. 25 mins): Katie the brand manager of a wrapping paper company, Jason the craftsman at Buckingham Palace, Andrew and Jane the Christmas tree grower and decoration shop owner and Oliver the warehouse manager for Crisis Christmas centres supporting vulnerable people experiencing homelessness

(But ssshhh! Don’t tell children as their job is to guess the roles of our festive guests!)

You can access both videos below, and for accompanying resources, please do log in or sign up to access these under ‘pre-recorded resources’ on your portal homepage (read more about the resources below).

KS1 video:

KS2 video:

Learning resources

The videos are accompanied by learning resources to link festive roles to children’s aspirations learning. Log in or sign up for a menu of optional extension learning activities to consolidate the links to aspirations and the world of work, including ideas for those classes who already used the videos last year, where children can put themselves in the shoes of volunteers and flex their reflection, design, numeracy, literacy and drama skills! You may like to provide these as take-home activities over the festive period.

KS1: Host an in-house drawing competition on festive jobs, discuss essential skills for Santa’s job, plan the Queen’s Christmas dinner or design a decorative window like the volunteers in the video. Use the guessing game recording sheet, plenary quiz and reflection activity to land the learning from the volunteer talks in the video.

KS2: Host an in-house drawing competition on festive jobs or have children try out some of the jobs themselves by designing wrapping paper, measuring Christmas trees and fashioning colour schemes for the Downing Street Christmas tree. Use the guessing game recording sheet, plenary quiz and reflection to land the learning from the volunteer talks in the video.

Use the activities flexibly – in an assembly, in class and with children who are having to isolate at home. Last year over 400 schools used these activities to bring some festive cheer to children during a difficult time. Michelle Giblin from Joseph Cash Primary, Coventry, said:

“These resources were a lovely contrast to the other Primary Futures pre-records because they highlighted more quirky, unique jobs and help to promote thinking outside the box of what you can do with your future as well as substituted some festive activities that were curtailed by the pandemic.”