Stage 1 - Bush Christmas

Engage your students with our expert-led, cost-effective incursion programs designed to enrich classroom learning across selected Sydney council areas. Bringing interactive and curriculum-aligned experiences directly to your school.

A small group of students sitting on the floor listening to a teacher read a story. There is a whiteboard on with an image of Santa Claus waving from his sleigh that is being pulled by a reindeer.
Listening to a Christmas story.

About this incursion

Bush Christmas is a 90-minute incursion program that uses story, song, and craft to teach students about Australian animals and their habitats through interactive activities, including creating sustainable Christmas crafts and meeting preserved animals up close. The program accommodates one class per session, with multiple sessions available in a day.

Inquiry Question

What are the external features of living things?

Student previsit and follow-up activities

Successful excursions have direct links to current classroom learning. Pre-visit activities carried out before the excursion will help students better understand the excursion content and provide a sense of connectedness and relevance to classroom learning.

Download the student pre-visit and follow-up activities here.

Activities on the day

During the incursion, students:
  • Listen to Snowy’s Christmas to learn about the habitats of Australian animals, what they eat, where they shelter, and ways they are adapted to their environments.
  • Observe preserved Australian animals to describe their external features.
  • Learn an Australian Christmas song, and accompany it with bush instruments.
  • Print an animal design onto a calico bag using a sponge and a stencil
  • Use Aussie animal stamps to decorate a piece of wrapping paper.
  • Make a gift tag from a gum leaf
  • Decorate a Christmas card

Important information

Cost
  • Government Schools: $15 per student  (GST-free)
  • Non-Government Schools: $25 per student (GST-free). Minimum cost of $600.
Location
Incursions are available to schools in the following council areas: Bayside, Burwood, Canada Bay, Canterbury, City of Sydney, Georges River, Hunters Hill, Inner West, Lane Cove, Mosman, North Sydney, Randwick, Sutherland, Waverley, Willoughby and Woollahra.
Key syllabus outcomes and content

Key syllabus outcomes

  • describe the external features of a variety of living things
  • identify and group plants and animal using their external features
  • identify that living things live in different places that suit their needs

Integrating the ‘Sustainability’ Cross Curriculum Priority is a feature of the program.

Skills outcomes

  • Describes ways that different places in the environment provide for the needs of living things
  • Makes simple pictures and other kinds of artworks about things and experiences.
  • Makes artworks in a particular way about experiences of real and imaginary things.

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About our centre

Learn how our centre helps students explore, learn and connect with nature.