Winter Archives - Page 2 of 4

Jingle All the Way to Learning: 5 Enchanting Christmas Activities for the Classroom

November 17, 2023 teachersbrain education, Teacher's Pay Teachers, Teaching Tips, Winter, Writing

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, and it’s time to sprinkle a bit of holiday magic into your classroom with some Christmas activities for kids or holiday activities for elementary.

Christmas and the winter holidays are just around the corner, and I want to share some festive resources and activities that will turn your classroom into a winter wonderland of learning and joy!

If you are looking for Christmas activities for elementary students, you’re in the right place!

Teaching during the holiday season is a special opportunity to infuse the spirit of Christmas into your lessons while keeping the focus on education. Here are some of my favorite Christmas activities for kids!

Christmas Math and Literacy Worksheets

Are you looking for some holiday worksheets for your K-1 students? I have you covered with over 100 various types of worksheets, games, and printables that cover many kindergarten and 1st grade skills.

Holidays Around the World Escape Room

Looking for a GREAT activity for your students to help your students practice problem-solving and learn about different winter holidays with a focus on the main idea? Digital Escapes™ are a fun way to get students to learn without even realizing it. NO Printing and No Prep needed for this digital escape! Super EASY for in-person or Distance Learning.

Students will click an audio button for a short story and directions to help with their first clue. During the escape, students will be tasked with solving 4 lock clues in order to escape the room and break the spell a bad elf placed on them. There is a PDF included in this download with directions, the link to the site, an answer key, and an optional note-taking worksheet for students. This activity takes about 20 to 30 minutes to complete.

Christmas Ornament Poem (FREEBIE!)

Are you looking for a great poem to easily download, print, and add to an ornament filled with a ribbon the same size as the student? I have you covered. 🙂 These make perfect gifts for the family!

Christmas Door Decorations

Christmas classroom decorations Christmas activities for kids

Ready to have the cutest door at school for the holidays? This is a simple door or bulletin board you can create using these printables. Pair Santa’s Vacation display with student writing samples or have students add a personalized bulb to the palm tree.

Santa is gone to the beach!

Ugly Sweater Christmas Writing Activity

Christmas activities for kids writing activity ugly sweater

Are you looking for a great way to do an engaging virtual OR in-person Holiday WRITING lesson with students? I have you covered with these interactive, editable Google Slides to easily have students copy and paste movable parts to DESIGN their own Ugly Sweater. Then, they will write a narrative, persuasive, or opinion paper about ugly sweaters.

‘Tis the season to be jolly and learn together! I hope you and your students love these resources as much as I do.

Looking for more Christmas fun? Check out my post here!

3 Reasons To Use Holiday Escape Rooms

October 28, 2023 teachersbrain Fall & Halloween, Halloween, St. Patrick's Day Ideas, Teacher's Pay Teachers, Winter

Let’s talk about escape rooms!

If you know me, you know that I’m a huge fan of this incredibly engaging and exciting way to teach little learners various concepts. It feels like a game and it’s just, well, fun for teachers and students! What’s not to love?!

If you’re looking for the perfect classroom escape room kit or even a fun digital escape room to use in your classroom, you’re in the right place! But first, let’s discuss some of the many benefits of escape rooms for students.

What skills do escape rooms build? What does an escape room teach?

It Boosts Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving

Escape rooms are like a real-life puzzle that our young learners get to solve together. As they work their way through the challenges and riddles, they’re not just having a blast; they’re also honing their critical thinking and problem-solving skills. It’s like a sneak-attack on those important cognitive abilities!

It Fosters Teamwork and Collaboration

Escape rooms are all about teamwork. Our students have to communicate, share ideas, and assign tasks to successfully complete their mission. This experience helps them learn the value of working together and teaches them essential skills for life. Plus, it’s a whole lot of fun in the process!

It Makes Learning an Exciting Adventure

The best part is that escape rooms can sneakily incorporate educational content. Think math, science, history, and language—all cleverly disguised in the form of puzzles and challenges. By turning learning into an adventure, we can keep our students engaged, curious, and excited about learning. It’s like a magic potion for knowledge retention!

With the holidays around the corner, it’s the perfect time to bring in some engaging holiday themed escape rooms to your students! Whether it’s Halloween, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, or anything in between, it can be celebrated with a classroom escape room.

Luckily, I have the perfect resource for you! I created an all inclusive Holiday Escape Room bundle that will have you covered for all holidays!

Use these holiday themed Escape Rooms to guarantee student engagement while they learn and solve a classroom mystery. With little prep, your students will work as a team to break into a box, which breaks them out of the classroom as they beat the clock!

What’s inside this download?

6 escape rooms all meeting 1st and 2nd Grade Standards to use for the holidays. Several can be used with 3rd or Kindergarten too!

These escape rooms are focusing on Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Veterans Day, Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day.

What does an escape room look like for primary students?

You will have to spend about 40 minutes to prep your materials. Students will be separated into two groups. First students watch the YouTube video as a hook. Then, students are handed or find a mystery envelope with a clue. The clue might have them find letters to build sentences, solve puzzles, or solve a riddle. (Each escape room is different.)

Each time they complete a challenge, they get another mystery envelope. There are 3 to 4 clues in each activity. Eventually, they will discover keys that will open a box. (The keys are paper. The box can be an old paper box filled with a treat or homework pass that you will open together once each group has their key.)

Once the box is open, the student can escape the room to recess or the library.

Certificates are provided for students who are Master Mystery Problem Solvers. The activity takes about 45-60 minutes to complete!

Check it out here!

Have you tried escape rooms in your classroom? How did it go? Let me know in the comments! For more escape room fun, check out my post here!

How To Celebrate Valentine’s Day In Your Classroom Online or In Person

January 28, 2022 teachersbrain Teaching Tips, Winter

Valentine’s Day is just a couple of weeks away! February is such a jam-packed month with lots of things to learn about. We get to celebrate Valentine’s Day (of course), Chinese New Year, and this year, the Winter Olympics!

Today, I wanted to share some of my favorite Valentine’s Day traditions from when I was in the classroom. Valentine’s is one of my favorite days to celebrate because it’s so fun to show our love and appreciation for each other. I love seeing the little cards that students bring in for their friends and their teachers.

Here are some fun ways to celebrate Valentine’s Day in your elementary classroom

Decorate your classroom. This one goes without saying but decorating your classroom or even just your classroom door for Valentine’s Day is so fun! A great place to find cute and festive decor on a budget is Dollar Tree. They have tons of heart-shaped banners and other decorations.
Have a Valentine’s Day party. This is a great time to break out the Valentine’s Day candy and activities. I love doing this escape room with my students. It is an activity that is guaranteed to get their engagement. Another very popular activity is the Love Monster Writing activity!
Exchange Valentine’s Day Cards. You can have your students decorate a paper bag or a shoebox with Valentine’s Day-themed supplies to collect their cards! This is such a fun way to get creative in the classroom and it’s so exciting to see what students come up with.

If you are teaching online this year, don’t worry! You can still have tons of fun with your students, even digitally.

Just host an online Valentine’s Day party! You can decorate your Google Slides with cute Valentine’s Day clip art. I created a digital Valentine’s Day escape room activity for teachers who need virtual activities that you can check out here.

As for exchanging Valentine’s cards, I have you covered there too!

This digital Valentine’s Day card resource was created with the needs of teachers who are doing virtual lessons in mind.

These digital google slides make it easy for your students to personalize and move editable conversational hearts to give virtually or in person. There is even a name grid provided so students can keep track of who got one and how to spell classmates’ names!

Included with this resource you’ll get 27 Colorful Google Slides with premade titles, editable text boxes, directions, movable conversational heart parts, and a video tutorial that you can check out below.

You can delete slides you don’t want to send to students, add your own directions or images to the sides of the slides to personalize.

Are you celebrating in person or online this year? Let me know in the comments!

Stop Motion Animation Activities To Encourage A Love of Creative Writing

January 21, 2022 teachersbrain Teacher's Pay Teachers, Winter, Writing

One of the most universally loved things right now is Disney movies. Frozen, Luca, Encanto… parents and kids alike love these movies. Which makes sense! The animation capabilities of these Disney creators are incredibly impressive.

Since it is something students love so much, naturally, I tried to think of ways to make it educational so they can enjoy it in the classroom as well. I found that stop-motion animation is a great introduction to animated movies and the enormous amount of skill, creativity, dedication, and art that goes into each movie.

It all starts with a good story! I found this way of approaching narrative, creative writing to be an extremely effective way to hook students into the concept because they want to create their own masterpieces.

With that in mind, I created a winter resource that will teach students about animation from a REAL Disney animator. How cool is that?!

This Stop Motion Animation Creative Writing three week unit is jam-packed with activities to get your students fully engaged in the creative process.

The focus of this resource is creative narrative writing through the integration of beginning animation concepts. The real Disney animator will get your students inspired and get those creative juices flowing.

The Animator Spotlight and Animator Interview will teach students everything they need to know to complete an animator study report.

Teaching students about short animation will help them better understand sequencing events and how to make their own creative endings. After that, students can use the printables provided to design their own book covers!

You’ll get everything you need with this resource. This includes lined paper along with writing toppers to make displaying your students’ work in your classroom easy and cute.

In addition to these activities, you’ll also get narrative writing choice boards, narrative lead ideas, creative writing story elements, a snowman flip book, and so much more. Furthermore, the stop motion animation directions will teach you how to create an animation with your students easily with tools you already have.

I included lots of extras with this resource for centers like the snowman drawing instructions and comprehension checks.

Interested in learning more? Check out my video here!

Looking for more winter activities? Check out these Winter Olympics activities!