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Teaching Winter Holidays Around The World

Teacher's Pay Teachers, Teaching Tips, Winter

Winter is an exciting time for kids of all ages! For teachers of young children, it’s an especially fun time in the classroom. While the students may be a little distracted by all the holiday events, winter provides a perfect opportunity to join learning and celebrations. Children can learn about holidays through listening to stories, reading, music, art, and even food. 

Celebrations from around the world provide an opportunity to discuss geography and culture in a way that gets students excited.

They may see similarities between their own lives and those of children in other countries.  They may even enjoy bringing elements of the winter holidays they learn about into their own celebrations! 

Holiday celebrations in the classroom are another way to teach students about other cultures. For a class party, foods from other countries could be served. Students could participate in art activities using themes they’ve learned about in their world studies. (

Instead of just focusing on the American traditions they are familiar with, kids can experience the ways that other cultures celebrate with their friends and family. While increasing a connection between kids around the world, these activities will keep students learning during the holiday season! 

If you need some inspiration to talk about holidays in your classroom, The Winter Holidays Around the World Journal is a perfect springboard into learning about celebrations.

winter holidays

On each page, students will read a short passage about a winter holiday celebration, trace key words, and draw a picture to demonstrate comprehension. There is a flag to color for each country’s page. They can also locate the country on a map or globe and color the illustrations. Teachers can also facilitate further research into the winter holiday celebrations using the Internet or other media.

winter holidays

Students will have a great time learning about different traditions while practicing their reading and writing skills!

If you want more holiday classroom fun, check out my Christmas freebies here! 

winter holidays

Try the Digital Escape Room 1-3rd, focus is on Main Idea and Holidays Around the World!

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

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

  1. 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. 
  2. 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! 
  3. 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. 

celebrate Valentine's Day

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!

celebrate Valentine's Day

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.

celebrate Valentine's Day

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

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. 

stop motion animation

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. 

stop motion animation

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. 

stop motion animation

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!stop motion animation

 

 

Summer Olympic Sports Activities for Kids

Teaching Tips

Summer Olympic in Tokyo

Athletes from all over the world gather to compete in the Summer Olympic Games every four years. In 2016, they were held in Rio De Janeiro in Brazil. The 2020 Summer Olympic sports activities will be held in Tokyo, Japan. 2020 will mark fifty-six years after having organised the Olympic Games at the Japanese capital for the second time. This is an exciting topic to bring into your classroom with lots of opportunities to create classroom discussions about summer sports. As a result, families like to watch the games with their children, so your lessons and discussions can easily be reinforced at home.

Summer Sports Activities

The 2020 Olympic Agenda will use many existing competitions such as judo, equestrian events, gymnastics, archery, swimming, baseball, boxing, surfing, field hockey and volleyball just to name a few. There are 47 sports being represented. You can check them out on their web site. The Tokyo National Stadium will be revamped and replaced by a new area for the opening and closing Ceremonies. You can find a great video about Olympic Facts for Kids on YouTube. Why not have an entire unit on Summer Sports during this special time in history? Students can get some physical fitness, learn about the history of sports and have fun while incorporating all subject areas.

Summer Olympic Sports Activities for Kids

Summer Olympic Activities to do with Kids

Teaching young students about history can be difficult. However, it’s not that hard. Here are some summer Olympic IDEAS:

  • Compare and Contrast Summer and Winter Olympics
  • Make Shadow Puppets for Students to Guess the Activity
  • Write About Being a Sponsor
  • Write to Persuading Parents to Attend The Games
  • Create a Torch and Discuss the History of the Flame
  • Graph Student’s Favorite Summer Sport
  • Make Medals for Different Sporting Events
  • Design a Shirt or a Hat for The Summer Olympics
  • Keep a Journal of Each Sport Discussed
  • Use STEM Activities to Represent each Sport
  • Write the Room with Summer Sport Vocabulary Words
  • Watch Re-plays of the BEST Moments in Class
  • Read Books like Elympics by X.J. Kennedy (Exposes both Summer and Winter Olympics)

Summer Olympic Interactive Notebook

Love using Interactive notebook in your classroom? I do too! There are some great printables to support teaching about Summer Sports. Don’t just cover the sports, but add the rich history of the Summer Olympic Sports. These lessons can lead to easily fitting in adjectives during activities. Let students describe the sports. Lead students to writing activities about various summer sports by keeping data in a daily journal with your students.

Summer Olympic Sports Interactive Notebook for Kids

Have fun sharing the Summer Olympics with your class! It is an exciting sporting even that doesn’t happen often. Summer Olympic sports activities will provide a lot of great experiences for your kids!