It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

Holidays Around the World- Diwali

I love doing holidays around the world. I start with Diwali. This year, I had student make beautiful Rangolis with oil pastels. 

Holidays Around the World- Las Posadas

After visiting Mexico, I lead the students in a guided drawing of a poinsettia. 

http://artprojectsforkids.org/portfolio/poinsettia/

I have them trace in black market and color with oil pastels. 

I display both the rangoli and poinsettia in my class as seen above in my Diwali post. Every time I walk into my class, I am put in a festive mood. 

Holidays Around the World- Germany

For those of you that don't know, Germany is the originator of the Christmas tree. Candles were originally used to decorate the trees outside of peoples houses. Being German, I am proud of the fact that many awesome Christmas traditions come from Germany, such as the tree and gingerbread houses! 

This year, I found this Christmas tree adjective quilt on TpT made by Games 4 Learning.

It was perfect. The kids came up with all sorts of great adjectives to describe Christmas trees. I was very proud of them. 

It called for adjectives for every letter, but I felt that was too hard for 1st grade, so I utilized my whiteout tape and turned it into an adjective quilt. I mean, who really knows an adjective for z that would describe a tree...?

It was also fun because they got to use black pens for their writing and markers to help color. Novelties make activities more engaging. 

Hour of Code- Scratch Jr. 

This week is Hour of Code week. We played around with Scratch Jr. It is free to download and lessons are already created for you here. I taught lessons one and two this week. Each took about 30 minutes, which filled my hour of code time. We also coded in computer lab using the Hour of Code website. My students chose Minecraft, but there are other options like Frozen. 

As you can see, the kids get to use pictures to code actions for a character. Both the Scratch Jr. app and the Hour of Code website work in a very similar way. 

Self Promotion- Holidays Around the World Expert Groups

I have never plugged a product, but I though I might try and see what happens. I create expert groups for my TpT store that are geared toward 2nd-4th grade. I created a holiday expert group that can help dive deeper into the winter holidays. Each holiday includes a non-fiction reading, note taking page, vocabulary page, and more. Check it out!