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Updated for December 2007
December Holidays
December is a month full of special days. Education World offers resources to help educators teach about all those special days. The resources below include holiday lesson plans; holiday art and gift projects; and additional holiday resources.
DECEMBER LESSON IDEAS
December: A Month of Multicultural Holiday Celebrations
Do your students celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or Three Kings Day? Maybe they celebrate St. Lucia Day or Ramadan. December offers great opportunities for teaching about our multicultural world. Included: Teaching lessons and resources.
Holiday Projects: Classroom Decorating and Gift-Making Ideas
Are you tired of doing the same holiday art project year after year? Education World reaches into our holiday sack (and our archives too) to find just the project for you. Included: Handprint wreathes, tissue paper bows, dozens of more ideas.
Classroom Lessons Deliver Holiday Presence
Capitalize on students’ excitement about the December holidays. Seven lessons combine fun and learning to deliver a holiday presence in the classroom. Included: Graphs, graphic organizers, bulletin board ideas, more.
Emphasize the Giving -- Not the Getting -- This Holiday Season
Are your students too focused on the “gimme” elements of the holiday season? Teach them about the true meaning of the season by emphasizing the giving over the getting. Included: Ten classroom activities that focus on doing good things for other people.
Unwrap Five New Holiday Lessons
We've wrapped up five new lessons just for you -- simply grab the bow and pull. You'll find lessons to develop vocabulary and reading skills, to teach about pop culture and multiculturalism, and to challenge students to create ABC books and timelines.
Take the Polar Express to Learning
Polar Express, the movie, joined Polar Express, the popular children's book, in November 2004. Holiday time is a great time to take a fresh look at the book. For this "teachable moment," Education World connects you to these lessons and resources.
Teacher Feature: Starring Kay Lanceley
Kay Lanceley helps students participate in an annual American Red Cross holiday project called Letters to Santa. "I love seeing the high school kids toting bags of gifts, bicycles, and so on, to the Red Cross collection area, and I love how attached they get to the children whose letters touch them," she told Education World.
Santa Claus and Newton's Three Laws of Motion
Leigh O. Cody, who teaches at Needwood Middle School in Brunswick, Georgia, submitted this week's lesson in which students decide which of Newton's Three Laws of Motion applies to each of three Santa scenarios.
Brighten Up the Holidays with Cross-Curriculum Activities
Across-the-curriculum activities that teach skills while celebrating the season.
Chicken Soup for the Holiday Soul
Teacher Alison Murphy finds the week before winter break to be very hectic at school. Because her students love to hear stories from the popular Chicken Soup series, she uses that to challenge them to create their own Chicken Soup books to take home as holiday gifts.
Give Your Students the Dickens
Explore some of the student-friendly Dickens Web sites we found and hear from some of the teachers and Dickens fans who created them. Included: Teacher-created ideas for extending the works of Dickens.
December Days: Ten Activities to Celebrate a Month of Special Days
Activities for ten special dates in December, a geography teaching master, and more.
Seasonal Notepad Gift
In this simple technology lesson, students create a seasonal notepad gift. (Grades K-12)
A Musical Holiday Gift
A CD song collection by your students makes a great gift for any holiday. (Grades PreK-12)
Sites to See: December Holidays
Don't let the December holidays disrupt the learning in your classroom. These online resources help incorporate the holidays into real learning activities -- and provide a little fun as well. Included: A dozen Web sites for Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Christmas.
Does December Spell "Dilemma" in Your School?
Emphasize holiday education instead of celebration for a peaceful season.
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