Festive Fun in December: Engaging Holiday Activities to Do With Your Class [episode 105]

Emily

Hey there, thanks for joining us today. In today’s episode, we’re sharing listener tips about all the fun you can have in December with your class.

Heidi

We start our episodes with a morning message just like we used to do it morning meeting in our classrooms. This week’s morning message is what fun things can you do with your class in December?

Emily

And we got so many good responses from our teacher approved community that we’re devoting our entire episode to it today.

Heidi

But before we get started, we want to mention that several of these suggestions require parent participation. Either parents are asked to send something in or they need to remember to get their kid dressed up for a theme. Both of those can be really fun, but they can also add a lot of stress on parents, who maybe don’t appreciate having an extra assignment from school at a hectic time.

Emily

Yeah, I know what that feels like. So we do recommend doing what you can to minimize the need for parent involvement. No one needs extra stress in December.

Emily

So let’s say you want to do a project where the kids use something silly to make Santa’s beard and then bring their projects to school. Rather than making it an at home assignment, maybe you could just do it in class instead.

Heidi

If there’s absolutely no other way to do your activity without parent involvement, the key to making sure that they stay on your side is to let them know what you need from them well in advance and send lots of reminders.

Emily

Yes, life is bonkers for everyone in December, and parents like myself will really appreciate you doing whatever you can to tame some of the crazy and remind us because we’re just gonna forget okay, we’re really busy.

Heidi

But despite the bonkers craziness of December’s it was one of my favorite months to be a teacher. Maybe my very favorite month to be a teacher. How did you feel about teaching in December, Emily?

Emily

Oh, I loved it. I remember being sad. Honestly, by winter break, of course, like ready for a break, because they’ve been crazy. But sad of like, Oh, that’s it. That’s that’s all we had time to do. Because there was so many fun things that we wanted to do and that we filled the time with. And it just feels like really magical to get to do all this fun stuff. And especially because both of us taught second grade and I feel that’s like the perfect age. So I I loved it. So what did you love about December Heidi?

Heidi

This was such a random thing. But my favorite day of planning each year was the day I printed a blank December calendar. And I started plugging in all of the stuff I want to do with my class used a pencil of course, because there were inevitably choir concerts and fire drills that I hadn’t factored in. But it was just this happy little teacher time making plans that I knew my students would love. Way more than the weather unit that I also happen to be planning.

Emily

So let’s dive into some suggestions from our Facebook group. Sarah said I teach second grade and the last few years I have had between eight to 12 students. Whoa. My teacher pal teaches fifth we are right next to each other. We Grinch out from the day after Thanksgiving break until Christmas break. It’s so much fun.

Emily

We wear a Grinch shirt every day. We have a Grinch gift or surprise each day as well. It is a lot of work, but we love it. We will pick a day to come in over Thanksgiving break to decorate and plan out Grinch tricks. Sometimes we fail and just leave a note saying your desks are a mess. And we dumped the desk but the kids love it.

Heidi

Wow. That sounds like a blast. I bet the kids talking about the Grinch all year. But it also sounds like a ton of work.

Emily

Yeah. So that’s why we wanted to start with this one. Because it’s such a great example of doing what lights you up. I don’t think I could commit to a theme that hard even when I really loved but Sarah and her teacher bestie love it. So they should keep doing it. You can tell she’s already so excited to get started this year.

Heidi

When you see all of the cool things your coworkers are doing, or the cool things that teachers share in social media. It just feeds this pressure that you need to be doing that thing too.

Emily

But forcing yourself to do what another teacher is doing, if it’s not authentic to you, is a surefire way to burn out and you want to do the things that you’re excited to do. And it’s okay to see what they’re doing and say that’s great for them, but not for me because I wouldn’t like that i wouldn’t enjoy it.

Heidi

Yeah, absolutely. Find the things that make you excited to be a teacher and lean into that. Maybe that means buying battery candles and doing daily winter yoga by candlelight while soft instrumental music plays. Or maybe that is dumping your students desk and blaming on the Grinch.

Emily

I think teachers worry that our kids will feel disappointed if we’re not doing the big exciting thing another teacher is doing. I mean, I know I’ve worried about that.

Heidi

And honestly, there may be a little bit of that disappointment. But we have to trust ourselves and the classroom culture we’ve created. If you are doing what lights you up, whatever that may be, your students will automatically buy in, even if it’s not what the teacher across the hall is doing.

Emily

So as we’re sharing ideas today, the rule is take what works for you and let the rest go guilt free.

Heidi

And if none of this works for you just send all of your good energy to those teachers out there who are about to be up to their eyeballs in Gingerbread.

Emily

Well, speaking of gingerbread, several people have fun ideas to share. Kelly said I always do a gingerbread day. We have math and literacy activities related to gingerbread, read different stories about the gingerbread man do a gingerbread craft, and decorate super cute. I teach third fourth grade literacy and math.

Heidi

There are so many fun retellings of the gingerbread man story. Every time I see a new one I have to buy it. As I was researching this podcast, I just came across the Runaway Tortilla which is now on the cart watch I ever heard of. I don’t know how I missed that one.

Emily

Well, the Gingerbread Girl and Gingerbread Baby are two of my go tos.

Heidi

I loved using those retellings to teach students how to compare similar texts. I had a whole gingerbread retelling unit that I’m pretty sure came out of a copycat magazine if you remember that, from like 2002- 2003.

Emily

The days before TPT.

Heidi

How did we manage?

Emily

But there really are so many fun gingerbread books out there not just retellings. I saw one called the plan for the gingerbread house, a stem engineering story. I don’t have that one myself, but it might be useful for anyone doing some gingerbread house building.

Heidi

And maybe someone like Shannon would appreciate that. She says My mom makes gingerbread houses with my kids every year graham crackers or milk cartons less that Mom, that’s amazing. They love them. They earn gingerbread bucks all week to buy their candy.

Heidi

And they always make sure everyone is loaded up on them. It’s good for math too, because the candy has different prices so they have to budget and plan what they can buy with what they have earned. They have a blast.

Emily

That’s so clever. Lauren also does the milk carton gingerbread houses but she does an easier version as well. She says they learn about needs and wants and goods and services. Then students create paperbag gingerbread houses that are stores and they make a town display. They write if it’s a good or service and connect it to the goods our state produces. That’s clever.

Heidi

Michelle teaches kindergarten and she says I love this time of year. My favorite activity is cookie making. I make the cookie dough and they roll it out and we bake the cookies in the classroom. That afternoon we’ll decorate them for snack.

Heidi

I remember making cookies with my mom and grandma when I was little and how much fun it was. Many of my students have never done this so I make sure it is a yearly tradition. And I’m sure her students love it too. Not just because they get cookies, but because they can tell that it means something to their teacher.

Emily

Which is why I love doing Sinterklaas with my students. Well, you know, as a couple of Dutch girls, we really didn’t have a choice so Sinterklaas or St. Nicholas, as you may know him, always visited our house growing up, so it seemed natural to extend that to our students.

Emily

I made sure we didn’t have any fire drills planned and then I had each student leave a shoe in the hallway. We went back inside and read the book the baker’s dozen, and talked about the Sinterklaas tradition. Meanwhile, the school secretary was kind enough to leave a little surprise in the kids shoes.

Heidi

I think you mean Sinterklaas.

Emily

I of course, of course.

Heidi

I just came across some photos like today of my second graders running in the hall to find a little bag of candy in their shoe. They were so excited and everyone in the photo is just a blur. We’ve been around. Those are the moments I missed the most. It was so sweet.

Heidi

I switched from candy to those like bags you get from target that has like a little coloring book and crayons in it because that was way easier. But yeah, early days with the candy bags.

Emily

I love that and there are not a ton of resources out there for teaching about Sinterklaas, we know from experience, but you can usually use a lot of St. Nicholas themed and just tell them it’s Sinterklaas, if you want to do something similar with your class, or I guess you could do St Nicholas.

Emily

Christmas in the Netherlands was one of several international holidays I did with my class. Several teachers mentioned that they do holidays around the world with their students as well.

Heidi

And several teachers mentioned Polar Express activities.

Emily

Oh yeah, that’s a popular one.

Heidi

So on the last day before winter break kindergarten teacher Meg says each student makes a train car at home that day we wear pajamas and read the story then our train parades through the school.

Emily

So I assume she means like, out of a box, right?

Heidi

Um, yes, assuming we also be we traveled to the North Pole, which is the gym we invite guardians to come and they are waiting at the North Pole with Santa. Santa gives each kid a bell and a candy cane. A local company provides each student with a nice pair of shoes too. Then we drink warm chocolate and eat cookies. It’s a tradition now and so much fun.

Emily

I love that they’re able to use that activity to provide shoes for the kids too.

Heidi

Yeah, I happen to know Meg she actually teaches down the street from our old junior high Emily, so I know what’s going on. So I imagined that shoes are a welcome gift for her students.

Emily

Oh, that’s so sweet. December is a great time of year to lean into lessons of kindness. Heather says we do several activities to promote kindness. We create a hallway display to make the Grinch grin. We also have a kindness elf that visits the week before vacation.

Emily

She brings a decoration for the classroom like lights, Garland window cleans and things like pencils that we can use to write kind letters, coloring books that we color pictures to give us gifts, candy canes, for essence, love to share with another class, Christmas card pieces for estimate cards, etc. The kiddos really get a kick out of it.

Heidi

Those are such fun ideas for making the month about giving instead of getting. If you teach in a school where you have to stay away from Christmas themes. It might be hard to adapt the Grinch or Polar Express. But a kindness elf could easily become a kindness snowman or kindness penguin. Or maybe you could find like a cute little Yeti.

Emily

And I love this idea from Becky she says the five senses of winter is always a fun interactive activity. We do a sense a week or maybe two in one week. We use a graphic organizer to identify senses and what it means to them and use what they suggested to explore our senses.

Emily

We use cups to scoop up snow or ice cubes and timed how long it took them out. Then we describe the attributes using sense language. We make cookies and drink hot chocolate made paper snowflakes to hang up. We brought in cozy blankets for texture, we let their list guide our activities.

Heidi

That sounds about my speed. I love an excuse to be cozy in the winter. But you sometimes need something more energetic to get those wiggles out. Kim recommends Minute to Win It games and Christa adds Reindeer Games Minute to Win It style.

Emily

If you aren’t familiar Reindeer Games is our December behavior management system. When the kids are on task, they earn a reindeer card. When they’ve collected the whole team of nine reindeer they earn a reward. The reward can be anything you feel like giving but Minute to Win It games are great because they’re quick, they’re lots of fun, and they require movement. So you’re helping channel some of that excess energy.

Heidi

You can get the reindeer games system as well as other December Behavior Management supports in our holiday behavior helps pack. We’ve got whole group systems like the reindeer games, small group competitive behavior systems and rewards you can use for individual students. Basically, we’ve got you covered for all of your December behavior needs.

Emily

You can find the holiday behavior helps in our store and we’ll put a link to it in the show notes.

Emily

But we’ve got more fun ideas to share and we’re running out of time. So quickly, Stephanie says pajama day and other dress up days such as Grinch day, ugly Christmas Sweater Day, etcetera. We have 12 school days in December. We have a school wide theme each day lots of fun.

Heidi

Kim says she uses Snowflake Bentley for fun activities in December. Tammy has her students make calendars to take home. Erica suggest shrinky dinks, which I think is a really fun idea. I’d never thought of doing that with my students.

Emily

Nikki is the media teacher and she loves doing Hour of Code with her students. I had to look it up, but it does look really cool. The website says it’s a free introduction to computer science through fun activities and videos for learners of all skill levels. There are lots of activities on that site. So if you want to have your students practice coding, definitely take a look there.

Heidi

Julie may be the bravest person I know because she says something simple is holiday seating, letting students sit where they want until the break. I teach third graders so it’s a big deal. I bet they do love it.

Emily

I’m sure they do but I don’t think God made me strong enough. But I love that she loves that. I love that for you, Julie good for you.

Heidi

A spin on changing around seating that doesn’t involve a free for all is this suggestion from Sue. She says we decorate our desks they bring in wrapping paper bows, small trinkets, lights, etc. It’s great fun. It doesn’t hold up too well but they decorate the sides and legs as well. So that lasts a little longer.

Emily

That does sound fun. I saw a similar tip on Instagram where the teachers had students earn desk decorating as a reward. Then they wrap their desks in black and white wrapping paper so the kids could color it as a fast finisher. And I did track down some black and white wrapping paper from American Greetings, you get 3 12 foot rolls for $15. Definitely measure though to make sure that’s enough.

Heidi

And it has some fun designs on it. So it’s like outline kind of like coloring book style. Yeah. So there’s like, it’s more Christmasy ones. And then some like snowman, you get all three rolls together, so you can’t really pick. But if $15 is too pricey to do this year, maybe put a reminder in your phone to check back after Christmas, and see if the price is dropped. No telling on Amazon, but it’s worth a check.

Emily

Well, that’s a pretty good list of ideas. I think anything else you want to add Heidi?

Heidi

Oh, just a couple quick things I loved. I love doing the Nutcracker with my students. I mean, we didn’t do the Nutcracker, we’d read a picture book by Deborah Heitzig. And do some fun activities with that. It’s a really good story for teaching about setting. And then we do some patterning rhythm activities with the march of the toy soldiers.

Heidi

And I also really love teaching my students that actions to 12 days of Christmas. We do it as a brain break a few times a month. I just always laughed so the kids begrudgingly put up with it, but it was fun. What about you, Emily, anything to add?

Emily

Well, I did always like to do a book Advent. Now I know it’s not truly an Advent because we’re not doing all 24 days before Christmas. I just have to make that caveat. But I would wrap up some of my favorite Christmas books, usually the like nice hardback ones that I don’t put up for the kids, you know.

Emily

And then everyday we’d unwrapped one to read together, which is just a fun way to get in more reading, sharing some of my favorite stories. It makes it more novel to get to unwrap the book before you read it. So I always think that’s fun one.

Heidi

That is a fun one. And you can easily do winter books instead of Christmas specific books. And that’s still a fun way to add magic to the month of December. And let’s be honest, any excuse to read a picture book is a win.

Emily

And don’t forget, we also have our Christmas festive breaks. Those are a great way to drop a few minutes of seasonal FUN into your day without having to sacrifice a whole day’s learning to a theme.

Heidi

Yeah, we’ve got simple crafts and games and other fun activities that take 15 minutes or less. The Christmas activities are done now and I am working hard to get those winter themed ones done as well.

Emily

Hopefully you’re feeling ready to take on December now. But if not, Teresa has this suggestion. Pray for snow.

Heidi

And if that doesn’t work, or even if it snows, you’re not likely to get a snow day. We’ll use this tip from April which is to survive with a laughy face emoji.

Emily

We’d love to hear the fun things you deal with students in December come join the conversation in our teacher approved Facebook group.

Emily

Now let’s talk about this week’s teacher approved tip. Each week, we leave you with a small actionable tip that you can apply in your classroom today. This week’s teacher approved tip is add some rigor into your fun. What can you tell us about that, Heidi?

Heidi

Well, I am all for having fun with your students fun without having to excuse it. I don’t think there’s enough fun left in education these days. But that being said, we can’t do fun all month. And there’s a lot we can do to elevate our seasonal activities from being enjoyable to being impactful.

Heidi

Maybe if you’re doing gingerbread houses, you could make it a stem activity. And I mean like a real stem activity where students are solving a problem and they’re planning and experimenting with solutions. Or if you’re doing holidays around the world, you could take the content deeper, and talk about what the holiday teaches you about that culture.

Heidi

The book Unpack Your Impact by Naomi O’Brien and Leisha Tab is a great resource for this. And I know they have some awesome units already done like a you know gingerbread that has a lot of cool features in it. I actually haven’t taught with their materials before. So this is just based on their book, but it would be worth a look, I think.

Emily

I think they do a great job of really extending the conversation around social studies and everything that that entails. So we’ll put a link to that gingerbread unit in the show notes if you want to check it out.

Heidi

To wrap up the show we are sharing what we’re giving extra credit to this week. Emily, what could share extra credit?

Emily

Well, I’m giving extra credit to the book Santa Shark by Mike Lowery. Now we just got this book and it is a Sinterklaas gift for my son so kids that have not read it yet, but I’ll give you the gist from Amazon.

Emily

Basically, while humans may count the days until Santa Claus arrives deep in the ocean, Edgar a goofy toothy young shark prepares for the arrival of Santa shark. But Lada his sidekick crab Powell is not as convinced. Still Lada helps Edgar get his home ready in a race against time they prepare a tasty snack for Santa write Christmas cards to their friends and sing Christmas carols like jingle shells, jingle shells Jingle all the waves.

Heidi

Is it a picture book?

Emily

It is and if you know Mike Lowry, he does this really unique illustration style that that does something really interesting with the text is sort of part of the illustrations. It’s very hard to describe this would be much easier if I could be like holding up example of his style. But if you know Mike Lowery, you know what I’m talking about, but I will put a link in the show notes. You can go check this book out. I think my son’s gonna get a big kick.

Heidi

Oh, that’s right up his alley.

Emily

Yeah. What are you giving extra to Heidi?

Heidi

Well, my extra credit goes to the Netflix series, the Movies That Made Us.

Emily

Oh, I love that show.

Heidi

I know it’s been out for a few years. I looked up and I think it came out in 2019. But kind of forgot about it. But thanks to the strike, I have rediscovered it because I need a new show. And it’s I know it feels weird. Maybe not offering something seasonal after we’ve just done all that. But they do have episodes on elfin home alone. So there you go.

Emily

That’s the ones I’ve watched, I think the seasonal ones.

Heidi

Well, I had seen those. So I’m going back and figuring out the rest. So I just watched ones on like Ghostbusters and Jurassic Park. That dirty dancing and was so good. Oh, I do live series on horror movies that I skipped right over. Yeah, that’s now. The rest of the episodes have been really good. I love it.