Mme B's Classroom

Holidays Around the World

As the holidays draw near, it’s the perfect time to teach your students about how different cultures celebrate Winter holidays around the world. In this post I’ll share lots of ideas, activities, and even some freebies to make teaching holidays around the world magical for both you and your students!

My little classroom of 22 students, in our Nations Capital, has at least 5 different religions being represented, and a dozen or so countries of origin (both born or identify as). In my Core French classroom, I typically avoid holidays and focus on the vocabulary surrounding the seasons, conversational necessities and local activities. My Immersion classes, however, are a different story.

Have a Holidays Around the World Classroom Party

For a week in December, starting the Monday after December 6, I will have stations of Holidays around the classroom. Students will find the station they want to start with, and they will have 30 minutes to engage with it. 2 stations per day, for a week, makes 10 stations. There will be more than 10 stations available, should students want to take the missed ones home with them. But this also gives them options to decide if there is a group they don’t want to learn about. While I have enormous opinions on this, I can not force a group of students to learn about another group while outside of the Curriculum expectations. I can give them the opportunity, while directing their language when speaking about other groups.

Magical Ways to Teach Holidays Around the World

Reading and writing opportunities are boundles. Having your class compare customs, read informational texts, watch videos of unique traditions, students will get a real sense of belonging in the classroom culture and highlight differences around the world.

The over all activity is Passport themed. Students will be “Traveling” around the world and learning about different groups/celebrations and creating fun crafts at the end. Read along to find out what each piece entails. Don’t forget to come back as I update with more information.

Side note – Why December 6? As my Grade 4/5 students are learning about different parts of Canada, I wanted to make sure we didn’t leave out important cultural information while discussing the provinces. December 6 is the anniversary of the Halifax Explosion. The Boston Tree is discussed in the Canada booklet, but I want to make sure students are aware of how unique each province is.

Passport

Students will start the activity by receiving a passport. They will include their names and brief bio information on the inside. There are spaces inside the passport to glue their travel stamps as they visit each country.

Each country has a stamp sheet that students will cut out and glue to their passport when the station is completed. This is a fun way of keeping track of their activities.

Suitcase

Students will also be given a large paper bag. They will have an Activity logo that they can colour and glue to the front of their suitcase, and any other decorations they want to add to the bag. This is where they will store all of their papers and crafts associated with the activity.

Booklets

These booklets were created years ago for another activity and I have always wanted to bring them back and spruce them up. These booklets have short passages, geared towards small snippets of information regarding the specific Celebration.

There are a few variations on Christmas; how different cultures celebrate Christmas in their own unique way. While others showcase different religions and what they celebrate around this time of year.

My son was vary gracious when he helped me expand my definition of “time of year”. While I don’t claim to know enough about each celebration to dedicate an entire lesson on their date, I can include celebrations like Diwali and Chinese New Year into this activity.

Informational Passages

Content similar to the booklets, these are full page informational passages with comprehension questions to be turned in. There is a dictionary/translation page at the station for any student that doesn’t understand the newer/bigger words being presented. But they should have a working knowledge of the vocabulary being presented.

Questions are placed in the form of a boarding pass, in which students will need to collect and return at the end of the activity. These can also act as your exit tickets.

I know it can be hard to squeeze time into your social studies schedule, which is why I reserve these activities for my French Language Arts – or Literacy – block.

Serve in-flight snacks – Optional

According to the Ontario Safe Schools policy, teachers are not permitted to bring home-made treats into the classroom. This is to protect everyone from known and unknown allergies, contamination, or dietary restrictions. Properly labeled, store bought foods are allowed however. If Teacher wishes to go this route, I would recommend reaching out to parents before investing, to make sure every child is cared for.

Note: There are some religions (ie Sikh) that can not consume foods that are prepared in the name of God (ie Kosher, or Halal). These are all kinds of considerations that need to be made before deciding to bring snacks into the classroom for this activity.

Send home a souvenir craft from Holidays Around the World

I have created a snowglobe craft to be completed by early finishers and we will assemble it together in class on the last day of school before the winter break.

I would like to have a special craft at the station itself, it would represent some portion of the Celebration. Instructions are in English, and all material is provided. If students don’t finish the craft during their station time, they are welcome to collect the needed items into their suitcase and complete it as “Early Finisher work” another day, or bring it home. This is still in the works and will be added to the bundle once it is ready.

Team Teach

I love the idea of team-teaching activities like this. If there is a time crunch, your team-teaching isn’t sure how to incorporate Holidays Around the world into their lessons, or you just want something a little extra special, try moving around the school to accomplish the same activity.

Your teaching partner, or other teachers within your grade, can host a variety of Holidays in their classrooms, and students will rotate between the rooms to accomplish the same task. This can be held during an entire block, so 2 hours, like a mini Winter Celebration, held the last block of the day for the entire week, or however you want to schedule it.

My TPT Holidays Around the World can be purchased in English and in French, therefore purchasing both units will allow for all teachers to access the material for their assigned subjects.

Snowglobe

After our 5 days of activities, I will hand out another set of colouring sheets. These will be coloured during one period, then continued to work on during early Finisher or at home. Once coloured, they are cut them glued together to form a 3D snow globe of the various celebrations we just learned.

Not all celebrations can be displayed within this snow globe, so teacher will need to decide which celebrations to print out, or students can pick and choose which ones they want to include in their snow globe, like a mix and match. There are no wrong answers, only wrong language.

Why so much choice?

In this new world where even children are exposed to divisive politics and language, it is important that these conversations stay outside of the classroom. My deal-breaker classroom rule is to always respect those around you, even if you don’t agree with them. In my classroom, I have students from various Religions and Countries of Origin that are clashing currently on the political level. The last thing I want to do is thrust a celebration in their face that goes against what they believe in their home. At the same time, I need them to know that others exist in their classroom, and in this world, and we must respect them as individuals regardless of our personal beliefs.


This is why I will always acknowledge that various groups exist, they are welcome in the classroom, they are being showcased in this activity, as any culture should. Disagreements will go as far as skipping that station and moving on; there will be no discussion, protests or other negative words/actions taking place.

It is my belief that this is the best way I know how to normalize diversity and acceptance, while respecting personal differences.

Options

The Celebrations Around the World activity does not rely on any specific Celebration to be completed. If Teacher wishes that a number of activities be removed from the rotation, it will not affect the outcome of the activity.

The passport will need to be modified to reflect the changes, but that can easily be fixed within Canva or strategic cut-and-paste to add/remove celebrations.

On TPT

Be sure to head to TPT to get your own copy of this growing bundle.

Celebrations around the world! Take the class around the world to experience how they celebrate Christmas or other important cultural celebrations during the Oct-Feb holiday season 

This unit includes countries such as 

Activities include 

This is a growing bundle!! That means more countries are on their way 

Expect to see:

This unit is perfect for elementary French immersion or secondary core French students.   

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Christine Boudreau

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