Have the kids create snowflakes out of paper to hang from the ceiling. At my school, this lines up with our “four pillars”: knowledge, community, effort, and kindness. Holiday celebrations can be wonderful opportunities for children to learn about the traditions and values that are cherished parts of people's lives. Anti-bias teaching requires critical thinking and problem solving by both children and adults.” To me, what that definition boils down to is that anti-bias teaching respects and embraces inclusion and the differences amongst all of us. That’s why it’s interesting, even surprising, that nearly 100 percent of students say they celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Easter, Passover, and Halloween. Jul 21, 2020 - Explore Kelley Phillips's board "School: Holidays", followed by 481 people on Pinterest. Every year I ask myself, what do these children understand about their relationship to their holidays? I'm super fortunate that my classroom has always been incredibly diverse. Sciences, Culinary Arts and Personal Teacher Essentials. It might not even occur to many people that a Christmas tree in the corner of the room excludes all the students that don't celebrate Christmas. What's New. Even the most well-intentioned teachers might accidentally stereotype certain religions or cultures. Holidays & Special Days | Education World. Encourage students to bring in a dish related to a holiday they celebrate. Rewriting "The Twelve Days of Christmas" and The Polar Express Ranell Cox, a teacher in Ponte Vedra, Florida, challenges her class to develop a new theme and lyrics for the familiar carol "The Twelve Days of … These are just a few of the tips I have learned in my long teaching career that has helped me survive the holiday season in my classroom. Halloween, following the bounty of the harvest season, is the beginning of the dark time of the year, a scary period for early agrarian societies. It happens every year. In October, I draw a large circular calendar and mark October 31. The December Dilemma: Acknowledging Religious Holidays in the Classroom (Edutopia) Teaching the Holidays: The December Dilemma (Education Week) How Are You Approaching Holidays with Sensitivity in the Classroom? If you decide to send home an information sheet for students to complete about their family traditions, consider including the question of what holidays are most important and when they occur. If that is the case in your classroom, offer an alternate activity or focus on a service project, as suggested above. Additionally, not every person who celebrates Christmas even has a tree. The holidays are the perfect time to engage your students with seasonal-themed activities. It also takes the pressure off you, as you may be feeling concerned that you need to know everything about your students' observances. We also dance around the Maypole. How we teach about holidays is a reflection of how our community values expanding our knowledge about ourselves and our neighbors. There is, however, the potential for problems when you discuss religious themes in a public school, like a parent complaining that you are preaching. (BAM! “Christmas is the reason for the season,” he said. They can present their findings to the classroom, and the ideas can be used to inspire a multicultural holiday celebration. Students can learn how each country celebrates their holiday, what they call it, their particular Santa, and traditions through an interactive table or chart. It's important to create a classroom environment where all of your students feel welcome and represented. Ask them to write a recipe … In this series, Mike focuses on how to use Morning Meeting to set a positive tone for the day during the build-up to winter holidays and school vacation. When talking about whether or not to celebrate holidays in the classroom, you may have heard about something called “the December dilemma.” According to Diversity Best Practices , the December dilemma refers to “that time of year where multiple holidays collide and people with good intentions can find themselves in the middle of potentially toxic misunderstandings.” Be sure to celebrate holidays that are relevant to the children in your care. In May, I teach the children English Morris dances, which date back to springtime planting celebrations of more than a thousand years ago. by TeachThought Staff. Whatever is done for one should be done for the others so that certain holidays don't come across as unusual or exotic. Earn Transferable Credit & Get your Degree, Biological and Biomedical This annual celebration highlights the need to protect our nation’s birds, … If you need other ideas for holidays outside of December, Teacher.org presents a list of major American holidays, and Study.com offers a lesson on major holidays around the world. Those don't often make the best combinations in the classroom. It’s Bird Day! You can avoid controversial topics and still honor a diversity of holiday stories, characters, and rituals as symbols of positive values. Leave this field blank. Select holidays and religious celebrations based on your classroom representation. Then you can hang their pictures, and all of your students will be represented. Celebrating holidays in the classroom inclusively is an opportunity for educators to teach students about different belief systems, including atheism. This is sponsored content from education.com.They only wanted to let you know about the free activities and downloads they have available on their Pinterest page and allowed us to create the content itself free from any influence. We’ve made it through the beginning of another school year. One of the best ways to create an inclusive holiday celebration is to avoid the pitfalls of stereotypical foods and Santa hats by using the season as a time of giving. It is important to note that like the values we instill in our children at school, the holidays of many world religions share common themes, such as thankfulness, caring for others, peace, and forgiveness. Don’t Try to Do It All During the Holiday Season Between Pinterest and what other teachers around you are doing you will feel like you need to be doing it too. Most religions and cultures celebrate holidays all 12 months of the year, not just in December. Guess the Holiday. Older students can use this as a time for research. Just as your students get into a routine, the holidays descend. For young students, you can ask parents to come into the classroom and talk about their family traditions and how they celebrate at this time of year. I’m all about teaching kids about world religions. Gateways to Better Education (GTBE) Phone: (800) 929-1163. This exposes students to different traditions even among the same religion. Search. Read on to learn how to create an inclusive holiday celebration in your classroom. Keene, New Hampshire, where I teach music today, is a relatively secular community. Parents seem to understand that teaching about the commonalities in holiday stories reinforces cultural understanding. accommodation [ ə-kä-mə dā-shən ] noun, An agreement that allows people, groups, etc., to work together. Most importantly, teaching children about the holidays guides them into lifelong learning and into thoughtfully and reflectively celebrating their own holidays within our diverse society. Each student and their family will celebrate the holidays differently. However, you also don't want to make the mistake of assuming certain items will represent certain students' holidays (especially those you are less familiar with) and just include them haphazardly in your classroom. Including diverse holidays. Make a face that looks like a cartoon Santa using fruits. It can be individual wreaths, that the kids then get to take home, or create one large wreath. Many holidays include the motif of light, which you can use to begin to discuss what they have in common: Teachers sometimes focus on the winter holidays just to provide cover for discussing Christmas. Technicians will be restoring service as quickly as possible. Statistically speaking, it falls below the national average for religiosity, with just over 20 percent of the population officially affiliating with a specific church, temple, or mosque. Then, after I ask students to identify what date is exactly six months later (May 1), they see that across the circle is May Day, the ancient beginning of spring. The cards include legal documentation and lesson plan ideas that pass constitutional muster. Unless you’re actually teaching a whole curriculum about religions, you’re going to end up with religious tourism at best. Even if our holiday celebrations look different within our classroom there's no denying the whismy of the bright lights on people's homes and the songs we hear. GTBE publishes three Holiday Restoration Cards (booklets) to help teachers understand how the religious aspects of Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter can be taught in the classroom. Integrate STEM in your classroom and celebrate Christmas and other Winter Holidays! For more on how to plan Morning Meetings that will help with classroom management at this time of year, see Mike Anderson’s “Handling the Holidays” series from December 2009 on the Responsive blog.. Students can be split into groups and learn about a holiday: its origin, traditions and how it is celebrated around the world. Holidays are important for many reasons, and children should be able to celebrate them in some way during school time. Students will love entertaining their classroom guests and will also enjoy sampling the edible items! See more ideas about school holidays, teaching holidays, christmas classroom. If done well, an inclusive holiday celebration can help students learn about diversity. As Hanukkah comes to a close and Christmas approaches, many teachers will decorate with candy canes, glittered Christmas trees and construction-papered dreidels. Once this is complete, they can share with the classroom or pin their sheets up on a board. Search. The holidays can be challenging for teachers whose many students celebrate many different holidays. Making one religion or holiday seem exotic would have the opposite effect on the classroom dynamic. Having taught about holidays for the better part of 15 years in four schools, I have rarely been questioned but know there’s always the potential concerned parent. 12 Ideas For Holiday Activities In The Classroom. Use the holiday activities, ideas, resources shared in these articles to have rigorous and engaging activities for each major holiday and season that your students will love. You can’t celebrate all holidays in a meaningful way in the classroom. It will be a fun activity that will get your family in the holiday spirit, and spice up your snack time with healthy treats. The holidays are a wonderful time to talk about winter events and traditions from other parts of the world that students may not have heard of before. When beginning a lesson about the winter holidays right around Thanksgiving, I ask the question, “What is one thing many of the winter holiday traditions have in common?” Among many correct answers, the one I am looking for is “light.” The stories, traditions, and lore of Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and even Chinese New Year contain things like stars, fireworks, lamps, candles, and fire. It's important to create a classroom environment where all of your students feel welcome and represented. It is no mistake that winter was chosen to celebrate important events -- in a season of darkness, a savior, optimism, and knowledge are all symbolized by light amid the darkness. Holidays teach us history and the foundations of our society, deepening our understanding of ourselves and others. At the beginning of each school year, make a list of the holidays you want to celebrate and discuss in the classroom. Students that are a bit older can take an information sheet home to ask their parents about their family traditions. Why do so many teachers find it hard to teach academically and meaningfully about all the holidays in a public school setting? Kids will love creating a wreath to hang in the classroom. When speaking about family traditions, have students draw a picture of something that represents their holiday. To celebrate in the classroom, we make paper crowns, star boy hats, watch a clip of a real procession, and learn traditional Swedish folk dances. The holidays can be used to explore how people of diverse backgrounds practice similar values. Ideas for Teaching Holidays Around the World. As we work to instill a strong sense of community and tolerance in our children, teaching the shared values of the holidays fits right in with our social and academic curricula. Jump to Navigation. Students can collect items for care packages for service members overseas, collect canned foods, draw pictures for nursing home residents or host a bake sale to raise money for a certain charity. Teachers everywhere are counting down the days to the miraculous winter break. St. Patrick's Day is a fun little holiday that comes during a time in the classroom when behavior can be a bit dicey. In December, students are excited to get time off school and, in some cases, to celebrate their special traditions. Service Disruption. And while Kwanzaa is important, so is Juneteenth, Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Indigenous People's Day. One can teach about the holidays from October all the way through May, beginning with the harvest and the holidays of Halloween and Diwali and ending with the rituals of Passover, Easter, and May Day. © copyright 2003-2021 Study.com. Find teaching resources for a variety of holidays and special days. Services, Working Scholars® Bringing Tuition-Free College to the Community. The holidays are such a magical time of year. The Snowman Bath Bomb Activity is a fun and unique way to engage your students while learning. “So why can’t you sing about Jesus?” Public school teachers know that the answer is tied up in the U.S. Constitution, but the question did prompt me to ask myself a question that I still ponder today. This time of year, students are excited about the holidays. However, St. Patrick's Day can add a bit of fun and whimsy into what can otherwise be a stressful month. The holidays are unavoidable, but you can be prepared to create an inclusive celebration in the classroom that goes beyond tacking up symbolic holiday images on your classroom bulletin board. St. Nicholas Day is observed on December 6th. St. Nicholas Day. 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