Holidays

Some of the best memories I have of school days are the ones for holidays.  The parties, the crafts, the RELAXING with my friends! I have a few favorites that I will post.


CHINESE NEW YEAR

My favorite for my class: A HUGE CHINESE NEW YEAR PARTY.....and I mean HUUUUGE!  30 ft dragon and all!  We learn all about Chinese culture on a Smart board trip through the country.  We do a lot of crafting and writing in this unit and end it with food from a local Chinese restaurant!  

These were sent home for the kids to decorate with their parents.  They had to find material to cover them with.  They were so cute and creative.  Click on the picture and you can see the materials.

This is our colorful dragon parade! 

FREEBIE! FREEBIE!FREEBIE! Run camera off on card stock. Hang photos down from the bottom of the camera. Glue the next sheet right under the writing on the previous entry.

 My kids have cardboard cutouts of  the cameras above. This comes  with photo paper to journal.  As I show each slide, they snap away like they are actually there!  SO FUN!  When the lesson is finished, they draw one of the pictures that they "took" and photo journal about what they saw. Photo journaling is a great writing activity for your Writer's Workshop! We talk a lot about giving details and using adjectives.

 I model the journaling A LOT before we get started.  I write things like, "OH MY GOSH!  I stood on the Great Wall today!  It went over and over lots of mountains as far as I could see!"  because I want them to use their VOICE. I require that they include facts that they learned in my lesson, so I model...
"There were tall watchtowers where horses and supplies used to be kept. I got to go inside and look around one of them. I could see out of the tiny windows where the soldiers watched for enemies. It was neat seeing all of the thick bricks that people were forced to make." I'm always surprised at how well they remember the facts that I'm trying to teach when they have to write them down! The more pages they do, the better they get at listening for things to write down and draw.  These really are a treasure of the unit too and parents love looking at them!  I have a few older students come visit each year and they tell me that they still have everything from our China unit.  Melts my heart!

THIS SITE HAS A FREE DRAGON MASK PRINTABLE.

THIS SITE HAS DIRECTIONS FOR A LANTERN- but see my tip below, too!