Holidays Around the World

I am sure that by now you've heard about our whirlwind trip around the world with our pal, Globe Trot Scott, as we learned all about holiday traditions around the world. Scott, our tour guide, sent us a package each day filled with information and souvenirs to help us become familiar with the holiday customs and beliefs of different cultures.

The package that Globe Trot Scott sent to us from each country.

Our passport with our information and a page for each country that we learned about.

We learned about the winter holidays in Germany, Italy, Mexico, Sweden, England, Russia, Australia, Israel and finished with sharing the traditions of our own families here in America. For each country, we read a traditional holiday story, read an informational text about holiday practices for that country, and we made a craft to help us remember each country. We even had some special guests visit to teach us about their families' traditions.

Violet's mom, Ashley, dressed up as La Befana and taught us about holiday traditions in Italy.

Mrs. Archer, the school secretary, shared artifacts from Sweden and taught us about the holiday traditions there. 

Traditional Swedish decorations.

Take a look at our crafts here:

A traditional note left inside a napkin in Italy.

A poinsettia flower, a symbol of the holidays in Mexico.

Eli models his crown for St. Lucia Day in Sweden.

Gingerbread ornaments are traditional in Germany.

A sandman (since Australia doesn't have snow at this time of year!)

A Russian Matryoshka doll. 

We also spent time during the month of December practicing for our Kindergarten Holiday Sing-A-Long. Thank you to everyone who attended the show! The students were so excited and proud of their hard work (and they looked absolutely adorable!)

This month has been full of wonderful learning and special activities. One of our favorites was Polar Express Day! We got to wear our pajamas and enjoy the classic story of The Polar Express. We also enjoyed some yummy homemade hot cocoa and popcorn as we watched the movie.

We spent time on Friday before vacation learning about reindeer. We read the story of the most famous reindeer of all (Rudolph, of course!) and also read an informational text about reindeer and compared and contrasted the two. We even turned ourselves into reindeer!

Friday afternoon was filled with another sing-a-long and our class celebration. Thank you to everyone for making this extra special for our class! We had so much fun together!

 I hope you all had a wonderful and relaxing holiday spent with family and friends! As wonderful as vacation was, I was thrilled to get back to my favorite kindergartners to continue our learning and fun together!