Holidays Around the World

Holidays Around the World 

Hey, y'all! One of my favorite units is our holidays around the world unit. We learn about culture, geography, traditions, differing opinions, and--my students' favorite--the fact that not everyone celebrates on the same day. This is how the kids justify how Santa gets around to everyone's houses in time!

We start off by building excitement! We prepare our passports and put together our "suitcases." I usually get donations of paper grocery sacks from the local stores (Trader Joe's has always been happy to donate!).  These are bigger and sturdier than stapling construction paper to make giant envelopes. We color the suitcase cover shown above, then glue it to the front of our suitcase. We keep our passports in them and any crafts we create. 

Inside the passports are stamps to each country we visit. As we learn about the country or celebration, we color in the stamp that matches it. We look on our world map to see where we're visiting in relation to where we currently are and where the other places are that we've been to. 

We get our books ready and we read a passage about each country or celebration. We typically do one place a day and a craft to go with it to help students remember. The books are half-page sized in order to save paper. You could copy front to back to make them even smaller or use the backs of pages for students to take notes or draw something that stood out to them. 

I've included at least one minimal prep craft idea for each celebration. No copies needed! Just some construction paper and crayons, and sometimes a few other supplies you probably already have on hand (toilet paper rolls, sentence strips, etc.). I hate doing a big unit and having to have a ton of supplies on hand, so I made the crafts with this unit as painless and stress free as possible!

Countries and celebrations included are: Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Diwali, Chinese New Year, and Christmas in the US, Australia, Brazil, France, Sweden, Norway, Spain, Italy, and Mexico (Las Posadas). More could also be added at a later date. 

At the end of the unit, we do a little review of the things we learned, then students choose two celebrations to compare and contrast. It's a simple and easy way for me to assess some of what they've learned. 

This holidays around the world unit can be found in my Teachers Pay Teachers store here. There is also a digital version that includes both the printable and Google Classroom™ versions. You can find that bundle here. 

I'm always adding new resources to my store so be sure to check back often and follow my store to see the latest and greatest.

I hope this helped and you found some new teaching ideas for your classroom. Have a wonderful, relaxing week and I'll talk to you soon. 

Stay cozy,