Celebrating Christmas and Holidays Around the World is one of our favorite kindergarten units. We get to to explore cultures, customs, holidays, and traditions. This social studies unit is perfect for December and for meeting standards while making the holiday seasons fun and memorable and EASIER! Keep reading to see these holidays lessons for kindergarten!
Holidays Around The World: The Trip
For our holidays around the world experience, we visit different countries around the world to learn about their holidays. We make this a mini little classroom transformation each day! Listen, we love a good set-the-stage moment, but we don’t have the time or energy to do Broadway-style productions so keep it simple! When you’re going on a trip around the world, you have to fly on a plane. And if you’re going to fly on a plane, you need a ticket. Each day, the students get a plane ticket for the country they visit.
To fly to each country, we use a video of an airplane taking off, and then we use Google Earth to show where the country is compared to our school. We start at our school and Google Earth “flies” us to the country. This is a great activity to pull in geography standards!
To find this video of the jet taking off, click HERE!
See how easy that little transformation was? Google Earth and a YouTube video, and you get to fly around the world. That’s how we roll in our classroom!
When traveling internationally, you also need a passport! Each student gets their own passport. Every day, they color the stamp for the country, and we use a date stamp to stamp the date we visit the country! I see all these cute suitcases and passports everywhere, but you’ll, I don’t have time or energy for that. They’re cute but I like to keep it simple around here because I’m tired. My kids love this passport. It’s one page. They get to color it, and the real highlight is the stamp. Nothing fancy, and kids love it. Keep it simple ya’ll!
Holidays Around The World: Social Studies
For our Holidays Around The World project, we visit 14 different countries plus we learn about several holidays that are not attached to a single country. For each country, we do a read-aloud, use an informational PowerPoint to learn facts about how the country celebrates Christmas or what holiday they celebrate, complete a graphic organizer, and the students complete their research journal page. Again, it’s simple and fun. I read a book. We do a Powerpoint with a few slides and we’ve learned about a country or holiday.
The read-alouds are not necessarily informational but relate to the country or holiday or some piece of how that country celebrates Christmas or holidays. For example, we read a Christmas tree book for Germany because Christmas trees are important in their celebration. For Mexico, we read The Night Of Las Posadas, which is a story about some of the celebrations in Mexico. (Our read aloud list is included in our Holidays Around The World creation!)
CLICK HERE TO SEE OUR READ ALOUDS ON AMAZON
Then, we will view an informational PowerPoint presentation for the country. This is the research portion of the project. We learn how to say Merry Christmas in the language and learn about decorations, food, who brings presents, and things that make their culture and celebrations unique.
The information from the PowerPoint helps us complete our graphic organizer!
Holidays Lessons For Kindergarten: Customs And Traditions
We also bring activities, customs, and traditions from as many countries as possible into our classroom. We love a good moment or experience in class. Creating memories is what we do. This brings the information to life in a concrete, hands-on way. And this: INVOLVE THE FAMILIES! We are so blessed to have a diverse population, so we have families make homemade foods and provide decorations, clothing, etc. So take this opportunity to make this unit personal and involve families!
When we visit England, we watch The King give his Christmas speech. Every year, this is the quietest 10 minutes ever. I love how fascinated the kids are by THE REAL King! (The video of the Queen’s Speech is found HERE!)
In Germany, St. Nicholas leaves treats in shoes. So we leave our shoes outside of our classroom, hoping St. Nicholas will leave us treats! Wanna know what kids remember? That they got candy in their shoes. True story. So simple but so memorable.
For Mexico, we bust a piñata! Ya’ll. This is terrifying. Giving kids a stick to beat something while blindfolded. Terrifying but also hilarious.
We also display the flags of each country we visit, as well as decorations from different countries and holidays. We have a menorah, poinsettias, a kinara for Kwanzaa, a lantern for Ramadan, etc. Yes. Do the decorations. Yes, make it inclusive.
Holidays Around The World Activities: Art Projects
Art is a big part of our classroom and our Holidays Around The World activities! We do an art project for each country to represent some aspect of the country and how they celebrate Christmas or holidays. (NOTE: These are NOT included in our creation but can be found in a blog post linked below!)
For more Holidays Around The World craft ideas, check out this post:
Holidays Around The World: Food
We use food to celebrate Holidays Around The World. For the food, we take two approaches. As much as possible, we use authentic food from each country: tamales from Mexico, panotonne from Italy, etc. The other approach uses food and snacks to represent parts of the culture. For example, Swiss Cake Rolls are yule logs, Christmas Tree cakes for Germany, chocolate cake for Buche de noel from France, and crab dip for seafood. (We do include some recipes and snack ideas in our Holidays Around The World creation!)
This is another great time to involve families. I send home a note explaining what we’re doing and asking if anyone wants to contribute food. We’ve had homemade King cake, banana pudding, and rice pudding. Families love being involved, and this is the perfect way to have families contribute to the classroom.
