Christmas Around the World

Our first visit is to France so, of course, we read a Madeline book!

We chart some facts that we learn about Christmas traditions in France.  Forgive my spelling of Claus (Clause), I must have just watched the movie!



I use a world map that I got from the dollar spot at Target and we place stickers on the countries that we are studying.







We make our own Yule Logs for our book and have
Swiss Rolls for our own Yule Log cakes!



We watch this video while we eat our Yule Log cakes!



The children need a photo on their passport so they make their own! 

  

They get a stamp in their passport for each country we visit.  I used a Santa stamp for Papa Noel.  The children tell me something they learned about Christmas in France while I stamp their passport.



We had a mini-lesson on the five parts of a friendly letter as we wrote our class letter to Santa.  Notice the spelling-we sounded out each word that was not a sight word that we have learned.  The children were able to read the letter back to me fluently.  This will help as they sound out words for their letter to Santa.



Now it is time to write our own letters to Santa. 
This child is from Ms. Potts' class- what a sweet letter.




She sounded out and illustrated each item on her list!

I will post more about our Christmas around the World unit as we work on it the rest of this week.  I have tried it many different ways and this year, I felt the need to simplify this unit in order to incorporate the Grinch unit from Chalk Talk.  We are also in the midst of DIBELS testing, completing report card assessments and making tons of Christmas ornaments as I am certain most of you are, as well.  There are only so many hours in the day!!  Hang in there!