Holidays Around the World

Pack your bags and get your passports ready-it's the holidays! The children have had so much fun working on our social studies unit centered on culture and the holidays. We started off studying Kwanzaa and talking about it's similarities to other holidays.
Then we made passports, created luggage and headed off on Thompson Airlines. We check in with the airline, head over to our seats to color our maps of our destination, buckle our seat belts and put our tray tables in the upright position and take off! When we land we check in at the customs desk with our passport. There we practice the local language by saying Merry Christmas in the native tongue. Then our tour guide picks us up at our hotel and takes us over a local museum or cultural center to learn about that countries tradition.
Our first stop was Italy where we learned about the Legend of Old Befana. We wrote about the story and created mini Befanas.
The next day we headed to Germany where we learned that Christmas trees originated from there. We created paper Christmas trees and also did some German paper cutting.
Today we went to Mexico where we learned of the Legend of Poinsettia and then made a poinsettia from butcher paper. Countries left on our world tour: Sweden, England and France. We will also be learning about Hanukkah.
Next week we will take turns in each first grade classroom learning more about Holidays Around the World!