This time of year can be hectic. Between the celebrations, grades due, and sugared-up students, I know it can be hard to write lesson plans and include meaningful activities. So I wanted to put together an ultimate list of holiday resources that are perfect for kindergarten, first, and second grade to make lesson planning as stress-free as possible.
These resources cover all subjects and major holidays including Christmas (and Christmas around the world), Hannukah, Kwanzaa, and New Year’s. There are resources to help you through an entire lesson in a subject, and there are resources to help you integrate across subject areas to dig deeper into a topic. These holiday resources are always a hit in the classroom!
These flip books are the perfect holiday resources to integrate Christmas around the world with reading and writing. There are seven countries covered: Mexico, Germany, Australia, Italy, Sweden, France, and America. You can also save money by purchasing them all in a bundle.
These holiday resources have a voice-over PowerPoint to help you teach about Christmas traditions around the world. It also has Google Slides without a voice-over for students to use in stations or independently. It’s perfect to use if you rotate students through classrooms for Christmas around the world activities or just to help you teach stress-free. There are downloads for Mexico, Italy, Sweden, Germany, Australia, France, and America.
Teach your students all about Christmas, Kwanzaa, and Hanukkah with these engaging units. Each one has vocabulary cards, graphic organizers, pocket book sorts, mini-readers, and more. Click HERE for the bundle with all three to save!
Celebrate the start of 2020 with your students with the help of THIS six-page flip up book. It will help your students reflect on the past year and set goals for the upcoming year. Just print, fold, staple, and done!
These flip up books are perfect for science, reading, and social studies interactive notebooks. Each one is full of activities to engage students while learning. The topics include Christmas around the world, The Polar Express, reindeer, and elves.
Use this free resource in a small group, whole group, or literacy stations to add some holiday fun into word work. It has three mystery word activities for students to do and includes recording pages.
Grab your favorite gingerbread man book – you can also include Gingerbread Baby, Gingerbread Friends, The Gingerbread Girl, or The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School – and an activity from this unit and be prepared for reading and writing. It has story element activities, sequencing, characters for retelling, comparing different versions of the book, and several fun writing activities. Plus, there’s a bonus gingerbread man scavenger hunt.
Use the Gingerbread Writing Craftivity or the Reindeer Writing Craftivity for students to self-assess their writing conventions while making a meaningful (and adorable!) craft. These are best-selling resources!
After reading If You Take a Mouse to the Movies by Laura Numeroff, use this activity to have students sequence the book, do a beginning-middle-end retelling, or complete a writing activity.
These winter-themed work stations are perfect to implement during the holidays (or January) to help your students master reading, writing, and phonics concepts. You can use them during whole group, in small groups to re-teach a concept, or put them in literacy work stations. There’s a set for kindergarten and first grade.
Walk your students through the scientific method with this free snowstorm science experiment. It includes teacher directions, visual student directions, and student recording pages that can go in science journals.
THIS science unit has everything you’ll need to teach your students all about reindeer, including literacy components to integrate science throughout the day like shared reading passages, a mini-book, writing paper, and a writing craft. I love using this unit the first or second week of December.
You can also get this unit in the December Science bundle.
This flip up book has everything you’ll need to engage students as they learn more about reindeer while integrating reading, writing, science, and math. From describing and labeling reindeer to learning about their life cycle, your students will love exploring reindeer in this flip up book.
This game is always a hit! Students practice their subitizing skills while playing this fun card game. Print it out, laminate it, and you’ll be set for morning work or a fun math station.
You can find all of these resources in my store, along with many others. Click HERE to head there now. What kind of holiday resources are you looking for this year? I’m happy to help you pick out the perfect ones for your classroom.
I’m a K-1 teacher who is passionate about making lessons your students love and that are easy to implement for teachers. Helping teachers like you navigate their way through their literacy block brings me great joy. I am a lifelong learner who loves staying on top of current literacy learning and practices. Here, you’ll find the tools you need to move your K-2 students forward!
