[KDiaz1073]

What countries do you think would be good to learn about how they celebrate Christmas for a 2nd. grade class?

[Jip]

Holy buckets!! You're onto Christmas and I'm still prepping for Thanksgiving. You are organized!!!

Our school did a whole school theme of Christmas Around the World last year. For sure, you should look at Mexico (Los Posadas), Sweden (St. Lucia's Day), Italy (La Befana), Holland (Sinterklasss), and Israel (Hanukkah).

A teacher idea book that would really help you is the December Idea book by Teacher's Friend Publication. Mine was written in 1986 by Karen Sevaly. But I know there are many on the market yet. It has lots of information and reproducibles for coloring & projects.

Good luck, you overachiever

[Tylana]

In first grade we always covered Australia because they go to the beach and have a picnic. We always allow our kids to wear bathing suits under there clothes and bring beach towels and have a picnic for lunch the day we study it. It is always fun to have a beach party in December when it is usually freezing and snowy outside here in Ohio.

What is the diversity of your population? We have a growing number of Muslim children as well as Indian children on our population so we added Dewali and Ramada to our unit on "Christmas" around the world. We call it our "What a Wonderful World" unit. We cover Mexcio, Sweeden, India, France, USA, Italy, Japan, Germany, Chinese New Year, Ramadan, Hanukkah...I think that is all. It is a fun unit that goes for the month of December and into January. We read a lot of picture books like Jingle the Christmas Clown (DePaola) for Italy, Legend of the Pointesetta (DePaoal) for Mexcio, Light for Gita for Dewali, Tree of Cranes for Japan and so on. Each child also makes a book that includes a brief discription of each celebration and a child created item that represents the celebration to glue onto each page. Many bulletin boards can be created during this unit. We also invite parents to share their family's heritage during this unit.

The Christmas aroound the World doesn't sound like a bad idea... but have some of the older kids in you school prepare for the younger ones.
Have them demonstrate the games, food, and other things that they do in the country that they are representing! well good luck from:7th grader

it is stupid

Wondering if reading the Legend of the Pointsetta for Los Posadas is appropriate for public school curriculum. Doesn't the part about baby Jesus infringe on the separation of church and state?