Week Two of Holidays Around the World was a hoot and a half! I bought some Insta-Snow here on Amazon.com for a fun sensory center! When I bought it, it was only about $10 and was on Prime. It looks like the price has gone up since then, so I would recommend waiting until Christmas time next year to purchase. It was well worth it!!!! I made two tubs full and still have about half a jar left for next year. If you store it in plastic gallon bags, it lasts FOREVER (which is about a month, in Kindergarten). We used it most of December. I threw in some plastic animal toys and the kids had a blast.
Ukraine & Russia
I am very fortunate to have many students who are Ukrainian this year, so I was able to ask their families for some inspiration! We colored in Babuska dolls (I just hand-drew some on paper for the kids to color). Then we made some out of scrapbook paper! I had a high school helper trace the dolls shapes and cut them out for me, so all the kids had to do was glue on the faces and draw on eyes and a mouth. They got to pick which paper they liked best and really enjoyed this activity. I laminated them all and added some glitter so the kids could add them to their parents' Christmas gift bags.
I had a parent make us Trubokchi, which is like a horn with a sweet cream filling inside. As I've said before, cultural learning is best approached by FOOD, in my opinion! The kids have a hard time remembering the names of countries and the different symbols that go with each Christmas celebration, but they have no problem remembering the food we eat.
Meanwhile, we watched The Story of Babushka on YouTube. Really great animation.
Another parent donated a bag of Ukrainian candy for us to taste. These tasted a lot like Zotz!
Australia
I cannot possibly continue this post without giving you a link to this musical gem on YouTube.
Aussie Christmas Music is just the best. The kids were laughing the whole day listening to it. Our favorite was, of course, 6 White Boomers. We sang it all day.
The story goes that reindeer would overhear in Australia's heated Christmas, so Santa trades them in for 6 elderly kangaroos! I WISH there was a children's book about this!!!
I just google image searched "6 white boomers" and I found this guy. I enlarged it and copied it for the kids to color. I even made some extra kangaroos for the kids who wanted to be accurate.
I also have this gem, which is one of my holiday favorites. It's a picture book that tells the story of a wombat that is only looking for carrots. He keeps getting into it with Santa's reindeer, who also want the carrots. It's very cute!
You can find it here from Amazon.com.
I took the cover of the book and free-hand drew the wombat and a carrot to create this mystery coloring picture with teen numbers.
Brazil
I bought some Panetonne for the kids to taste on Brazil day. Really, no one liked it much (including me. Latin Americans LOVE this stuff for some reason, but I have always hated it!) THIS KID was the only one who really loved it, so he got to take home all the leftovers! 1 Panetonne is PLENTY for the entire class. I had more than half leftover.
We "played" a Brazillian game very similar to Secret Santa, called Amigo Secreto ("Secret Friend.") Usually the game is played throughout all of December, but we boiled it down to a 30 minute writing chunk! I carefully assigned each kid to one student in the class. I whispered to them who their Amigo Secreto was, and their job was to write them a nice note. Then at carpet, I read them aloud and revealed who the secret friends were. In this video, I included only two examples since I have to say their names (only first names).
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