Cultural Heritage Project

Before Thanksgiving every year, I explain our big Christmas Heritage Project to the kiddos. I introduce the project and encourage them to talk to their parents/grandparents over break to find out about their family's heritage and roots. 

The Project: 
After break, students share their family roots and we begin our research at school on how their ancestral country/culture celebrates "Christmas" or a winter holiday around the same time (ex. Diwali, Chinese New Year, etc.) . Students then do a web quest that has different Christmas Around the World websites to help guide their research. 
Some of my favorites include:
Santa Net 
Why Christmas
The North Pole
Christmas Around the World
Kids Travel
They use an I-chart to record their findings. After they have discovered a lot about their country and their celebrations, we use our information to write a short paragraph about the holiday, type them up the computer, and add a caption.

Researching how our countries celebrate Christmas or a winter holiday

 Reading LOTS of books on our countries 

The "at home" part of the project is the creation of an  Ornament that illustrates a tradition from the way their culture celebrates Christmas/Winter Holiday.

I use a rubric to grade their presentation of the ornament - it reflects: effort, whether it matches a tradition or just of the country, an in depth explanation of the tradition, and if the project was turned in on time.

 Presenting our Ornaments

In writing, students wrote an informational compare and contrast  essay

Incorporating geography, we also researched where our cultural country was located using maps, globes, and atlases. It was very interesting listening to the kids as they discover the SIZE comparison of other countries to our own. Many of them were shocked by how small their country was and at how BIG others were. Geography can be very eye opening for one's world view in many ways. 

Do you do anything to celebrate holidays around the world or family heritage? 

Happy Holidays!

Project Christmas

Vocabulary Word of the Day = Blessing 

For the past few years, every Christmas, our two fifth grade classes choose a community service project to support. This year, we decided to help Toys for Tots. We spend two weeks selling Candy Canes at school. The kiddos sell candy canes at 25 cents specialty canes at 50 cents for ten minutes before school starts in the morning with a partner and tally the amount. 

 During morning work they sold to fifth graders and counted up money. Then, during math class, we looked at how many candy canes we sold, how much money we made, what the total was, and what our current profit was. Slowly, our chart grew and grew ...

This year, we profited $524!!! 

What an incredible experience we had this year for our project!  

This last Thursday, our entire fifth grade team - 46 students, 6 chaperons, and 2 teachers traveled to Walmart with a budget and a plan. When we arrived, we were greeted by Walmart employees who presented us with an additional $100 to spend! The students shopped with their chaperons, picking out toys to donate. While shopping, a Hershey Chocolate representative decided to support our project by presenting us with an additional $100 cash on the spot! Walmart also provided us with cookies, punch, and a mini stocking for each kid to enjoy during their shopping trip. We were all blessed by the experience and the support we received from our community in helping with this great project! We dropped off the toys at our Lions Club to be distributed though the Toys for Tots program.  

Does your class do any community service activities during the year, I would love to hear about them! 

Welcome Aboard AIRWAY 5!

Every year, I celebrate Christmas/Winter Celebrations around the world, however, with the shove push towards Common Core and preaching teaching only the standards listed, I have had to push a lot of these not important non essentials out the door. Don't I sound enthused ;) This year, as I was trying to figure out how I could still squeeze in my Christmas Around the World - I realized we could do it for the Christmas party! Genius.
WARNING: This is a LONG post with LOTS of pictures! You've been warned!

So with no further adieu, 

  WELCOME ABOARD AIRWAY 5 - ENJOY YOUR TRIP! 

Who says fifth graders wouldn't enjoy a plane trip in the classroom - don't let kindergarten and 2nd graders 

have all the fun! 

To begin our journey, we checked out baggage (brown paper bags turned into suitcases - idea from HERE), turned in our tickets (template from HERE), grabbed our passports (template from HERE), boarded "Airway 5", and headed off to INDIA! 

In route, we watched a safety video {this is an actual Virgin Airlines Safety Video} The kids LOVED it!

Once we arrived in India, we were greeted by costumed "Indians" who passed out a cultural snack for us to try. For many of the kids this was a new experience - good for some, not-so-good for others! Snack = Fennel seeds and liquorish candies - intended as a breath freshener sweet. 
We also watched a short clip about the winter celebration of Diwali pronounced "DiVali"

Our cultural craft included creating stained glass lotus flowers using laminate, tracing sheets, and permanent markers. 

 Our next destination was Sweden! 

In route, we read an informational article on their winter celebration St. Lucia Day and viewed a short powerpoint showing us the different aspects and the history of St. Lucia. 

Once we arrived in Sweden, we were greeted by our very own "St. Lucia" who passed out a cultural snack of sweet cookies to everyone.

In my partner teacher's room, we continued our travels to the country of Mexico where they celebrate Las Posadas! In South American countries, the nativity and story of the Christ Child is performed and reenacted by children. Poinsettias are native to South America and flower throughout the winter. The shape of the flowers petals are often referred to as the "Star of Bethlehem" which led the shepherds and wise men to the Baby Jesus. Here we learned about the celebration and acted out the story of Baby Jesus's Birth. For the cultural craft, we created paper poinsettias to wear. 

After re-boarding their plane, students found themselves arriving in the Land of Dragons! The largest winter celebration in China is the Chinese New Year. There are lots of similarities to this holiday and Christmas including eating special foods, giving gifts (of money), and celebrating with lots of light! In China, students created chinese paper lanterns and learned about this holiday through a short movie clip. 

The next destination was to the country of Israel. Many Jews, around the word, celebrate the winter holiday of Hanukkah. Students read about the Miracle of the Maccabees, lit a menorah, created a paper dreidel and played for chocolate coins. 

The final stop on Airway 5 found us back in our own country - the good old USA! Here we learned about the history of Christmas music and the different golden ages - we answered the questions, what is the oldest song? (I Saw Three Ships) When was the first golden age? (Victorian Era) Why did Christmas stop being celebrated for years? (Puritans/Pilgrims banned it) When was the second golden age of Christmas music? (1940s - 1950s)
We also looked at the history of Christmas Cards and answered questions like, When was the first Christmas card created? (1843) Who began the first "official" Christmas cards? (Queen Victoria) Who started the first US "affordable" card company? (John C. Hall - Hallmark!)
Our Cultural Craft included creating our parents Christmas cards to go along with our science ornaments - We hope, parents, all enjoyed these :0) We used stamp pads and markers to create thumb print holiday designs. 

We also made sure all of our items were packed safely in our luggage (paper bags) and that we had filled out our passports correctly and been stamped for each country. 

To end our day, we watched A Charlie Brown Christmas, ate cookies, created SUPER scrumptious cups of hot chocolate at our Hot Cocoa bar (yes, we fixed the sign! LOL), and opened our stockings. 

MERRY CHRISTMAS ALL!! 

Christmas Celebrations

We're almost finished with our celebrations of light unit - see Christmas Around the World post.
This year, I had the students create little booklets to keep their notes and the essential questions in throughout the unit.
I had them answer the unit's essential questions at the beginning of the unit and I will have them answer them this week again to show what they have learned and how they can apply it to these critical thinking questions.
Essential Questions:
Why is it that so many different cultures celebrate "Light" around the same time of year?
Why is it important to understand other cultures and their traditions?

We have had a great time learning about the different celebrations and comparing and contrasting them to our own holiday traditions.

My stations this week centered around the social studies theme "Christmas Around the World"

Station 1:
Students read together on the carpet different articles about how other countries and cultures celebrate around the month of December (Diwali, Hanukkah, St. Nicholas Day, St. Lucia Day, Festival of Lanterns, Chinese New Year, Las Pasados)

Station 2: Students work cooperatively to create a holiday craft
Because I wanted to have different cultural elements, I actually had this station change each day
-create a menorah
-use critical thinking to put the paragraph together about Kwanzaa and the Kinara
- create a St. Lucia Wreath
- create a henna tattoo (Diwali)

 Station 3:
This idea I got from Cardigans and Curriculum
Write a persuasive letter to Santa explaining to him why your house is the BEST and why he should stop there
The idea was for the kids to use persuasive techniques such as exaggeration, flattery/compliments, whats in it for you? to convince Santa.
I required it to be done in a 5 paragraph essay format even thought it was a letter - it is good practice for kids to realize that a paragraph is generally not long enough to give adequate support in 5th grade. I try not to stress a specific number of paragraphs in any paper (for example 5 paragraph essay) I feel this limits kids... instead I just ask about how many might this end up being if we add everything we need.
Intro p. reason 1 p. reason 2 p. reason 3 p. closing = this one happens to be about 5 but some kids wrote more ... *smile*

Station 4:
I had three popular Christmas toons
-Silver Bells
-Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer
-The Grinch
They had to highlight the ADJECTIVES in each song
This was sadly, more difficult for them than I anticipated... we will continue reviewing parts of speech
heavily in the coming half of the year.

This is my first year doing centers (and I probably wouldn't have gotten the ball rolling if it weren't for the encouragement of my partner teacher!) But I am really enjoying them now! We do stations for a half an hour every morning. I try and incorporate each academic element that I teach - reading, writing, social studies - this is my most "integrated" part of the day. The kids do one station a morning - having completed each of the stations by Friday. On Friday, we "make up" any stations we weren't able to complete. They hang onto their center work in their ELA folders throughout the week. Center work is due Monday mornings.

I would love to hear how other teachers organize center time in their classrooms.

Do you do weekly centers? How do you do centers?

Note: Please be aware that that as a social studies educator, my purpose is to get students excited about learning other cultures as well as their own. I am not perfect in my education of this, though I do try and do a lot of research before teachings cultures and history. Concerning the crafts and activities used in my room, I try to make them as authentic as possible from my findings and research but do not claim to be a museum. Using tangible items helps spur students passion for the cultures and history we study and creates in them a desire to learn and discover more. If there is something that bothers you or have questions on my instruction concerning your culture or any other topic I may teach in my room, please feel free to email me personally to help me gain more understanding. I love learning about others and am always striving to educate my students better.