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! 

Project: Annual Native American Dioramas

It is project time again in our classroom! Students did an absolutely FAB job this year taking their learning and applying it to our region project - I just had to share! Students worked with their original regional group to design a diorama of their cultures environment, shelter, natural resources, and any other details they could. 

Students reread their information on their region. Loved seeing them reviewing their unit notes about their region to help them plan their diorama. 

They did an absolutely amazing job and really showcased their knowledge of each region! I really could not get over the incredible amount of DETAIL they put into them! It was so exciting listening to them share what they wanted to add based off of their knowledge. So. Cool. 

Painted sticks for "Sugar Cane" 

yes, that is a brave going through the "Sun Dance" 

Removable roof to see inside the "Kiva" 

This Eastern Woodland long house has an "open top" to see inside - love. it.! 

Love this depiction of a whale hunt! 

 Ice Fishing

 Inuksuk formation 

 Please note this adorable bundle of wood - it is even tied together with a string :p 

We were also able to get our dioramas on display at our public library in town - this was really neat because it gave the kids an authentic outside of school audience to showcase their knowledge and work. 

Here are more activities for Native Americans: