NEA: December Holidays

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December Holidays

Teaching Theme of the Week

from Education World®

Students research a variety of December holidays and create a chart comparing Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Las Posadas, and Ramadan.

More Holiday Resources
Lesson plans, activity ideas, Web sites and more — all in recognition of December's many holidays.
Holiday Resources »

Subjects: Language Arts, Fine Arts, Educational Technology, Social Studies

Grade Levels: 3-5, 6-8, 9-12

Objectives
Students will:

use library and Internet resources to learn about December holiday celebrations around the world;
learn about different elements of holiday celebrations (including the role food and candles/lights play in the celebrations, dates and countries connected to the holidays, and associated symbols and key words);
use a student work sheet (provided) to help them document what they learn; and,
use the work sheet to aid them as they complete a writing activity.

Keywords
Christmas, Kwanzaa, Chanukah, Hanukkah, Las Posadas, Ramadan, December, holiday, candle, light, costume, song, research, multicultural, compare, contrast, comparison, chart, graphic organizer

Materials Needed

print and/or online resources
Student work sheet 1
Student work sheet 2

Procedure
In this lesson, students complete a chart comparing major multicultural December holiday celebrations. (Younger students complete the chart on Student work sheet 1; older students complete Student work sheet 1 and Student work sheet 2.) The charts provide spaces for students to make notes about different elements of five holiday celebrations -- Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Las Posadas, and Ramadan. If students or members of your community celebrate a different December holiday, you might replace one of the holidays on the work sheet with that one.

Provide students with the appropriate work sheet(s) and challenge them to use print resources (including encyclopedias, children’s books, and other sources) and Web sites (see list below) to learn about the major December holiday celebrations. Review with them the categories and the kinds of information they will be searching for, including the following.

Younger students:

Dates of each of this year’s celebrations
Countries where each celebration is the predominant one
Foods commonly associated with each holiday celebration
Symbols of each celebration
Key Words associated with each holiday

Older students:

Decorations associated with each celebration
Songs that relate to each holiday
Gifts and the role gifts play in each celebration
Stories that might be told during each celebration period
Light/Candles and the role lights and/or candles play in each holiday festival

After students have had a class period or two to complete their research, hold a “sharing session” in which students share their findings. As each students shares, encourage the others to learn and add information to their charts. This is also an opportunity to handle discrepancies in information, clear up misconceptions, and locate answers to questions that arise. (Older students might keep a bibliography and annotate each note so they will be able to associate each note with a source in the bibliography.)

Resources on the Web
Note: The resources under each category below are arranged in order of difficulty. Older students can use all resources to complete this activity; teachers might limit younger students’ to the first one or two resources.

Christmas

Hanukkah/Chanukah

Kwanzaa

Las Posadas

Ramadan

Assessment
Have students write a paragraph or a brief essay comparing

several elements of any two December holiday celebrations, or
one element of holiday celebrations (for example, symbols or foods) across cultures and celebrations.