New Year Reading Activities: History of Holiday Traditions

It's back-to-school time again! Heading back from the long holiday break can always be a little big stressful! But, I like to keep things easy and embrace the new year with lots of pre-prepped learning activities to celebrate! 

This newly updated resource is ready for 2024! This comes with 7 different reading articles for up to seven days of reading lessons done for you! Each article comes with a comprehension worksheet that also includes an answer key. Your students will learn a lot about the new year's holiday and the traditions with these new years non fiction articles. Included in the pack is one about the first and last countries to welcome the new year and how they celebrate. Another article explores the different balls that have been used in New York’s Time Square on New Year’s Eve and how that tradition got started. Students can extend their learning by completing a STEM challenge based on the ball drop. The third article is about the famous song, Auld Lang Syne, and just what those words mean and how the song came to be one we that sing when the clock strikes midnight on January first each year. Next, there is an article about goals and new year’s resolutions. Students can extend what they learn by setting goals of their own in a cute New Year’s Eve ball card. Another article is about words and how words are added to our dictionary each and every year. The class will learn who chooses what words are added and where these words come from. To extend, they may even create a snack or something to play with, should you choose to do so. Up next, is an article about the Tournament of Roses parade. When students read this, they may be inspired to create models of their own. So to extend their learning, you can have them create small shoebox floats and host their own walk-thru parade. Lastly, students will learn about college football bowls and how they came to be.

 

The resource does not stop there, also included is a time capsule that students can create individually. And finally, there is a teambuilding game that is perfect for welcoming your students back into the classroom and get them talking and sharing about their break and also the new year. As you can see, students will not only get reading activities with this pack, but this crosses over to other subject areas as well including history, science, writing, and art.

Click here to be taken to the resource. 

Christmas Reading Comprehension Activities

It's the most wonderful time of the year....and also one of the craziest. Can you really get any teaching done between Thanksgiving, Christmas breaks? My answer to you is yes, but you have to be strategic and play to the interests of the students....and what could be better than to using Christmas activities as the basis of your learning? I love to help my students learn about the traditions of the holidays. I find that sprinkling a bit of learning with a Christmas theme provides a bit of excitement and keeps them engaged in the crazy weeks leading into the holidays. 

Let me share with you what I mean. First, I think about different traditions for the holidays. I use those as the basis of learning activities. For example, I created a magazine-style reading booklet that covered different traditions surrounding Christmas trees. Inside I researched and wrote seven articles, enough for seven days of learning! Another booklet I created is all about gingerbread, a favorite around this time of year. With each set of reading articles, I included a set of comprehension worksheets. I also love to extend learning through additional fun activities. For the Christmas tree pack, we do a S.T.E.M. project where students build their own trees. We also do many other activities along the way. In the gingerbread activity pack, students create their own gingerbread houses using a template that looks like a gingerbread house and opens up to reveal a piece of writing about a Christmas memory or tradition. These are super cute for a bulletin board display too!

I love doing these for every holiday I can.  I these reading activity backs for many different holidays, not just Christmas. I have a set for New Year's that is updated with the new year each year. I have one for Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, April Fool's Day, and Thanksgiving. They are so fun, and I love all the learning my students do. By the end of the holiday, they know why we have the traditions we do. 

If you are interested in checking any of theses out, you can find them by clicking on each picture below.