[00:00:00] Hey friends. Welcome back to the Firstieland Podcast. When I think about December, I sort of have a love-hate relationship with that month as a teacher. I mean, I loved it for so many reasons. First of all, it was a short month, only three weeks, and then we got a two-week break. So what’s not to love about that, right? Plus, it always felt really festive, you know? Like, we had a Christmas program and all the kids would get dressed up and they looked so cute, and my team and I would always go out for dinner beforehand. We’d have a nice meal and then we’d exchange gifts, and that was always fun. And then December was also sort of a more relaxed month in terms of content. Like, I never felt the need to push the kids really hard with our reading and math series because I didn’t want to start anything new before break since I knew I was just gonna have to reteach it all when we came back. I could do different kinds of activities with the kids that were a little bit more fun but still aligned to our standards.

But then there was this sort [00:01:00] of hate relationship with December, right? Because number one, I was basically working on fumes. We were so busy at school, and then I’d go home and there was all the holiday stuff there. We were decorating and baking cookies and making gingerbread houses, and it was just go, go, go on the weekends. It was all stuff I wanted to do, but it was a lot. I mean, we are lucky enough to have Playhouse Square in Cleveland, which is very close to us, and they have all the Broadway shows come there. I always took my kids to see a special show in Cleveland every December. We saw The Nutcracker, A Christmas Story, Scrooge, and so many others.

And that was always fun. But there were all the regular chores that you had to do on the weekends on top of all the fun holiday stuff, and so I was just tired all the time. Good tired, but nevertheless tired. So when it came to school, I wanted to do all the fun stuff, but sometimes it was hard to have the energy. And then the kids were usually off the wall, and so that made things [00:02:00] tough sometimes. But honestly, I sort of found that if I just embraced the chaos instead of fighting against it, my class was better behaved.

So in today’s episode, I’m gonna give you a few ideas of things that you can do in December that’ll not only keep your kids engaged and wanting to work, but they’re also standards-aligned so you don’t have to worry that it’s just fluff or something like that. You can be assured that your class will still be learning all the basic skills that you’re supposed to be teaching them, but in a little bit more fun, hands-on way.

So my first suggestion is to do a gingerbread unit. It’s always a hit, and if you’re looking for a way to teach your reading comprehension standards in a more engaging way, my best advice is to grab several different versions of The Gingerbread Man story and compare and contrast those stories. There are so many different versions. My favorite is the classic tale The Gingerbread Man by Jim Aylesworth, [00:03:00] I think because I love the illustrations so much in that story.

And then for comparing stories, there’s The Ninjabread Man, which is a really cute story about a little sensei who’s training a bunch of ninja animals in the forest, and he decides he’s gonna use an ancient recipe to bake a special Ninjabread Man. The story is similar in that he escapes from the oven and the other animals try to use their ninja moves to capture him, but in the end, a fox outsmarts him.

I mean, there are so many different versions of this story—The Gingerbread Girl, The Gingerbread Man Loose in School, The Gingerbread Cowboy—and then there are books like The Runaway Dreidel and Stop That Pickle! They’re sort of like adaptations of the story of The Gingerbread Man. If I went over each book in this episode, it would be super long, but I’ll put a link in the show notes to all the books so that you can check them out yourself. But using some of these books to help you teach standards like recognizing characters, setting, [00:04:00] plot, retelling, comparing, and contrasting different stories—there are so many ways that you can use these books to teach those standards in December.

Okay, so my next activity that we did every year, and probably my favorite, and it’s in keeping with the gingerbread theme, was when we would adopt gingerbread babies. I’d read the book The Gingerbread Baby to my class. It’s by Jan Brett if you’ve never read it, and it’s an absolutely adorable adaptation of the Gingerbread Man story. So in the book, a little boy named Mattie bakes a gingerbread cookie who doesn’t quite cook long enough, and when he escapes from the oven, he’s still a baby. And of course, the whole story is about how they try to catch him.

So after we read the story, I’d have a tray of gingerbread cookies delivered to my classroom with a note from Mattie, and it basically said that he had baked too many cookies and his mom wanted to use the kitchen, so he needed somebody to take care of his cookies until he could come [00:05:00] back to get them. And so the kids would each get a little gingerbread baby, and they got to name it, make it a birth certificate, and they made a baby book.

So the baby book was filled with all these writing prompts they had to complete, like where the baby went on its first outing, who its friends were, and stuff like that. It was really, really cute, and the kids would make little gingerbread houses for their baby to live in. And then they also got peppermint candies that they used for babysitter money, and if they had to leave their baby unattended at any time—like to go to the bathroom or leave the room for another class—they had to hire another student to be their babysitter and they’d pay them with peppermints. The kids loved it. It was really cute. Perfect for December, plus they learned a little bit about responsibility and taking care of their babies.

I found some little tiny gingerbread cookie toys on Amazon for the kids to adopt. They’re about two or three inches tall. And then I even [00:06:00] found little baby strollers at the Dollar Tree, and so when they were delivered to our classroom, they were each in their own little stroller. I mean, you can imagine how excited the kids were to do this. I used my Gingerbread Baby resource on TPT that has all the writing prompts and the birth certificate and baby book and everything in it. So I’ll leave a link to that and the gingerbread toys in the show notes. Or you can grab the resource at firstieland.com/gingerbreadbaby, all one word.

Okay, so another really fun thing to do in December is to learn about different holidays around the world. I personally didn’t like to do Christmas Around the World because there are a lot of families who don’t celebrate Christmas, so I didn’t really want to just limit it to that. So when I did this, I spread it out over about a week or so, and we learned about a different holiday every day. If I remember right, we learned about Chinese New Year, Diwali, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Ramadan, and Christmas. And so I had [00:07:00] Google Slides for all the different holidays, and we’d do one slide each day. Each slide had links to YouTube videos about the different holidays, and then there was also a link to a different read-aloud for each holiday too.

We’d watch those videos, and then the kids had a little Holidays Around the World craft book that they’d work on each day. There was a little paragraph that told about the holiday on each page, and then there was a really simple little craft that represented each holiday that they would make and glue onto the pages. So it was a very easy little book to make. Took maybe 20 minutes each day, and it was a good way to get our social studies standards covered in December. Plus, the kids really enjoyed it and they looked forward to it each day. And that’s really the name of the game in December—because if you can do activities where they’re not only learning but they also really like doing it, that’s gonna cut down on the chaos that usually comes in December.

All right, so my fourth idea for you is to just have a stash of [00:08:00] simple no-prep math and literacy games that you can grab when you’ve got some time to kill. I had about 10 or 15 games like this, and I put them in a plastic bin on one of the shelves in my room. All that they needed to play was a couple of game tokens and some dice. And so anytime the kids were getting antsy and they just needed a break, I’d let them get together with a partner to play a game. It only took like five or ten minutes to play, and it was just enough time to give them—and me, honestly—a little break.

I mean, after all, teachers need a little break once in a while too, especially in December, because we’re all exhausted. So grab yourself some no-prep games. I’ll put the link to the ones we used in the show notes and give yourself a little bit of a break whenever you need it.

All right, so my fifth idea is for some writing prompts, and the reason I’m giving you this idea is because it’s hard enough to get kids to write, but in December it’s virtually impossible, right? But you still have to teach your writing lessons. So around this time of the year, for me, my kids were still working on [00:09:00] how-to writing, and they were getting pretty good at it by this time.

So we did some seasonal how-to writing prompts like How to Make Hot Chocolate, How to Decorate a Christmas Tree, and How to Build a Snowman. And what made them fun for the kids was the hands-on activity that we did with each of the writing activities. For instance, we actually made hot chocolate when we wrote How to Make Hot Chocolate, so they were excited about that, you know? I mean, what kid doesn’t love hot chocolate? So everybody wanted to participate.

And then when we did How to Decorate a Christmas Tree, we actually did that too. I had a tiny little tree in my room, and I had a bunch of ornaments that the kids had given me as gifts over the years. And so every year I’d let my class help me decorate it, and then we’d write the steps together for our writing lesson. So when you add a fun component to your writing lesson that lets the kids get in there and do something they really enjoy, it’s easier to get them to actually do the writing activity.

[00:10:00] All right, so now I have two more ideas for you, and these both involve a little bit more work. But in my opinion, they’re well worth it. I loved a good theme day in my room, and I’ve done both of these, and I love them both equally as much, but I would not suggest trying to do both of them in one month. It would probably be a lot. So you can sort of pick and choose which one you like the best.

Usually, I did my December theme day near the very end of the month, so it would definitely be in that last week before we left for winter break. Some years I did one as my holiday party, and other times we’d do it as rotations between classrooms with all of the first grade, and that was a lot of fun.

So the first one is A Day in the Life of an Elf. And what the kids would do is they would fill out a job application to be one of Santa’s elves, and then afterward they’d be invited to the North Pole to try out some of the different elf jobs. Depending on if I was doing it on my own with just my class or if other classrooms were [00:11:00] participating too, we’d set up different stations that the kids would visit, and they’d represent the different places at the North Pole.

So there was the kitchen where the kids would frost sugar cookies, and then they’d make a little cookie craft. And there was the barn, and that’s where the kids would make reindeer food. The third station was Santa’s living room where the kids would decorate a little Christmas tree craft. Station four was the sewing room because everybody knows that elves make their own clothing, so the kids made a little elf hat headband there. At station five, the kids helped Santa check his list, and they played a game about naughty and nice behavior. And at station six, the kids went to the ornament room where they made a little Christmas ornament, and then they could wrap that and give it to their parents as a gift.

And then of course there was the toy room, and at that station the kids put puzzles together. And then the last station was having a snowball fight, because everybody knows elves do that at the North Pole, and that was an addition game.

[00:12:00] So it was super fun. Really, everybody loved it. We’d get parents to come in and help at the different stations, and it was perfect for our holiday party. So if you want to try it with your class, I’ll put the link in the show notes, or you can grab it at firstieland.com/elf.

And then I told you that I had two theme days, and so the other one was Santa Day, and it was similar to Elf Day except that all the station activities were things that Santa does at the North Pole. So they played different math and literacy games where they had to feed the reindeer, eat milk and cookies, get Santa dressed, build Santa’s sleigh, and stuff like that. It was all super cute and all math and literacy related, so if you want to take a closer look at that, you can go to firstieland.com/santa.

[00:13:00] All right, friends, so there you have it. Seven really great ways to make December not only fun but manageable and keep your kids on task instead of creating chaos. Some of the ideas are super low prep and others are a little bit more work, but they’re all also magical and memory-making, so it’s worth it.

I think the thing to remember is not to overdo it in December. Pick a few things that you really want to do and leave the rest at the door. Don’t try to do every idea that I’ve given you in this episode. Pick the one or two things that resonate with you. You don’t have to do every single thing to make your classroom special in December. And that goes for at home too. It’s so tempting to get lured in by all the cute stuff that we see online, and then we feel guilty if we aren’t doing it all.

But think back to when you were in school. Were your teachers doing a million different things during the holidays in the classroom? Probably not, but you still have memories of something. Maybe it was a really special ornament you made for your family or a holiday program where you stood on the stage in a fun, sparkly costume [00:14:00] and you felt so special and wonderful.

And your kids are gonna have special memories too. Just remember—try to embrace the chaos, take a break when you need to, and add a little more fun to your lesson plans to help the kids stay on task. Okay, friends, that’s it for this week. You can find the links to everything I mentioned in the show notes. And until next week, remember to make learning feel like play. I’ll see you next time.

Thanks so much for tuning in. I hope you’re walking away with some great tips that you can use right away. Be sure to hit the follow or subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, I’d love it if you’d leave a review. You can find the show notes and links for everything mentioned in this episode at firstieland.com. I’ll see you next week in Firstieland.