Holidays In The Classroom

Do you celebrate holidays in the classroom?  I love celebrating holidays in the classroom because you can cross the holiday themes into all subjects and skills in the classroom!

First things first, it’s important to introduce students to each holiday and teach them the meaning of them.  Sometimes celebrations can be confusing for students.  I like to use social stories to teach the basics of each holiday to my students.  

I have a social story for each holiday for the month of December.  Social stories include: Visiting Santa,  Understanding Christmas, Christmas Presents, Understanding Kwanzaa, and Visiting Family During the Holidays.

I put these on display with some of my favorite adapted books and pull them down from my adapted book shelves when needed.  Some of my favorite adapted books are from Autism Classroom News, Speech Room News, and Mrs P’s Specialties.

This is my favorite adapted book for the winter.  I will leave this on display through January and February to practice prepositions.

Here are some of my favorite winter read aloud for the classroom (amazon affiliates):

As with every month, I always have my binder skills on display with the new monthly theme.  My December theme is Penguins.  To read more about these, click HERE.

Cooking is a must! Look at these adorable reindeer crafts from Sailing the Spectrum.

Winter is a fun season for all sorts of arts and crafts.  Here are a few of my favorite crafts from over the years:

A big theme in December is Santa.  I love these letters from Breezy Special Ed that help students write letters to Santa!  This is a great writing activity for your writing center!

And lastly, I love to do Elf On the Shelf in my classroom!  I do it month long and my students LOVE IT!  Every day they come in and find Elf in a new spot.  I like to leave notes and have fun with it! Click here to grab one for your classroom! (amazon affiliate link)

Looking for some fun games for work centers or holiday classroom parties?  Here are some of my favorite I ordered last year on Amazon! (amazon affiliate links below)

RING TOSS GAMES

PIN THE NOSE ON THE SNOWMAN