Little School on the Range: Christmas Around the World

My students have always adored learning about Christmas traditions around the world. We try to learn about Christmas in other countries throughout the month of December. It’s a great unit for our Social Studies class! I usually introduce the unit with a power point presentation. It is a super way to encourage class discussion.

The presentation covers Christmas traditions in 10 different countries. The countries include:

· United States

· Mexico

· Australia

· Sweden

· France

· Germany

· Italy

· Japan

· Greece

· Spain

For each country, the presentation allows us to discuss:

· The country’s location in relation to the United States

· Their country’s flag

· When they celebrate the holiday

· Special traditions that are unique to the country

· Figures that they have that are similar to Santa Claus

We then cut out fact cards for each country that reiterates the information from the presentation. We put them into pockets in our Social Studies interactive notebooks. The cards help us with our activities throughout the unit.

Teaching Christmas around the world, allows us to also practice our map skills that we learned earlier in the year. This unit has activities that reinforce what we’ve learned about the seven continents and allows us to locate countries and capitals on maps.