December Week 1 in Kindergarten - Christmas in Germany
December is here!
Young children + December is simply magical. I absolutely love teaching in this month.
If this is your first year teaching, I will be honest and warn you it is an exhausting month. But if you get prepared now, you’ll have more energy to enjoy your sweet kinders and their excitement for the season.
If you’re new here, welcome! I share my lesson plans for free HERE
I go more in depth with my lessons on weekly blog posts so I can share more details, photos and videos that I am using. I truly hope this helps you and your students!
You can visit my December lesson planning homepage HERE and there you will find an overview of what I teach this month along with the links to the other weekly blog posts.
Before I get started on the weekly blog post and what I have planned, I’ll share some fun ideas for the month of December.
Many of them are in our freebie library, but I will show them here in case you missed them!
This page contains affiliate links. Read Full Disclosure
Let’s get started!
Last week, I shared what I give my students for Christmas gifts.
How cute are these?! The best part is you can make them for about $1 each!
I love that they are personalized with their names, and I can put the year and my name too.
They are editable and can be used year after year! CLICK HERE
How adorable are these letters to Santa? I made differentiated versions so they can be used with a variety of ages.
I added picture word banks so students aren’t asking you how to spell everything too.
These always make me giggle. I absolutely love seeing what kids ask Santa for. Often times it is things I would never guess.
They are available to print for FREE CLICK HERE
Do you make magical reindeer food with your kiddos?
This is such a fun activity to have your kiddos practice rhyming, reading, writing, sequencing skills and more. They are so engaged and we love taking care of Rudolph and his friends so they have energy to fly around the world on Christmas Eve.
They are available to print for FREE in our freebie library as well (you already signed up at the top of this page!)
You won’t have any trouble getting kiddos to write with this project. They are thrilled to make magical reindeer food and write about it!
The entire kit is FREE by signing up for our email list. I hope you love it as much as we do.
12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS
Before we get started on lesson planning for the week, I have to share this super cute blog post about the 12 days of Christmas.
Before we homeschooled, I loved spoiling my children’s amazing teachers with 12 little gifts to help them get through the crazy month of December.
I have free cards you can print and an editable version - CLICK HERE
So those are a few fun ideas to get your December off on the right foot!
Back to December lesson planning…
You’ll absolutely love this digital morning meeting and calendar resource!
I formatted these activities for both Google Slides™ and PowerPoint™.
Students are with the moveable pieces, embedded songs and daily activities.
Display the calendar on your front board and this will save you so much wall space (less clutter too!)
CLICK HERE to learn more or CLICK HERE to purchase the December kit.
Morning Work
If you already using my morning work, then you know that students can mostly be independent with these.
These target the exact skills my students are learning, but can also be independent with.
The week shown below is FREE!
After practicing handwriting all fall using correct directionality, I now have students practice tracing letters on their own.
I still watch to make sure students are forming their letters correctly.
In the classroom, I have a million morning jobs to get through myself. I also like to focus my time on individually greeting every single child. This sets the tone for the day, and I know that every student of mine has made eye contact with me, and they feel acknowledged, seen and appreciated. I always tell them that I am so glad they are here today.
So while you’re doing making connections with students and competing your morning tasks like attendance, students are independently working on standards based skills using THIS morning work. Print an entire week for free from every single month to see how the skills progress.
Each month also now is compatible with Google Slides if you’re teaching virtually! This comes in each pack as a free upgrade.
DIGITAL TASK CARDS
Whether you’re in the classroom, homeschool or teaching virtually, another fabulous resource to help kindergarten kiddos be more independent is Boom Cards™.
“I am so excited to try using Boom cards with my class this year. These Boom decks look so engaging. I also like how they help students work on specific skills so I can assign students what they need. Thank you!”
“Worth every penny!”
I generally do not have children move to “play” stations when they complete their morning work because it is just so distracting for other children. But if you’re a 1:1 school or have iPads, it could be an incentive to work through their morning work to move on to their assigned Boom Cards.
They can put on their headphones and get right to work. You can assign them cards with the exact literacy or math skill they need more help with. Many decks come with audio directions so students can truly be independent with these activities.
Just like the morning work, I target the exact skills we are working on this month. The audio provides scaffolding so students can be truly independent.
This video gives you a peak at one card from each deck to see how they work.
Tip: I often have children repeat the same deck multiple times. You can check the data and see how they are doing!
If you don’t have time to do this in the mornings, you can use Boom Cards whole group, assign them on SeeSaw and Google Classroom, and parents even can put the app on their phone.
One of my favorite things is that students get instant feedback so they know right away if the got the answer correct.
Visit my monthly Boom Card homepage to see all the decks for each month or SAVE BIG with the growing year long bundle!
What are Boom cards? They are digital task cards played on the Boom Learning website!
They can be played on tablets, smart phones or computers!
CLICK HERE to visit my FAQ
PHONICS
We have put in all the hard work of mastering last sounds.
All the “playing with words” - stretching them out using slinkies, segmenting the sounds using Elkonin Boxes, substituting sounds orally… all that hard word building phonemic awareness (hearing sounds in words) has made this unit easier to teach.
To see how I started teaching the unit, visit my November blog post HERE and scroll down to the phonics section.
We are actually almost done with this unit, and I plan on giving my post test next week!
So this week we are working our way through the centers and hands-on activities, and while my kids are doing that, I can pull my students that need additional instruction on last sounds.
I can reteach my kiddos that are struggling while my other students continue to solidify their skills with the activities shown above.
I often reprint previous worksheets and activities to reteach my intensive students.
The matching last sounds activity is a great snapshot/quiz to see if kids can find the two words that have the same last sound.
This gives you a peak into their phonemic awareness abilities.
Here is a quick review of the last sounds we focused on this unit:
In the phonics last sound unit, you’ll see these picture pages. Cut out the elkonin boxes and laminate if you prefer.
Here is how I use the Elkonin Boxes to isolate sounds in CVC words:
These are our activities for the week! I also have more ideas on teaching last sounds on my November Week 2 blog post HERE
You’ll notice how my format from previous units stays the same… so this will save you so much time in teaching expectations. Students love that they recognize what to do and will get started right away.
For more information on how I teach phonics, please visit my phonics homepage HERE
MATH - MEASUREMENT & DATA
I love teaching this math unit to my kindergartners. It is fun to teach them how to measure objects and we have so many activities planned.
To keep everything organized, I use three ring binders with page protectors.
It is so easy to find exactly what I need when I go to make copies.
To start, I always give a math unit pretest.
Then it is time to get started!
This week I go over the vocabulary for the unit. I made these adorable posters with kid-friendly definitions.
I also made a coordinating mini book that has the definitions for students to trace as well.
I spend the first couple of days building background, having students make connections to measurement (how tall are you? Do you weigh more or does your dad weigh more? How far is your house from school? How big are your feet?)
We talk about why we need units of measure, and how we measure things in different units - inches, feet, pounds, etc.
During the first week of the unit, I also send home standard checklists with students so their parents can see what we are working on.
This unit only has three standards, but they are important!
I use a variety of approaches and techniques so my students are exposed to the vocabulary and strategies for solving these problems over and over again. It is easy for them to mix up terms such as length, height and width... so we do lots of hands-on activities and reinforcement worksheets.
The unit pretest, building background, some hands-on modeling and the vocabulary posters with mini books take most of this week.
CLICK HERE to read the full measurement and data blog post and try these two freebies!
I love to start this unit with this adorable read aloud about a little inch worm who loves to measure things. It is a great introduction to what can be measured and what cannot be measured.
It is the perfect book to help students make connections and build their background.
You can purchase it HERE or just watch it on YouTube below!
READING
I love guided reading time! I do this in small groups, and this is truly where the magic happens.
You can give 1:1 attention, move quickly or slowly and really “move” kids in small groups.
I would teach in small groups all day if I could. It is so easy to keep them engaged and make connections with each child.
We follow the same routine each week with guided reading using the same three materials: fluency and comprehension passage, mini reader and sentence builder
The theme changes each week and the difficulty increases each week, but the routine stays the same.
Monday: introduce theme, vocabulary/sight words, I read the comprehension passage, we read it together
Tuesday: review words, we read together, they read on their own (whisper/buddy), answer comprehension questions
Wednesday: sentence builder
Thursday: mini book, Review CAP skills - front cover, turning pages, holding a book properly, I read the book to them
Friday: we read the book together, buddy read, answer comprehension questions
This setup works perfectly for the classroom, homeschooling and even distance learning.
I love that my kids are in a routine and it saves me so much energy not having to explain what to do. All of our instructional time is spent on learning.
The Santa book is FREE!
Each day to start our guided reading, we warm up by reviewing sight word flash cards and then read two sight word fluency pages that we are working on.
If you have five kids in each small group, just make five fluency passage folders. I just slip each passage into a page protector and this makes it so quick and easy to read each day.
I use these three pronged folders and page protectors.
You can do the same thing with your guided reading fluency passages as well.
I outline my guided reading routine HERE on our rock star reader homepage.
I try to use my students’ excitement and buzz to tap into content areas and teach them the standards.
Instead of fighting the Christmas spirit that is going around, I use their energy to keep them engaged with our lessons this month.
So we are going to learn All About Christmas in Mexico, Italy and Germany.
We go to school for three weeks in December. So each week we learn about a different country’s Christmas traditions.
On Monday, I kick off each country we are studying with a slideshow. The beautiful photographs and simple sentences get the kids so engaged and excited. They love to share their connections, questions and inferences,
We are so excited to learn about Saint Nicholas and Christmas in Germany. Saint Nicholas’ Day is on December 6th, so this is the perfect unit to teach the first week in December.
I still remember my kindergarten teacher teaching us about Saint Nicholas and leaving gold coins in our shoes.
I start with the slideshow shown above to build background knowledge for my kiddos and teach them some of the vocabulary. Plus, this really builds their excitement for what we will be learning about this week.
Oma and Me is a cute book about a German boy and his Oma getting ready for Christmas in Germany.
They are celebrating their German Christmas traditions such as using Advent Wreaths, or Advent Kranz.
The little boy loves to ask his Oma all sorts of questions.
The mini books come in BW and matches the slideshow. Students have already practiced the sentences and vocabulary. This makes an excellent tool to build fluency and comprehension. We color them, buddy read and then they take their books home.
By Wednesday, students have heard the German vocabulary words for a couple days and now we practice writing them!
The kids always are excited to learn about Der Nikolous, or Saint Nicholas, because they know he leaves special treats in children’s shoes!
To get ready for Saint Nicholas, the kids can cut out and decorate their boots and then glue them to their “We are Ready for Saint Nicholas” paper. Be sure to have them only glue the middle/bottom of the area for boots so there is a little pocket at the top that you can leave gold coins or a candy cane in.
Saint Nicholas brings so much excitement to our classroom! It is so fun to even have the kids line up their shoes in the hallway. Then bring the kids back into the classroom and read them a story about Saint Nicholas (during which time have a teaching buddy or the secretary leave treats in their shoes).
Full disclosure: if you’re deciding which book to read for Christmas in Germany week, the kids and I both like St. Nicholas more than Oma and Me.
Afterward, they can go check to see if Saint Nicholas visited. They are beyond delighted to find chocolate gold coins left in their shoes… it is so magical! This is something they will talk about and remember for the entire school year. I still remember my kindergarten teacher doing this with me.
We write adjectives to describe Saint Nicholas and students can decorate his miter and glue it to the top of their Saint Nicholas writing prompt. These look so cute displayed in the hallway.
Then students can do their writing prompt about why it is important to be generous. This is such a wonderful lesson to teach!
Christmas in Germany is such a fun week in the classroom. Next week, we learn about Christmas in Mexico and Las Posadas.
NO PREP ACTIVITIES
I use these activities as my “centers” in the classroom. This year I am using them just as supplemental activities here and there with my daughter for homeschooling.
You can use these activities in any order you wish and they are all standards based. They are so versatile! These are the ones I plan on using this week (shown above.)
I ditched all the cute centers that took a ton of ink and lamination, and instead I just “print and teach” with these activities. The kids recognize the format of many of these now and they require very little direction.
They are perfect for “sub tubs” or for fast finishers too.
We are continuing our narrative writing unit that we started last month (see November Week 2 blog post HERE)
It is so neat seeing my students be able to write a complete sentence now, and even begin stringing sentences together with details.
It is truly not overwhelming if you provide students with structure, support and scaffolding such as sentence starters, graphic organizers and picture word banks.
They are going through all the steps of writing a narrative, but I am holding their hand the entire way in the form of scaffolding. They feel so independent, and their narratives turn out different from each other which is so fun to share.
Going through the motions of writing a narrative will give them so much confidence. Have them repeat this activity several times. This way you can then slowly pull away the sentence starters, but they still will know exactly what to do.
They are becoming writers before your eyes! It is so neat to be a part of.
My students are used to using picture word banks, so I go over this narrative word bank with them. You can have them simply finish the sentence starter “One time I ….” and they choose a box to help them complete the sentence. Or you can also try to have them add one detail the on their own.
This is so exciting to see how far they have come with reading and writing just since August.
When you feel they are ready, the next step is to move to the snapshot moment activities.
They can all in the graphic organizer, and transfer the ideas to their paper.
Or, you can brainstorm ideas together on the graphic organizer, and everyone then writes their own piece. The picture word bank right on their paper gives them support, and this will keep 25 little people asking you how to spell things.
I use narrative writing Boom Cards to help students practice writing a sentence, put events in order and add details.
DAILY REVIEW for MATH and LANGUAGE ARTS
I created this program to be used as a daily review whether you’re in the classroom, teaching virtually or homeschooling.
You can print the daily math and language pages front to back and simply use these for a daily warm up or review,
or you can use the My Tasks today along with the daily reading journal.
I created this program last spring when schools went remote for virtual learning. It makes it so easy for parents to see what students need to work on each day.
It brings consistent, standards-based activities that students feel confident completing each day.
In the classroom, these make perfect daily warm ups for language arts and math time. They also can be used for a daily end of the day review.
I use them at home with my daughter each day - I just copy the math and language arts page back to back each day for her. I love how she can be almost totally independent with them!
PRINT AN ENTIRE WEEK FOR FREE HERE
THIS VIDEO IS A PREVIEW OF THE YEAR LONG BUNDLE
Head back to the December Lesson HOMEPAGE HERE
See what I am teaching next week HERE
I hope this relieves some stress from your plate and helps you with your planning.
All my best,
Michala
