December Activities in the Special Education Classroom

The holiday season is my absolute favorite time of year outside and inside of the classroom! My students and I always have so much fun celebrating the holidays. Check out some of my favorite December activities:

ELA Ideas

• Read The Gingerbread Man. I love this version retold by Mary Sandel from the Fountas and Pinnell intervention collection because it is predictable for making picture-supported sentences and easy enough for my emerging readers to read the text. 

• My favorite Christmas books are:
• Clifford’s Christmas by Norman Bridwell
• The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bell by Lucille Colandro
• In addition to using picture-supported sentence boards, I also have an old lady doll that I have students take turns feeding throughout the story. I just print an extra copy of the sentence board at a larger scale, laminate and cut out the pieces, and then pass them out to each of the students as the story starts. It is a great interactive activity and really builds joint attention and engagement during the read aloud! 

• My favorite Holiday Traditions books are:
• Kevin’s Kwanzaa by Lisa Bullard
• The Night Before Hanukkah by Natasha Wing

Math Ideas

• One of my favorite math activity for the holidays is a tree decorating craft incorporating money. I print out tree outlines on green cardstock. Next, I gather decorations for the students to glue onth their trees. Then, I give each student a buying menu so that they can purchase the decorations they want. I differentiated this activity three ways by having one buying menu with coin icons for matching the coin to the picture to make the purchase, another option with prices to work on single coin values, and finally an option with prices in multiples of 5 so students can count out nickels or easily use TouchMoney. 

Cooking & Craft Ideas

• I love making special gifts with my students for their families. We always have so much fun creating, wrapping, and sending special cards home. This Santa handprint mason jar is one of my favorites!

• When celebrating Christmas, we love making Christmas Cookies. Some years I make them from scratch with the kids and other years when we are feeling rushed for time I will get the pre-cut cookies so we can focus on the best part... DECORATING!

• When celebrating Holiday Traditions like Kwanzaa and Hannukkah, we make sweet potato pie and marshmallow dreidels. 

• For all of my favorite classroom visual recipes check out my Visual Recipes for the Whole Year on TPT. 

Social Group Ideas

• Each year we have a small celebration in my classroom where my paraprofessionals and I give gifts to the students and the kids have fun opening and playing with their new toys. Then we have treats, play games, and dance to some holiday music. Then, my students join their homeroom general education classrooms for their parties as well. 

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Gingerbread Activities in The Special Education Classroom

December is my favorite month in the classroom. Yes, I admit it can be a bit chaotic with the holiday parties and overall excitement but it is a lot of fun and there are so many fun themes that we do each year. Each year, I start with our gingerbread theme. Below are my favorite gingerbread activity ideas from my special education classroom. 

ELA Ideas

• Read The Gingerbread Man. I always use the version retold by Mary Sandel from the Fountas and Pinnell intervention collection. 

• Practice positional words using a gingerbread doll, cookie, or cutout and a cookie jar. 

• Use the stem "(Name) ran away from the ______." during predictable chart writing and then use my class book template to create a book students can read again and again! 

Math Ideas

• Practice subtraction activities using gingerbread manipulatives, or for some added fun use cookies and let students eat them as they subtract! 

Cooking & Craft Ideas

• Make gingerbread playdoh. It smells delicious and can be made in the microwave! Find the recipe in my Gingerbread Thematic Unit or if your class loves to cook try my Visual Recipes for the Whole Year. 

• Make gingerbread ornaments. These are a great gift idea for families and they also smell great! 

Social Group Ideas

• Play who stole the cooking from the cookie jar. My Gingerbread Thematic Unit has script cards that make this game accessible to many students! 

• One year my class made a gingerbread ornament from the recipe above for all of the staff members in the school and delivered them. This was a great authentic opportunity for practicing greetings and manners! 

Interested in these activities and more? Why not bundle and save!