Creating Lessons from Holiday Decorations: A Big List of Ideas

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It's time to decorate the classroom! Or to create fabulous decorations for your students to take home with them! But what other learning can you get from holiday decorations?

 
Creating Lessons from Holiday Decorations. A blog post with a big list of classroom activity ideas to use with holiday decorations
 

Find the Maths

  • What angles can you find in a 5 point star? A 6 point star? 7 points?

  • What's the circumference of the bauble? The diameter?

  • What shapes can you find in holiday decorations?

  • What nets do you need to create 3D decorations?

  • What's the area of those nets?

  • How many decorations do you need to decorate a classroom? To decorate a tree?

Find the Writing

  • Write about why we need holiday decorations

  • Write about the history of holiday decorations

  • Write a procedure for making holiday decorations

  • Write a short story about holiday decorations

  • Write a newspaper article about how your class is decorated

Find the Engineering

  • Which decorations are the strongest?

  • How can you made decorations stronger?

  • How do you test the strength of a decoration?

  • Can you use decorations to make a machine?

  • Can you make decorations move on their own?

  • Can you create structures out of decorations?

 
Creating Lessons from Holiday Decorations. A blog post with a big list of classroom activity ideas to use with holiday decorations
 

Find the Creativity

  • How can you portray decorations using paint? Pencils? Clay?

  • What recycled materials can you use to create decorations?

  • Can you create a dance about decorations?

  • Can you create a play or a song about decorations?

  • How can you use colour in your decorations?

  • How can you use shapes in decorations?

Don't forget to leave your holiday ideas in the comments!

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Surviving Christmas in an Australian Classroom

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Ah, Christmas. The students are tired. Admin are insisting that it's business as usual until 3pm on the last day. There's activities and performances and assemblies and you never get a full class for more than half an hour at a time. You've just found out you need to move your whole classroom across the school. Oh, and it's swelteringly hot!

Of course, what you need are Christmas or holiday themed activities which promote real learning - while fitting into the spaces of time you get in the classroom!

 
Surviving Christmas in an Australian Classroom. A teachers blog post with different ideas for making the most out of the Christmas season in the classroom
 

Bring on the Games

This is a great time for reinforcing everything you've taught during the year with a series of games. Your students will love you, they'll have a better chance of remembering things into the new year and then their next teacher will also love you! 

Short multiplication games, grammar games and spelling games are great for filling in the 5 or 10 minute gaps before you have to be somewhere. You could also hold a trivia quiz over the last few weeks, breaking the class into teams and covering all sorts of information from the year (things you've covered, books you've read, events you've attended plus general trivia).

Board games and adapted board games can work really well for those times when you're missing some of the students. You can also take the games outside to rejuvenate students. Use the first hour of the day when it's a little cooler, or find a covered or shaded place to play. 

Writing Tasks

Writing is one of those tasks which is wonderfully adaptable to any event or time of the year. Students can create their own creative writing prompts, create stories, poems, songs or plays about Christmas or the holidays. They can respond to articles in newspapers or online. They can write letters to family and friends or write reflections about the year they've had. 

Persuasive writing is now a big feature of Australian classrooms and an excellent technique to work on at Christmas time. Students can write advertisements or letters to the editor or they can respond to a persuasive text prompt.

 
Surviving Christmas in an Australian Classroom. A teachers blog post with different ideas for making the most out of the Christmas season in the classroom
 

Reading

Although the Christmas season might not allow enough time for a Christmas novel, there is enough time to examine Christmas picture books. Students can examine picture books based on old carols and stories or picture books which tell new stories. They can talk about the way Christmas is portrayed, the emphasis which is put on Christmas in the books (is it about Santa? Giving? Where Christmas is held? The food?) or how different Christmas books compare with each other. Alongside the reading discussion, there's plenty of room for accompanying writing and craft activities.

 
 

Maths Investigations

Christmas and holidays are great for maths investigations. You can plan for Christmas lunch (time table for cooking, menu planning for 4 people or 6 people or 8 people, working out the cost of ingredients and creating a budget.

Or you could create an investigation around wrapping presents - how can you wrap different sized boxes? How much paper will you need? 

Or look at patterns of Christmas lights. What patterns can you create? How does it change when you use different numbers of lights or colours?

There are so many easy to set up and easy to implement ideas to create real learning at Christmas time - even with the heat.

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Three Connections to The Ruins of Gorlan (Ranger's Apprentice #1)

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Although The Ruins of Gorlan is set in a fictional world, there's still many connections to real world history and topics. Those connections are just waiting for you to explore in the classroom.

 
3 Connections to the Ruins of Gorlan. A look at different topics you can explore in relation to the first Ranger's Apprentice book by John Flanagan. A Galarious Goods blog post
 

Medieval History

The world of the Ranger's Apprentice books is a rather modern version of medieval history. Conditions are a lot cleaner and nicer for our characters, but there are castles, fiefdoms, barons and knights and lots of connections to European medieval history.

Students can spend some time reading up on medieval history. They may like to research historical documents and images or they might like to spend some time reading medieval historical fiction (you can find some here or here). This allows for comparisons, for students to discuss why the author may have chosen a medieval setting and discussions about how realistic the world of the Ranger's Apprentice is.

Spies in History

One of the roles of the Rangers is to act as spies for the King. There's a rich history of spies throughout history and it's a topic students can definitely get their teeth into. Students might like to look at why spies are required, who some of the famous spies are and what impact they've had on historical events. They could look at how spies work and spies who work during war time. There's also many middle grades and young adult books on spies which can be connected to The Ruins of Gorlan.

Archery

As an apprentice Ranger, Will learns archery and is expected to become an expert with the bow and arrow. Archery is an activity which developed to allow people to hunt for food before becoming a weapon and, in modern times, a sport. Students can learn how archery works and where it appears in other books and media. Through archery you can also connect The Ruins of Gorlan to physical educations - you may be lucky to allow the students to experience archery or you could look at some accuracy and strength drills - and STEM - creating a bow, looking at forces, looking at records from archery competitions, examining how bows and arrows have developed over history.

 
3 Connections to the Ruins of Gorlan. A look at different topics you can explore in relation to the first Ranger's Apprentice book by John Flanagan. A Galarious Goods blog post
 
 
 

Lessons from Three Characters in The Ruins of Gorlan (Ranger's Apprentice #1)

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In my last post I talked about The Ruins of Gorlan, the first Ranger's Apprentice book by John Flanagan and why I thought it would be a great read for the classroom. Here I'd like to spend a bit of time talking about some of the characters and the lessons they can inspire in the classroom.

 
Lessons from 3 Characters in The Ruins of Gorlan - a look at the first Ranger's Apprentice book by John Flanagan and potential discussion topics to use in the classroom. A Galarious Goods blog post.
 

Will

Will is an orphaned ward of Redmont Fief and knows nothing about his past. He's small, but nimble, and uses his climbing and hiding skills to get himself in and out of trouble. He aspires to be a knight, but is instead chosen as an apprentice to the mysterious Ranger.

The use of orphans in children's stories is a familiar topic, but it's definitely one worth revisiting with students. Why do authors choose to revisit the orphan storyline? What does it add to the story? How would the story be different if Will (or other famous orphans of children's literature) were not orphans? What similarities are there between Will's story and the story of other orphans?

Will's lack of knowledge about his past is also an interesting area to explore. Students could look into how family history shapes characters and how it shapes us as individuals. They could look at family stories and the narratives they create.

Horace

Like Will (and three of the other young characters in the story), Horace is an orphan and a ward. However, he gets his wish and is placed into battle school as an apprentice Knight. Despite having a natural ability with the sword, Horace finds the experience isolating and miserable - due to the behaviour of others and the lack of cultural knowledge he has around the battle school.

Horace's struggles at battle school are really interesting. On paper he's the perfect candidate, but he doesn't understand what the culture of the school is supposed to be like and has no one to ask about it. This leaves him open to abuse at the hands of older students. Students can investigate the idea of 'belonging' and 'culture' and talk about why it might be hard to be a new student at a school or a new immigrant to a country.

There's also opportunities to discuss bullying through this story - and how to deal with it. Horace doesn't deal with it particularly well and students might like to propose different ways he could have approached the situation.

 
Lessons from 3 Characters in The Ruins of Gorlan - a look at the first Ranger's Apprentice book by John Flanagan and potential discussion topics to use in the classroom. A Galarious Goods blog post.
 

Halt

Halt is the Ranger of Redmont Fief and Will's mentor. Little is known about him or his past, but he carefully guides Will to learn the skills necessary to become a Ranger. As Will gets to know Halt, he discovers that Halt has played a pivotal role in defending Araluen in the past - and that this experience will assist them in dealing with growing danger.

Halt's role as mentor is a familiar role in fiction and non-fiction stories. Students can compare mentors from different narratives and look at differences and similarities. They can also look at biographies and memoirs of notable people and identify mentors to real life people. Students may also like to identify the features of a mentor.

Have you used the Ranger’s Apprentice books in your classroom? Who is your favourite character?

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Introducing The Ruins of Gorlan (Ranger's Apprentice #1)

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Finding novels for small groups or whole classes to read can be a difficult exercise. Here I'd like to introduce one of my favourite books - a great coming of age story appropriate for 8-14 year old readers: The Ruins of Gorlan by John Flanagan.

 
Introducing the Ruins of Gorlan. A look at the Ranger's Apprentice novel by John Flanagan and why it's a great class novel for middle grade readers. A Galarious Goods book blog post
 

What’s the Story?

The Ruins of Gorlan is the first book in the Ranger's Apprentice series by John Flanagan. It takes us to the fictional world of Araluen - similar to medieval England - a world of castles and knights and the mysterious Rangers.

The hero of the story is Will, a young orphan who wants to be trained to be a knight like his fellow ward (and - at the beginning of the book - rival) Horace. However, he is considered too small to join the battle school and is instead apprenticed to the enigmatic Ranger, Halt. We follow his training as an apprentice until an almost forgotten enemy appears to test Halt, Will and others around them

What Kind of Story Is It?

Although there are some fantastical elements to this book (those elements aren't really present in later books in the series) it is primarily an adventure. It's also an origin story - we see how Will enters training as a Ranger, how he is challenged through that training and asked to make decisions which will shape his future, how he interacts with his mentor and how he can apply his training in an unthinkable situation.

We can compare this book with other origin stories, looking at what the traits of an origin story are and how we could change or challenge them. Students can also try to write their own origin stories - either of original or familiar characters.

How Can We Use The Ruins of Gorlan in the Classroom

There's a lot in this book which can be used in the classroom. The fictional medieval elements allow research and discussion of medieval history. The characters in the story are challenged by a number of situations, including bullying, not being able to follow their dreams, confronting fears and being persistent, allowing for some interesting discussions. There's also incredibly rich vocabulary used throughout the book, allowing for word work and discussions.

Decided to teach The Ruins of Gorlan, but not sure where to start? Download this FREE RESOURCE - The Ruins of Gorlan: Introductory Activities to get you going.

 
 

Have you taught The Ruins of Gorlan in your classroom? What ideas and themes did you focus on? Share your experience below in the comments.