Ninja Notes

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Holidays

Gift Festive Christmas Classroom Activities to Your Students

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Do you need some Christmas classroom activities to keep your students busy during December that are still valuable learning opportunities? Look no further than this list of easy to implement (and barely prep) ideas. Come check out some Christmas math or design a social media account for an elf. These Christmas activities are perfect for your upper elementary classroom.

You know that week in December when you’re constantly called down to the auditorium for concert rehearsals, some of your students are away sick, some have left for vacation early, and you have to keep a classroom full of excited kids busy? Do you need some Christmas classroom activities to solve the problem?

Christmas is fun and all, but it’s so hard to keep kids interested in learning, and it’s a challenging time to introduce new concepts with all those interruptions. What’s a teacher to do?

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How to Make Recycled Can Characters

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Upcycle cans from your house into these adorable can characters. It's great as a Christmas craft or a language arts character study.

Here’s a great reason to eat potato chips (you don’t have to eat them, but it’s a good excuse). Have your students collect Pringles cans or any other metal or cardboard can that has a plastic lid and upcycle them into a great holiday activity. Our students have loved making recycled can characters over the years.

This activity will work with other types of cans that are made of cardboard with a metal base and plastic lid.

We made our cans into snowmen, gingerbread men, penguins, Santas, elves and reindeer as a fun Christmas craft activity that parents will cherish for years to come.

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How to Teach the Importance of Remembrance Day

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Teaching students about the history and importance of Remembrance Day continues to be part of the school curriculum. Come learn about some of the different ways we teach students the history while honouring those who have sacrificed their lives to keep Canadians safe and free.

As we were growing up, many of us had family members who had served in World War II. It was easier to understand the purpose of Remembrance Day when Grandpa would wear his medals to our school service. Our current students are a few generations removed from that war, though some have had family members serve in Korea, Afghanistan or with the United Nations Peacekeepers. It is difficult for some of them to understand the abstractness of war, so it is even more important for us to give them a realistic view of those events and the history behind them.

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Being Thankful in the Classroom

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Canadian Thanksgiving is early in he year, which is why we call the time from Back to School until thanksgiving the beta period. Come find out what we use it for and get loads of resources you can use to be thankful in the classroom or acknowledge Thanksgiving.

The year has started. Things are starting to settle and it’s time to count your blessings in the classroom. We call the start of the year through Thanksgiving (well, Canadian Thanksgiving on the second Monday of October) the beta period. It’s the time of year to try things out, get to know the students, build relationships, and set up the year for success. It can be hard to be thankful in the classroom unless we take a moment to sit back and list the things we are grateful for.

The beta period is not the time of year we spend getting deep into the content. We review. We read. And we talk about what is coming next. We check out our skills and show what we can or can’t do.

Most of all, we celebrate all the things were are thankful for in our classroom. Keep reading to see how we spend this special time of year.

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