Holiday stories from around the world are suitable for year-round reading, writing, listening and speaking. Students can listen to them read aloud and respond by inventing their own song-story-endings. They can also draw out new ideas that connect one holiday theme to another, hand-in-hand around the world.
Through a familiarity with food-growing regions on the planet, students sing and create songs about growing crops they are familiar with in their homes and that grow in different parts of the planet.
Children publish their own stories of how they want the world to work, and how it should work from their view. Stories are illustrated, and students narrate the pictures as they tell and present their stories to the class.
As students learn through story-telling about the lives of global historical figures and their impact, they can create hand puppets of their favorite person using scraps brought in from home. Materials can include recycled paper, newspaper, magazines, Popsicle sticks, cotton balls and old fabric.
Students examine patterns among the various shapes in nature throughout the world by viewing Internet sites. Students create similar patterns and representative shapes using string, crayons and recycled materials from home.