State Christmas Books

It's Jen from An Adventure in Literacy here today to share some state specific Christmas books. I'm featuring the Virginia books, but if you change the title to your state you can find most of the other states on Amazon. I've used these books in my classroom and they are always a hit. Students love recognizing local places they have been. 

The Twelve Days of Christmas in Virginia by Sue Corbett

This book is part of "The Twelve Days of Christmas in America" series. Each state book mirrors the 12 Days of Christmas...with a little state flair. In addition to being super books, most are written by local authors. Search Amazon for "The Twelve Days of Christmas in America" or insert your state in the title.

Santa is Coming to Virginia by Steve Smallman

Join Santa and his reindeer as they fly over famous state sites.  You can find some regional versions of this book too. There is even a Santa is Coming to Washington DC to cover those patriotic symbols and monuments. Santa truly is everywhere! Search Amazon for your state.

Wishing all book lovers across the country loads of holiday cheer!

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Fun with Christmas Carols!

Hello, everyone!  It's Andrea here from Reading Toward the Stars with some quick and easy ideas for using seasonal songs in your classroom.

I have been working with my kindergarten students with gaining concept of word.  This is something that our current reading program lacks, and it is heavily assessed throughout the year.  This past week we worked on using the song "Jingle Bells" for concept of word practice.  They used bingo markers to put marks under the words in the poem.

After doing that, we counted the words in each line and went back and read the poem, while they pointed to the dots as we said each word.

After reading through the poem, they then looked for various letters in the poem and marked them.

They really had fun with this and can't wait for the next poem.

This week with my older students, we are going to work on reading Christmas songs and not singing them.  This helps with fluency practice since the students have to attend to the words and think about what they are reading.

I am going to use my Fluency with Christmas Carols with them to help them with this.  We will READ the songs. Then they can fill in the blanks with words from the songs to practice.  You can grab this freebie by clicking {here} or on the picture below.

How do you use holiday songs in your classroom?

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