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June 22, 2015

Differentiation Guide: Holiday Hullabaloo

Differentiating Holiday Hullabaloo Week

Holiday Hullabaloo is a week full of silliness, celebration, laughter, and fun! Have a great time celebrating different holidays, birthdays, and other special days with your campers this week!

One way to differentiate and extend activities is to look for thematic connections using ABCMouse! In small groups or pairs, campers can…

• Listen to familiar holiday tunes like Jingle Bells, We Wish You a Merry Christmas, and Jolly Old St. Nick in the “music” section.

• Check out the “art” section – you’ll find thematic images (ghosts, pumpkins, witches, etc.). Challenge campers to use the online coloring tools, then replicate their creations with art materials at the easel or in the art center.

• There are lots of holiday-themed puzzles and games, as well!

There are also activity-specific modifications that you can make to meet the needs and interests of all of your campers.

• Create “Holiday Homes” by working in pairs to drafting blueprints for Lego homes, then swapping plans with another pair of campers – can you build what I created?

• An activity like “Holiday Reading” will pique the interest of children if you tap into their other interests. For example, your technology-loving campers can use the tablets to convert the story to a video or commercial, while your art lovers might want to illustrate their own stories and your “everything’s funny” jokesters might need a game where you read a page backwards, substitute silly words in the text, or add an outrageous joke/rhyme/accent to the end of each page!

• Try making “Holiday Patterns” and turn them into a game by challenging friends to figure out which shape would come next in a friends’ pattern, or gluing shapes onto index cards and making a holiday Memory game.

• Extend your theme talk about “Christmas in July”, and help your students work together to make a video about what Christmas in July would really be like! What would they make instead of a Snowman? Would Santa still come down the chimney?

• Your sensory or rice bin can become an “I Spy” game by hiding small thematic objects inside (jingle bells, a small picture of Santa, etc.) and making a visual “key” for friends to use to find the hidden items! (See photo below as an example.)