What are you planning on doing in your classroom the first day back from Winter Break? After all, the students have been home for 1-3 weeks. They’re going to be a bit out of sorts, and won’t remember what was taught before they left on vacation. They may be a bit tired from sleeping in. How do you get them to re-engage?
You might want to begin by discussing the New Year. The earliest recorded New Year’s celebration was in Mesopotamia, somewhere around 2000 BCE. They celebrated the new year during the Spring Equinox as a celebration of the balance between night and day. Humans have been celebrating the start of the new year for thousands of years. It’s long been considered a time of new beginnings, and hope for the future.
Today, we celebrate by dropping the ball in Times Square, New York City, enjoying fireworks displays, and attending parties with a countdown to midnight on December 31st.. It’s long been a time for renewal and promises of improvement in the coming year. New Year’s resolutions are our personal plans for self-improvement in the coming year. Have your students come up with their own New Year’s resolutions. You can discuss classroom behavior or academic achievement, and ask students to think about how to improve in the future. Give them a clean slate and a chance to start again as if it were the beginning of a new school year.
Pinterest has some fun art projects you can enjoy with your students those first days back to school. Cutouts for New Year’s resolutions can be decorated, colored, and displayed in the classroom. Students can decorate and learn about New Year’s celebrations around the world. And creative writing assignment ideas are available with a New Year’s theme.
Introduce math topics you previously covered and would like to review. There are many New Year’s-themed math lessons that will make the review fun for students. Lessons from fractions to decimals, geometry, algebra, and more are available as a fun review.
Check out these Math Bundles:
Multiplication and Division Math Bundle of 4 Games/Lessons
Expressions and Equations Bundle of 6 Games
Integer Bundle of 5 Games and Puzzles
Fractions, Decimals, and Percentages Bundle of 9 Games/Lessons
Good Luck your first days back in the classroom! You’ve got this!
Kelly