Celebrating Holidays in Early Childhood Programs

Each group represented in the classroom should be honored, including staff, says the article “Celebrating Holidays in Early Childhood Programs” in reference to ELLs and the upcoming holiday season.

For the winter holidays, this should be completely doable. What teachers want to keep in mind is that no holiday should be treated as if it’s unusual. So educators should stress that all holidays are meaningful and culturally-significant, the article states.

No matter which holiday it is or from which culture, in some way, all of them focus on the themes of gratitude, appreciation, and thankfulness. In multilingual classrooms, the article “5 Ways to a Bilingual/ Multicultural Holiday Season” says the topic of thankfulness can involve language learning, such as learning how to say “thank you” in a variety of languages and also cultural-sharing on each holiday; for instance, how on Chinese New Year families get dressed all in red for the holiday dinner.

A terrific way for teachers to embrace the whole class during the holiday season is to teach students about giving, in general, says the article “4 (Non-Religious) Ways to Celebrate the Holidays in Your Classroom.” For instance, students can decide on a service project of some sort, like holding a class or school-wide food drive or making holiday crafts or cards for nursing home residents.

One way to make sure that ELLs are included all year long is to bring in a family outreach organization like The Latino Family Literacy Project that addresses the literacy needs of the largest minority base in the country, Latino ELLs.

The Project’s age-specific training workshops and proven literacy programs are designed to set up home family reading routines for parents and their children. The organization introduces teachers to a step-by-step literacy instruction process and language-acquisition method that helps tremendously in vocabulary development, reading skills, and overall English language development for both parents and their kids. It also helps greatly in establishing a stronger connection between parents and schools. Teachers can attend a half day program training at a workshop near them or take an online webinar. For more information, please contact The Project today.