December's+Holiday+Celebrations

Holidays Around The World: A Time To Celebrate Peace On Earth and Goodwill To Men

Introduction: Have you ever wondered why so many people celebrate holidays in the winter? From Christmas to Hanukkah to Kwanzaa and from the United States to Sweden to Australia, people are looking for reasons to push aside the long, cold days of winter and search for a little peace in the middle of the chaos. This webquest will take you around the world where you can explore the customs and traditions of the holiday season. Let's go on a quest for Christmas...Kwanzaa...Hannakuh...anything warm and joyous!

Task: On December 16th, Philo Magnet Academy will be presenting a celebration of "Holidays Around The World" for all students, staff, parents, family members, and the community as a whole. It will highlight the different holidays celebrated during the winter months and how they differ from country to country as well as how they've evolved over the years. Your task is to become a researcher, digging for information that will lead you to the answers, then deciding on a method of presenting your information to students, staff, and invited guests. Individually or as a group, you may decide to do any of the following activities:


 * Create an art gallery with original artwork depicting holiday celebrations around the globe and/or traditional photos or paintings.
 * Create a PowerPoint Presentation telling the story of your assigned country's holiday customs.
 * Create a PhotoStory or Animoto movie telling the story of your assigned country's holiday customs.
 * Create a skit that brings to life a scene from your country's holiday customs.
 * Play and/or sing holiday songs from various countries (or your specific country) and tell the story behind the songs. (Why would anyone want a partridge in a pear tree for Christmas?)
 * Create Christmas Cards highlighting the customs of your country along with the language or phrases used during this season to be distributed to family and other guests.
 * Write a poem or short story to share with students, staff, and family during the presentation and be combined into a holiday booklet.

The goal is to create a presentation that will capture the imagination of your audience and allow them to experience the holidays in ways they've never imagined. Have fun and Learn bunches!

Process: Your teacher will divide you into groups and each group will either be assigned a country to research, holiday songs around the world, or other winter celebrations other than Christmas. Countries will include Sweden, Italy, France, Poland, Germany, Mexico, England, Australia, and China.  As soon as you receive your group assignment, you will begin researching holiday customs and traditions using the graphic organizer provided here. [|Holidays Around The World Research Organizer.doc] Open the document, complete the identifying information on the top of the form, then use the resources in the next section to find facts, pictures, etc related to the four categories. Keep in mind which task you might want to explore because you may need to include pictures on your graphic organizer or saved in a separate file. Ask your teacher which method he or she would prefer. After you have filled in the information from your research, save the graphic organizer in your student folder on the h drive so you won't lose your work. You may open another document if you run out of room on the first one. Just be sure that you give it a different name when you save it. You can also use this graphic organizer if you are researching a special holiday such as Hanukkah. 

If you are researching the history behind holiday music, open the graphic organizer provided here [|Holiday Songs Organizer.doc]

Resources: Find your topic listed below and follow the links to complete your research. Don't forget to record the information on your graphic organizer.

Sweden: [] [] [] []

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">Italy: [] [] [] <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;"> France: <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">[] [] [] <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 90%;"> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;"> Poland: <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">[] [] []

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">Germany: ​ <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">[] [] []

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">Mexico: <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">[] [] [] [] <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;"> <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">England: <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">[] [] [] [] <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">

Australia: <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 90%;">[] <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;"> [] [] [] <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;"> China: <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">[] [] [] [] <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">

Kwanzaa: <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 90%;">[] [|http://www.theholidayspot.com/kwanzaa/][] []

Hanukkah: <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">[] [] [] [] [] <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;"> Holiday Songs: <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 90%;">[] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 90%;"> <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%; text-align: left;">Holiday Greetings: <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 90%;">[] [] <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;">Holiday Customs and Traditions: <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 90%;">[] [] []

Evaluation: Rubric for Art Gallery Project [|Rubric for Holiday Art Gallery.doc] ​Rubric for PowerPoint Project <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 110%;">[|Rubric for Holiday PowerPoint Presentation.doc] <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 120%;"> Poetry Formats to Follow [|Poetry Ideas for the Holiday Webquest.doc]