A Christmas Carol Vocabulary Activity - Capacious Amounts of Coal

I'm not usually a big fan of handing out candy in the classroom.  It can set a bad precedent, and often backfires.  However, while reading A Christmas Carol this week, with my small reading groups, I made an exception. First off, because it was the last week before Christmas break, and everyone was handing out goodies. And secondly, those little bags of candy coal on the end aisles of all the grocery stores, at this time of year, are perfect for Dickens' classic.

I used them in our classroom as incentive for close reading.  The word capacious, meaning ample, roomy, and generous - was one of our Stave 2 vocabulary words, from when Fezziwig adjusts his "capacious waistcoat".  But, the word is used twice in Stave 3, as well, in connection with the Ghost of Christmas Present.

This garment hung so loosely on the figure, that its capacious breast was bare, as if disdaining to be warded or concealed by any artifice. 

How it bared its breadth of breast, and opened its capacious palm, and floated on, outpouring, with a generous hand, its bright and harmless mirth on everything within its reach!

So, as we read Stave 3 aloud, I had the students on the lookout for the word.  When they spotted it, all they had to do was raise their hand, and point it out on the page, and they could receive a piece of coal - for a total of two pieces of coal each for the chapter.  Not exactly a capacious amount, but enough to keep the students engaged, and following along while their classmates took their turns reading.

Tasting "A Christmas Carol" - Christmas Pudding

We watched Disney's The Muppet Christmas Carol for our family movie night, to go along with our reading of the Dickens classic.  I was pleasantly surprised at the number of direct quotes from the story it contains.  It turned out to be a lot more on the educational side, than I had anticipated.  Though, of course, with the Muppets there was plenty of "entertainment", too.

The children had a good time picking out the parts of the movie that were the same, and the parts that deviated from the book.

The Christmas pudding was omitted from the Kermit/Cratchit's Christmas dinner.  But, that was okay, because I was ready with Mathew Walker Christmas pudding (ordered earlier in the week off of Amazon) to fill the gap.

I had deliberately ordered the small, four serving pudding, so that I would be able to deliver the line that, "nobody said or thought that it was at all a small pudding for a large family", and because as I suspected...

...the English dessert is an acquired taste - especially for our American palates...sort of like a really moist fruit cake.

I don't think Christmas pudding will make our list Christmas favorites. It was fun though to take a taste, and bring a spoonful of the story to life.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

A Christmas Carol Stave 2 Vocabulary Activity

To review some of the vocabulary from stave 2 of Dickens' A Christmas Carol (though again, this activity would work with any book you happen to be reading through near Christmastime) I gave the children stocking tops (the white papers) with quotes from the stave/chapter printed on them, with the vocabulary words underlined, to match up with the synonyms, printed on the polka dots (round label stickers) of construction paper stockings.

The activity worked the way I  had hoped, but I think it might have been even better to have given the students the stockings with the tops attached, but polka dots blank, so they could have looked up the vocabulary words in a thesaurus, and filled in the synonyms themselves, for that little extra push of learning.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

"A Christmas Carol" Stave 1 Vocabulary Activity

I put this activity together, to work on the vocabulary from stave 1 of A Christmas Carol, with a couple of small reading groups I lead at a local private school, and with my own children (the 10 to 16 year olds, anyway) at home.

We used the Christmas Carol vocabulary for stave 1 from Quizlet.com, but the activity would work equally well with any of the staves, or for the vocabulary from any book you happen to be reading through, near Christmas.

I started by sketching out a large-ish Christmas tree, on a 4 foot sheet, from a roll of paper.  Before coloring it in, I traced out a circle on the tree for each vocabulary word.

But, instead of printing the vocabulary words in the circles, I used their synonyms.

I printed the vocabulary words on the backside (upside down) of paper Christmas balls, traced out around a cup, slightly larger, than I had used for the circles on the tree.  I decorated the front sides of the ornaments with a couple squiggly lines, and marked them with the page number on which the word on the back could be found.

Finally, I gave them to my students (a different set and tree for each group) as a vocabulary race.  The goal was for each student to grab a Christmas ball, find its vocabulary word on the proper page of their book, and print out part, or all of the sentence it was found in, before matching the ball to the circle on the tree with the corresponding synonym (I had thesauruses on hand, in case help was needed).  They glued the ornaments to the tree by the tops, so when they were done, the tree was covered in quotes from the chapter...

...that could be lifted up to reveal the vocabulary words with their synonyms underneath.

The student who placed the most ornaments correctly on the tree was the winner, and got an extra piece of (candy) coal - as well as a hearty, "Bah! Humbug!" from everyone else.

Simple Christmas Craft - 3D Cardboard Christmas Trees

I don't know who first came up with the idea of slipping two cardboard trees together to make them stand, but it's a classic for sure.

It's also the sort of craft I really love, because it gives the illusion of a messy and complicated project, without actually being messy or complicated.

So, before I cleaned up the cardboard left over from our cookie craft, I asked the older girls (and a friend who was visiting and needed something to do) to cut out a couple of trees each for the younger children.  There are templates all over the place online - we used one from a freebie math craftivity featured this month at TeachersPayTeachers.com (there are all kinds of great Christmas themed worksheets to be found over there right now - many of them free).

Anyway, once the girls were done with the trees, I cut alternating slits from the bottoms and tops of each pair, midway down...

...so they could be slipped together to make a standing tree - just like with the slip-together playhouse.

Then, I took them apart, for the children to paint green on both sides (the part that seemed messy, but with washable paint, and paper covering the table - really wasn't).

We left them to dry overnight (making them seem complicated), flipping them every once and a while, so the paint wouldn't stick to the paper.

 And, I gave them back to the children, to decorate with stick on jewels (of course any type of sticker would work - or even bits of paper to glue on).

Making for a great seems-like-a-lot-of-work-but-is-really-quite-easy kind of Christmas craft.  Now I just have to dig out our copy Hans Christian Andersen's The Fir Tree, and we'll be all set.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Super Simple Christmas Craft - Cardboard Christmas Cookies

I've mentioned our love of decorating cardboard Christmas cookies before.  It's such a classic, no muss, no fuss, low maintenance type craft though, I thought it might be worth a second mention.

A couple of minutes of tracing, and cutting cookie cutter shapes from thin cardboard - the backs of cereal boxes, or the card stock from the backs of paper reams - a box of crayons, and maybe some Christmas music to set the mood, and you've got the makings for an entire afternoon of Christmas crafting...

 ...and pretend play...

...with very little clean-up required.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Christmas Science Craft for Children - Spiral Angel Spinners

Add a Christmas touch to the old convection spinner experiment (where a paper spiral is hung above a lit candle to allow children to "see" the air current created by the rising hot air) by giving the plain spiral an angelic make-over.

Simply cut a salad plate sized paper circle into a wide spiral...

...lift up the center of the spiral, and glue two quarters of a paper doily to it (or something equally pretty) points together - to form wings.

Then, glue two small circles (we used a medicine cup for a pattern) on either side of the center of the wings, sandwiching the center of the spiral, and the two loose ends of a loop of string - for hanging, between them.

Decorate the circle faces, or leave them blank, if you prefer.  They are pretty either way.

Make one, or an entire chorus of spiral messengers.

They make a lovely decoration, spinning slowly in the candlelight.  Just take care with the open flame...

...nobody wants a house fire for Christmas, I'm sure.

It's great to be a homeschooler.