Holiday SEL Bundle of Activities to Teach Character Education

Inside: Use this Holiday SEL Bundle to teach social-emotional learning and character education for each major holiday.

In our house, we absolutely live for the holidays.

As soon as one holiday is over, we tear down the decorations, put up the new ones and start the countdown to the next holiday.

Maybe it’s because in our family we have a St. Patrick’s Day birthday, a Halloween birthday and a New Year’s Eve birthday.

Or maybe it’s the teacher in me that loved the themes and arts and crafts and storybooks for each holiday.

Maybe it’s the fact that we’re an interfaith family and literally celebrate ALL the holidays so there’s a holiday every month (except August…I guess we take August off).

But the best part about holidays is we can use them to teach harder subjects in fun, hands-on ways so our kids don’t even realize they’re learning.

And when we can theme our activities and our centers and our homework with high-interest themes for each month, our students will be more engaged and ready to learn.

So to teach social emotional learning (SEL) and character education in a fun, hands-on way you will love this Holiday SEL Bundle, perfect for helping kids decide what is kind and what is not kind.

Why It’s Important to Teach Social Emotional Learning

Teaching Social Emotional Learning is an essential part of any curriculum because if we’re teaching the whole student, we can’t just focus on reading, writing, and math.

We have to focus on turn taking, and fair play, kindness, and being includers.

But social-emotional learning has so many more benefits than simply teaching about kindness.

It also improves our students’ self-confidence, self esteem, problem-solving skills, emotional intelligence and encourages kids to be more helpful, compassionate, generous, and grateful.

There are tons of ways to teach Social Emotional Learning and make it fun.

To connect SEL to reading skills, we can use this Emergent Reader Bundle.

To connect SEL to the alphabet and letter recognition we can use this Kindness Zoo Bundle.

To connect SEL to gross motor skills we can play these Kindness Games.

And to connect SEL to the holidays, we can use this Holiday SEL Bundle.

What’s Included in the Holiday SEL Bundle:

Holidays Included in the Holiday SEL Bundle:

Valentine’s Day
St. Patrick’s Day
Easter
Halloween
Christmas
December Multicultural Holidays

Resources Included in the Bundle:

24 hearts with kindness or unkindness clipart in color
24 hearts with kindness or unkindness clipart in black and white
24 shamrocks with kindness or unkindness clipart in color
24 shamrocks with kindness or unkindness clipart in black and white
24 bunny peeps with kindness or unkindness clipart in color
24 bunny peeps with kindness or unkindness clipart in black and white
24 pumpkins with kindness or unkindness clipart in color
24 pumpkins with kindness or unkindness clipart in black and white
24 Christmas trees with kindness or unkindness clipart in color
24 Christmas trees with kindness or unkindness clipart in black and white
Kind and Unkind sorting mats in color and black and white for the activity
4 Kindness worksheets to help kids show what they know and determine what is kind and what is not kind in color and black and white
12 creative writing prompts to encourage kindness writing
Interactive Emergent Reader for Holidays Around the World, We Celebrate Differently in color
Interactive Emergent Reader for Holidays Around the World, We Celebrate Differently in black and white

How to Use the Holiday SEL Bundle:

For Each of the Kind or Unkind Sorts:

1. Purchase and print out the version you wish to use: color or black and white.

2. If you use the black and white version, color the cards using these skin color crayons so the kids on the characters are as diverse as your students.

3. Cut apart the cards (hearts, shamrocks, bunnies, pumpkins, or ornaments) and laminate them for durability.

4. Go over the pictures on the cards to ensure children understand what the picture depicts. You can use these as discussion starters before or after the activity.

5. The students will sort the cards by kind actions or unkind actions by placing the cards near the correct item: Valentine Envelope, St. Patrick’s Day Rainbow, Easter Basket, Halloween Gate, or Christmas Tree.

They can do this in small groups during centers, independently, or you can do it as a whole group in a pocket chart.

If there are too many cards, you can only give students half the cards at once so they are more successful.

6. To follow up on the activity, students can complete the Kind or Unkind worksheet to show their understanding.

Students will cross off or circle the actions on the worksheet. If you use black and white version, students can color in the images that are kind and x off the images that are unkind.

7. To connect this sel curriculum to writing skills, students can draw a picture/write how they will choose to be kind this summer. If students are prewriters, they can dictate their answer and draw a picture.

For the Interactive Emergent Reader: We Celebrate Differently:

1. Print out the version you wish to use: color or black and white.

2. If you use the black and white version, use these skin color crayons so students can color in the people.

3. Read the book together and students will decide if they do or do not do what the page says in their family to celebrate.

They can circle the words and/or cross out the words that make sense to them.

4. On the last page, students can draw their favorite holiday they celebrate and write/dictate their favorite holiday or the holiday they celebrate in December.