Grinch Day in 5th Grade!

I LOVE the holiday season in the classroom. It is hands down one of my favorite times of the year. There is so much excitement and joy to be found by watching and experiencing the holiday cheer through the eyes of children. 

Over the next few posts, I am going to be sharing pictures and short explanations about what are some of our favorite things to do during the holidays in 5th grade! During the season, my goal as an educator is to help provide fun yet purposeful activities for the kiddos to do! And, the season may be over but these are great to save for next year! 

I love Grinch day, and 5th graders love Grinch Day, too! Every year I try to do different things in the classroom so I switch things up a lot! This year we dressed up in green, read the story, watched the old animated film, and did a Readers' Theater which the students LOVED. They did such a great job with it. I am constantly so impressed with how much students embrace amazing opportunities to showcase their talents. The key is making sure you provide them as much opportunity to do so in an environment where they feel safe and respected!

I snagged this big book version at a conference a few years back for FREE, and it is one of my favorite holiday books! 

I also am a firm believer of providing healthy holiday snacks as much as possible! This was my first year trying out the Grinch hats, and they were a huge hit! We also had some Grinch punch. You can check out the recipes and directions here (punch) and here (hats). 

It was so easy to put together, and I did go ahead and make them the night before. I had several teachers ask me on my IG account how they held up, and they did great! I did sprinkle a little Fruit Fresh on it to help the fruit keep their color until the next day. 

Next year, I think I am going to let the kiddos make the snack on their own! I will give them the tools and fruit then encourage them to make a Grinch hat out of it(without seeing a picture). It would be a great writing/brainstorming extension for the holiday season. 

Our Grinch Readers Theater was my favorite part of the day. You can find the script by Katie Rink here.  The kiddos got to pick the roles, they read through the script together, we put on our hats, and read the play! They cracked up, smiled, and had a blast. For the hats, we used sentence strips and printouts of Whos from Whoville and one of the Grinch.

There are so many great ways to pull in resources that enhance your classroom learning experiences during the holiday!