The holiday season is a time full of excitement and joy, but it can also bring challenges for your students as they navigate different social and emotional situations. By focusing on important counseling and SEL ideas for the holidays, you can be confident that your elementary students will grow in areas like friendship, feelings, empathy, and diversity this year. Check out these easy ways to incorporate these topics into your classroom!
Why the Holidays are Perfect for Teaching SEL and Counseling Topics
The holidays provide many opportunities for you to introduce and address key SEL topics. During this time— no matter what holidays they celebrate— students often experience heightened emotions and social interactions. They are also likely exposed to different cultural experiences at this time of year.
This results in the perfect setup for teaching friendship, identifying and managing feelings, showing empathy, and embracing diversity and acceptance!
Counseling and SEL Ideas for the Holidays
Friendship Skills
Friendship is at the heart of many holiday traditions! Teach students how to build and maintain healthy friendships by discussing important character traits like kindness, sharing, and thoughtfulness.
Activity about Friendship
Use this Build an Elf Friend activity as a fun and interactive way to teach kindness to your elementary students.
This activity allows students to consider positive friendship traits while designing their own elf. As students reflect on what makes a good friend, this activity becomes both personal and meaningful. It takes about 30 minutes to complete and is perfect for small or large groups!
Feelings
Next, ensure your students know how to identify and manage the variety of emotions they may experience during the holiday season. These feelings can range from excitement to anxiety— and all in between!
Teach students key emotional vocabulary, self-awareness, and strategies to use when big feelings arise.
Activity about Feelings
Color the Christmas Feelings is a great resource to use when teaching elementary students about their feelings. Use the included ASCA-aligned lesson plan to make things super easy for you!
Students color different holiday-themed pictures that go along with 5 different common emotions while learning about how each emotion feels, looks, and sounds:
- Sadness
- Anger
- Worry
- Fear
- Happy
This resource also helps you teach students about coping skills they can use for each emotion.
This resource also encourages opportunities for discussions about how to recognize and manage the different emotions that one may experience during the holiday season. It is a simple but highly effective tool to help students connect their feelings!
Empathy
Empathy is another crucial SEL topic during the holidays! This skill is vital for building positive friendships and relationships with family members, and the many events of the holiday season allow for natural opportunities to practice putting oneself into someone’s else shoes.
By teaching empathy, you can help your students understand how others feel and learn to respond in kindness.
Activity about Empathy
Walk in My Elf Shoes in the perfect activity to choose to teach and reinforce empathy! It challenges students to think from another person’s perspective by imagining themselves as one of Santa’s elves as they answer different scenario cards and answer the related empathy-driven questions.
This resource is great for students who are struggling to make or keep friends!
Diversity & Acceptance
Finally, encourage diversity and acceptance by emphasizing various holidays and everyone’s unique famiy traditions. Highlighting this important topic promotes an inclusive environment where all students feel welcome and respected.
Activity about Diversity and Acceptance
Use the Walk in My Holiday Shoes activity in your diversity counseling lesson. This inclusive resource highlights Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Diwali and is the perfect way to decorate your classroom bulletin board for the holiday season!
Non-specific holiday versions are included as well to ensure all students can participate and feel included in this activity.
Books & Videos to Teach Counseling and SEL Ideas for the Holidays
Each of these books and videos is a wonderful choice for your classroom during the holiday season as well. You can easily integrate important SEL and counseling themes into your discussions about each book as you read to your class.
*As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. This means if you click on a link and make a purchase, I get a small commission that costs you nothing and helps me continue to provide this content.
The Littlest Reindeer by Brandi Dougherty
The Littlest Reindeer is an engaging Christmas book to read to your students while highlighting the importance of perseverance and friendship.
Book Summary
Dot may be the littlest reindeer in the North Pole, but she has a big desire to help Santa pull his sleigh! But Dot just can't seem to fly the right way, no matter how hard she runs, leaps, and kicks. Will Dot learn to fly, or is the littlest reindeer just too little?
Hanukkah Bear by Eric. A Kimmel
Your students will love the heartwarming pictures and humor found in Hanukkah Bear.
Book Summary
Bubba Brayna makes the best latkes in the village, and on the first night of Hanukkah, the scent of her cooking wakes a hungry, adorable bear from his hibernation. He lumbers into town to investigate, and Bubba Brayna—who does not see or hear very well—mistakes him for her rabbi. She welcomes the bear inside to play the dreidel game, light the menorah, and enjoy a scrumptious meal. However, after her well-fed guest leaves, there's a knock at the door—it's the rabbi and all of Brayna's other friends arriving for dinner. But there are no latkes left—and together, they finally figure out who really ate them.
Green is for Chrismas by Drew Daywalt
Green is for Christmas is a fun holiday story starring the crayons from The Day The Crayons Quit.
Book Summary
When Green Crayon claims that green is the only color for Christmas, other crayons let him know that there would be no Christmas without them either. No candy canes or Santa without Red, no snow without White, no bells or stars without Silver, and no cookies or reindeer without Tan! The crayons agree that they all need to come together to make Christmas special.
Home for the Holidays by Sesame Workshop
Home for the Holidays is a great book choice for younger elementary students. It introduces them to the many different holidays and discusses how these differences can bring us all together.
Book Summary
No matter what holidays you celebrate during the most wonderful time of the year, love, family, togetherness, and giving are universal. In this diversity book for kids, share in the joy with Elmo, Cookie Monster, Abby Cadabby, and more friends with festivities on Sesame Street! From Thanksgiving and Eid al-Fitr to Chinese New Year, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Diwali, Christmas, and New Year's, this special picture book is a heartfelt celebration of different cultures and holidays from around the world.
Tough Cookie by Edward Hemingway
Tough Cookie is a fun, holiday twist on the classic story of the Gingerbread Man. It highlights different emotions and the power of friendship in a silly way your students are sure to remember!
Book Summary
Once upon a time, while Fox was visiting the land of Holiday Treats, a little cookie―still warm from the bakery oven―burst out the front door looking sweet and ready to be devoured. But, as it turns out, Cookie is not as fast as he thinks and when Fox finally catches him, they’re both in for a big surprise: Sugar Cookie does not taste delicious―and he’s certainly not fit to be eaten. What’s an unsavory cookie to do? Is there another option for this not-so-sweet treat?
…OR switch things up with the read-aloud version of this story!
Incorporating SEL topics into the holiday season doesn’t have to be complicated! You can weave these topics into classroom discussions, holiday craft projects, classroom parties, writing prompts, and more with ease.
The holiday season offers many opportunities for you to teach important SEL topics. By focusing on friendship, emotions, empathy, and diversity through engaging activities and meaningful stories, you can help your students navigate the joy and challenges of this festive time of year. Use these counseling and SEL ideas for the holidays, and watch your classroom transform into a space where all students feel valued and supported!
You might also be interested in reading:
5 AMAZING Winter Counseling and SEL Ideas for Elementary Students– Plus Winter Books!
3 Simple Ways to Teach Diversity in the Classroom
You might also be interested in these products:
Diverse Families - Digital Resource
Counseling Resources BUNDLE for Google Classroom Distance Learning
Follow along and don’t miss a thing!
Instagram 💜 Pinterest 💜 Facebook 💜 Teachers Pay Teachers 💜 Amazon 💜 Counselor Collab
