I love this time of year, but it gets a bit crazy with all of the special holidays colliding in the fall. We go from Halloween to Veterans Day to Thanksgiving to Christmas and then on to a New Year! Wow – I get a bit of whiplash trying to keep up with programs, lessons, and attempting to teach some aspect of these special holidays.

So what is the secret to surviving this great big glob of celebrating? What helps me the most is being organized – thinking and planning ahead. Since I know I have two big programs each fall within a month of each other – Veterans Day and Christmas, I pick a theme for both at the beginning of the school year.

I start teaching songs that will be used in the program, but that aren’t heavily geared to a particular season. Since patriotic music can be sung throughout the year, I teach lessons on the history of “The Star Spangled Banner” or the military theme songs while teaching the songs to my classes. I teach the more specific seasonal songs about four weeks before the program such as “Jingle Bells” or “Up on the Housetop”.

This year, I knew that Lincoln Elementary is using the school wide theme “We are Super Heroes”.  Once I knew the theme for the year, I brought in an aspect of a super hero in my programs and lessons plans. I even wrote a theme song called “We Are Super Heroes” which I was able to teach to the whole school in August.  During morning announcements over the intercom every Tuesday, we sing the song to reinforce the theme. The children love this song!

My Veterans Day program this year was called “Every Day Heroes”. The children wrote about veterans in their families that are their own personal heroes.  Several children read their stories during our program. We also learned about three local heroes, astronauts Gus Grissom, Ken Bowersox and Charlie Walker. We included their stories in our Veterans day program too.

Our Christmas program this year is “A Super Hero Christmas” which includes four super friends that help lead our program. Our school theme song “We Are Super Heroes” is the theme song for our Christmas program. The sheet music and background track for “We Are Super Heroes” will be for sale in the website store.

Planning early takes excess stress off the teacher and the students. The students already know the music and everyone feels better prepared. True, there will always be last minute details to work out – choosing children for various parts, etc., but overall, planning ahead makes the holiday collision a bit less crazy!

“Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.”
-Thomas A. Edison