Are you looking for a meaningful (yet easy to prep) Christmas classroom activity you can use for the entire month of December?Try RACK sacks!These are a simple way for your students to practice kindness during the holidays andall you need is paper bags and copies. Introduce this activity at the beginning of December and then use all month as a center, fast finisher, or writing activity in 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5th grade classrooms.
A RACK Sack is simply a paper bag you put student-written compliments in throughout the month of December. RACK stands for Random Acts of Classroom Kindness and what better time to focus on kindness than the holidays?!
Here's all you have to do to get RACK sacks started in your classroom:
1. Get a paper bag for every student to decorate.
2. Give students time to decorate their RACK sacks in class.
3. Hang (think staple) RACK sacks on your classroom wall where they will act like brown paper stockings.
4. Make copies of compliments (you can find a free compliment download at the bottom of this post)
5. During centers, writing or as a fast finisher students can write compliments to one another.
6. Have a parent helper deliver compliments to RACK sacks throughout the month so you don't end up with a crazy stack of unsorted compliments on the last day before break.
7. Students see their RACK sacks filling up with compliment kindness and will wait with anticipation to read and take them home.
The RACK sacks will stay in your classroom until winter break when students will take them (plus all their classmate compliments) home. This can also be a nice spot for any holiday gift you have for students or treats they collect from a class party. Just stock up the RACK sack and send that baby home!
The kids love reading their compliments and it's an easy center activity ALL MONTH LONG! Keeping a cup of sticks or paper slips with all students' names to draw from helps to spread out the compliment giving more evenly if one or two RACK sacks start becoming way more full than the others.
Word to the wise: ALWAYS read the compliments before delivering them (or letting a student/parent helper deliver them) to RACK sacks. Most of them are so sweet and melt your heart (see compliment above), but a small percentage of students think a backhanded compliment counts as a compliment. As we all know too well - it does not! You do not want a nasty "compliment" making its way home resulting in an angry parent e-mail {Happy holidays!}, so just read the compliments! If you want to use the same compliments I do, you can get them for free when you download theseSimple Student Holiday Gifts. Easy peasy!
Want more Christmas ideas and resources? Try these holiday posts:
5 Simple Holiday Student Gift Ideas from Teachers
10 Amazing Amazon Gift Ideas for your Favorite Teaching Teammate
Santa Scramble Math Challenge: A Festive Freebie Download
Happy Holidays Super Teacher!
