Welcome to HIT—How I Teach….In this episode, I teach the important lesson of helping kids write Christmas thank-you cards. Writing thank-you cards can be challenging for adults, much less for kids. Kids often do not feel that they have the penmanship/dexterity skills to write thank-you cards neatly. They often feel like they don’t know what to say on their message.
Enter—Language Arts Lady’s “almost-done-for-you Christmas Thank-You Cards”! These cards will help bridge that gap for students from Pre-School to 6th grade, helping them write thank-you cards whether they are strong in penmanship or not, whether they are great at art or not, and whether they have strong writing skills to create messages or not!
(You can go ahead and get your free sample set here: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Christmas-Thank-You-Cards-Freebie-7541656)
Each of the three levels has unique features that make these cards easy for that level to succeed with:
- Pre-Writer Level (Preschool, Kindergarten, and First Grade)
- Choose between two sizes of cards
- Choose full-color or ready-to-color simplistic Christmas pictures
- Rhyming messages and non-rhyming messages are on the inside of each of these cards in dotted letters for kids to write over with a pencil or pen
- Five different primary level coloring pictures (or fully colored) in two sizes of cards
- 46 pages of easy-to-print black & white and colored cards
- Help kids say thank-you for gifts and treats easily and quickly!
- Beginning Writer Level (2nd, 3rd, and 4th Grades)
- Choose between two sizes of cards
- Choose full-color or ready-to-color medium difficult Christmas pictures
- Rhyming messages and non-rhyming messages sheets for children to copy on the primary lines or cut and paste onto the card (messages fit perfectly when pasted)
- Five different medium-level coloring pictures (or fully colored) in two sizes of cards
- 58 pages of easy-to-print black & white and colored cards
- Help kids say thank-you at their own level of writing!
- Advanced Writer (4th, 5th, and 6th Grades)
- Choose between two sizes of cards
- Choose full-color or ready-to-color
- Rhyming messages and non-rhyming messages to copy provided for kids who need help coming up with their message
- Five different detailed coloring pictures (or fully-colored) in two sizes of cards
- 54 pages of easy-to-print black and white and colored cards
- Thank-you cards your middle schoolers will love to color and send (or choose fully colored fronts)
In addition to showing you how to use my Christmas Thank-You Cards, I also teach tips around making this as pain-free as possible—whether you are using mine or creating your own.
Kids’ Thank-You Note Tips
- For pre-writers, write the message they want in light color highlighter and let them write over your highlight (that is how it is in my pre-writer set)
- For any level, provide a message and allow them to copy it word-for-word onto their card (writing notes involves the penmanship and the thinking-writing process…provide help to them on each [see Beginning Writer Cards])
- Allow child to dictate their message to you as you write it for them if needed
- Don’t have them write too many notes in one setting
- If child is artistic, have an opportunity for them to decorate the front of the card themselves (all of my cards have both options—to color and already colored)
- Provide the size of lines each child needs—primary/dotted, primary, thinner, etc
- Provide the amount of space each child needs—too big of a space for their message can be overwhelming
- If writing the card is stretching enough, address the envelope for them. Don’t ask too many new/unfamiliar skills all at once.
- Make the experience as easy and stress-free as possible—you want them to be okay doing it again after the next gift event!
It’s all here in this week’s HIT—where each week, I bring you tips, tricks, and techniques for teaching writing, language arts, grammar, and more (to grades two through twelve) drawing upon my 100+ curriculum books totaling over 50,000 pages.
But wait…there’s more! Not only do I teach parents, teachers, and homeschoolers the hundreds of teaching tools I have developed over the past twenty years, listeners/viewers also get a weekly downloadable booklet, Teacher’s Notebook (TN) that has actual lesson sheets that you can print off and use with your students to teach the very topic that I just taught you!
And for your convenience, How I Teach…. is available as a podcast (follow along in your TN sheets for that week) and a YouTube video (with Power Point containing the same as the TN)!
Note: This lesson came from Christmas Thank-You Cards https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Language-Arts-Lady-With-Donna-Reish/Search:Christmas+Thank-you+cards, available at three levels in three products as a bundle for all three levels
Find everything you need here!
Weekly broadcast episodes with Teacher’s Notebook downloads (and links to listen or watch!) at the Language Arts Lady blog
Master (continually updated) Teacher’s Notebook downloadable booklet
Free writing books and videos of me teaching your students for you for a couple of weeks!
All of my digital books
How I Teach YouTube Channel
How I Teach Podcast
