Ms. Klose & Ms. Lerner’s FUN 4th Grade — Italian Holiday Traditions

🇮🇹 Ms. Klose & Ms. Lerner’s FUN 4th Grade 🇮🇹

Intro into some fun Italian Holiday Traditions ✨

Today’s Mini Lesson Plan

Use this page like your “presentation notes.” Tap the Table of Contents to jump to each part.

🕒 Starts 11:45 AM 🎯 4 main parts 🇮🇹 Italian culture + craft ✨ Kid-friendly + fun

📚 Table of Contents (with timestamps)

1) Who can guess who I am?

Quick silly warm-up guesses: Elf? Santa’s wife? Sprunki? Vinny’s mom?

11:45 AM

2) Some interesting Italian traditions

La Befana + Epiphany + why we keep the tree up (Southern Italy vibes!)

11:48 AM

3) Italian hand gestures

A fun, respectful “gestures” mini-lesson + practice time

11:55 AM

4) Making Italian candy canes

Hands-on craft: green/white/red “Tricolore” candy canes

12:00 PM
✅ Tip: If you get off track, just jump back here: Table of Contents

11:45 AM — 1) Who can guess who I am? 🤭

Let kids guess:

  • Christmas Elf?
  • Santa’s Wife?
  • Am I a Sprunki?
  • Vinny’s Mom?
Big reveal line idea: “I’m La Befana!” 🎁🧹

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11:48 AM — 2) Some interesting Italian traditions 🇮🇹

  • La Befana / Epiphany: A fun Italian tradition celebrated around January 6th.
  • Family tradition note: Vinny is a mix of Calabrian & Sicilian, so many of our traditions follow Southern Italy.
  • Tree tradition: Many families keep the Christmas tree up until after Epiphany.
Optional kid question: “Do you take your tree down early… or do you like keeping it up longer?” 🎄

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11:55 AM — 3) Italian hand gestures 🤌

This is the fun part! We’ll learn a few famous Italian gestures (respectfully — gestures can mean different things in different places).

  • 🤌 “What do you mean?” (the classic pinched fingers gesture)
  • 👌 “Perfect!” (context matters)
  • 🤷 “I don’t know!” (shoulders + hands)
If you want, tell me which gestures you want to teach and I’ll write a kid-safe script + add pictures/icons.

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12:00 PM — 4) Making Italian Candy Canes 🍬

Today we’re making Italian Flag Candy Canes, also called Tricolore Candy Canes (because Italy’s flag has three colors).

  • 🟢 Green
  • ⚪ White
  • 🔴 Red
Add your step-by-step instructions here (or tell me your bead counts + materials and I’ll format it into a perfect craft card).

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Optional: Want a second page for crafts?

If you decide you want the candy cane craft (and/or hand gestures) on a separate page, you can create a second HTML page and link it here.

  • Craft Page: italian-candy-canes.html
  • Gestures Page: italian-hand-gestures.html
Just say “make page 2 for candy canes” and I’ll generate the full separate page + link it cleanly from this one.