Category: Holidays

Many Christians celebrate Jesus Christ’s resurrection on Easter Sunday. To non-Christians (or non-traditional Christians), that event signifies a rebirth of spring that is filled with joy and gifts — and chocolate! Overall, it is America’s most-popular holiday with Christmas a close second. The date depends on the ecclesiastical approximation of the March equinox. This year, it’s March 31, 2024.

Here’s a good mixture of games, lesson plans, stories, and songs that can be blended into many academic subjects (for updates on this Easter-themed list of websites, click here):

18+ Interactive Easter websites

Preschool-2

This website includes a colorful collection of Easter (and Spring) games and information that is visual and enticing to youngers. Games are Easter Math, Easter Egg Hunt, Easter Egg Dress-up, Easter Word hunt, complete-the-sentence, and more. Also, viewers will find websites about the history of Easter around the world.

ABCYa Easter Egg Hunt

Preschool-Kindergarten

Like all of ABCYa’s games and activities, Easter Egg Hunt is a colorful and intuitive educational game for young children.  It is easy-to-understand, playful, with favorite Easter symbols and energetic music that will engage children. The five Easter-themed games are easy-to-understand (no directions required) with a countdown clock to motivate activity. Nicely, it also aligns gameplay with the national standards met.

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Reinforce fiction writing–characters, plot, setting, climax–with a short story in MS Word or another word processing tool. Then use color, borders, and pictures to enhance the words. Click the images below for larger sizes. Designed for grades 2-7: (more…)

St. Patrick’s Day is a cultural and religious holiday celebrated on March 17th to honor St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, credited with bringing Christianity to the country. The day is marked by parades, wearing green clothing and accessories, traditional Irish music and dance, feasting, and the symbolic consumption of foods and beverages like corned beef, cabbage, and Irish stout. It has become a global celebration of Irish culture and heritage.

Getting ready for St. Patrick’s Day? Try these fun websites with activities for different grade levels, different classes (click for updates on this list):

1. Puzzle–St. Pat’s Puzzle
2. Puzzle–St. Pat’s drag-and-drop puzzle
3. Puzzle–St. Pat’s slide puzzle
4. Puzzles and games
5. Resources for St. Pat’s Day from Education.com by grade and subject
6. St. Patrick’s Day history–video
7. St. Pat’s Day songs–video
8. Tic tac toe
9. Wordsearch

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Two math celebrations are coming up on March 14th: Pi Day and World Maths Day

Pi Day

Pi Day is an annual celebration commemorating the mathematical constant π (pi). Pi Day is observed on March 14 since 3, 1, and 4 are the three most significant digits of π in the decimal form.

Daniel Tammet, a high-functioning autistic savant, holds the European record for reciting pi from memory to 22,514 digits in five hours and nine minutes.

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Many people in the United States, particularly students, parents and teachers, join forces on Read Across America Day, annually held on March 2nd to coincide with the birthday of Dr. Seuss. Let’s celebrate with this take-off of his writing style, but about technology, reprinted with permission of Gene Zigler at Cornell University:

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
and the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.

If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash,
and the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash,
and your data is corrupted 'cause the index doesn't hash,
then your situation's hopeless and your system's gonna crash!

If the label on the cable on the table at your house,
says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,
but your packets want to tunnel on another protocol,
that's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall,
and you screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss,
so your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse,
then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang,
'cause as sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang!

When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy on the disk,
and the microcode instructions cause unnecessary risk,
then you have to flash your memory, and you'll want to RAM your ROM.
Quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your mom.

Copyright © Gene Ziegler

Email: [email protected]

--reprinted with permission © 6-28-09

Here are thirteen great reading websites for students K-5: (more…)

Presidents’ Day is an American federal holiday celebrated on the third Monday in February–this year, February 20, 2023. It was originally established to honor George Washington, the first President of the United States, and expanded to also celebrate the birthdays and legacies of other U.S. Presidents, particularly Abraham Lincoln whose birthday is on February 12th.

Here are great ways to celebrate in your classroom including websites, games, activities, printables, quizzes, audios, songs, interactive maps,  crafts, flashcards, videos, webquests, books, posters, trading cards, lesson plans, word searches, puzzles, speeches, articles, animations, biographies, and more (click the titles for the link):

1. Activities

Family Education has many president-themed quizzes, crafts, flashcards, as well as other patriotic activities.

2. BrainPop President videos

With the quality and ease-of-understanding teachers expect from BrainPop resources, this link provides classroom resources on fifteen presidents including Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Madison, Adams, Jackson, Nixon, Clinton, Kennedy, Reagan, and Obama. It also includes videos on the Presidential Election and Presidential Power.

3. Games and online activities

From Primary Games, popular home of a wide variety of edutainment for kids, this link includes a President’s Day Wordsearch, games, coloring pages, worksheets, jokes, stationary, and mobile games.

4. Google explores Presidents

This site is part of Google’s Arts and Culture, reputed to be well-done, visual, and immensely enticing to viewers. It is a curation of websites and web-based resources on each president, as well as general information on life in the White House. Each President’s archive is anchored by his official Presidential portrait.

5. History and background

From History.com, this is one of the most comprehensive, engaging collections of Presidents Day activities you’ll find online. It includes videos, animations, Presidential speeches, and articles as well as background on the White House and the holiday itself.

6. Learn about each President

Curated by WhiteHouse.gov, this site includes links to each President. From there, you get a fairly short though comprehensive biography of each president, interesting facts, and the part he played in creating the nation.

7. Presidential Timeline

Create a timeline of events in the life of one president or many.

–image credit Deposit Photos

Here’s the sign-up link if the image above doesn’t work:

https://forms.aweber.com/form/07/1910174607.htm

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Copyright ©2024 worddreams.wordpress.com – All rights reserved.

“The content presented in this blog is the result of my creative imagination and not intended for use, reproduction, or incorporation into any artificial intelligence training or machine learning systems without prior written consent from the author.”

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.

Here are eleven fun Valentine sites to fill those few minutes betwixt and between lessons, projects, bathroom breaks, lunch, and everything else (click here for updates on this list):

1. Drag-and-drop games
2. Google Drawings Magnetic Poetry from Ctrl Alt Achieve
3. Games and puzzles
4. ‘I love you’ in languages Afrikaans to Zulu
5. Match
6. Puppy jigsaw
7. Rebus game
8. Sudoku
9. Tic-tac-toe
10. Typing
11. Write in a heart

Do you use any I missed? If you’re looking for more, here’s my collection of holiday lesson plans, easily adaptable to Valentine’s Day.

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Chinese New Year, also known as the Spring Festival or Lunar New Year, is a traditional Chinese festival that marks the beginning of the Chinese lunar calendar. The celebration usually lasts for 15 days. The date varies each year, based on the lunar calendar. This year, it is February 10, 2024.

During Chinese New Year, people welcome the new year and engage in activities that bring good luck. Some common practices include:

1. Family Reunion: It is a time for family members to come together, similar to Western cultures’ celebration of the New Year.
2. Feasting: Families prepare and share elaborate meals with symbolic dishes that represent good fortune and prosperity.
3. Red Decorations: Red is a dominant color during Chinese New Year, symbolizing good luck and warding off evil spirits. People decorate their homes with red lanterns, couplets, and other red items.
4. Fireworks and Firecrackers: The loud sounds of fireworks and firecrackers are believed to scare away evil spirits and bring good luck.
5. Giving Red Envelopes (Hongbao): Adults give red envelopes containing money to children and unmarried individuals as a gesture of good wishes and blessings.
6. Cleaning and Spring Cleaning: It is customary to clean the house thoroughly before the new year to sweep away bad luck and make room for good fortune.
7. Dragon and Lion Dances: Traditional dragon and lion dances are performed in streets and public spaces to bring good luck and prosperity to the community.
8. Temple Visits: Many people visit temples during Chinese New Year to pray for good fortune and make offerings.

Overall, Chinese New Year is a joyous and festive time aimed at ushering in prosperity, happiness, and good luck for the coming year.

–image credit Deposit Photos (more…)

The 100th day of school is a special milestone celebrated in many educational institutions around the world. It is particularly popular in elementary schools, often filled with fun and educational activities centered around the number 100.

How to celebrate

Here are activities I like that blend learning into the celebration of the 100th Day of School:

Geography

As a class, come up with two locations in each state, to total 100. One will be oriented around geography and one around history (such as “Kansas became a state January 29, 1861”). Include a brief description and a picture and then share the collection with parents and schoolmates in the class newsletter or another vehicle.

History

Research what happened the hundredth year of your home country’s existence.  What was the country like a hundred years ago? What caused it to change? Who was president? What has been invented since then? Divide the class into groups so the project can be completed in one class period. Then, have everyone copy their information to a digital magazine (like you can create in Canva or Adobe) and share it with everyone.

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Also on January 1st: It’s Public Domain Day! Every year, January 1st is Public Domain Day. This is an observance of when copyrights expire and works enter into the public domain–free for all to use. According to Public Domain Review, here are some of the newly-available artistic works you might like a/o January 1, 2024:

The picture above is interactive on the website. If you click it, you enter Public Domain Review’s website and can then explore each of these new sources of inspiration, free to use.

The big excitement this year that has everyone talking is Walt Disney’s original designs for Steamboat Willie–the precursor to Mickey Mouse. As of January 1st, it is available to all. Some history from Wikipedia:

“It could have entered the public domain in four different years: first in 1955, renewed to 1986, then to 2003 by the Copyright Act of 1976, and then to 2023 by the Copyright Term Extension Act (also known pejoratively as the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act”) of 1998. It has been claimed that these extensions were a response by Congress to extensive lobbying by The Walt Disney Company.”

Here’s a 7-minute animation of Steamboat Willie from YouTube, with over 13 million views:

Copyright ©2024 askatechteacher.com – All rights reserved.

Here’s the sign-up link if the image above doesn’t work:

https://forms.aweber.com/form/07/1910174607.htm

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.