Every month, subscribers to our newsletter get a free/discounted resource to help their tech teaching.

K-8 Holiday Projects

Regular price: $7.99

On Sale until December 25, 2025: $4.99

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In about half the world–mostly those where people live under socialism, communism, dictators, or autocracies–law and order is decided for the people. In the 1700’s, when the brand new United States of America, newly liberated from the British aristocratic rule that relied on Kings and Queens, wrote its very first Constitution and Bill of Rights, it decided to establish a system of government by the people. Called ‘the Grand Experiment’, the founders empowered ordinary citizens–such as farmers, shopkeepers, laborers, and seamstresses–to elect the individuals who would protect America’s shores, our freedoms, and our way of life.

Over two hundred years after that mandate, it is still unclear whether it will work. In the 1850’s, Abraham Lincoln warned:

“Elections belong to the people. It’s their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.”

A hundred years after that, Gore Vidal bemoaned:

“Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.”

Winston Churchill called democracy “…the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.… “. In short, it is messy.

Still, every four years, Americans must make critical choices that will shape our nation’s democracy. Citizens are expected to research their options and then vote for the candidates most qualified to fulfill the country’s goals. Thomas Jefferson called education a “…vital requisite for our survival as a free people.”

This year, on Tuesday, November 4, we will elect every one of 435 members of the House of Representatives, one-third of the one hundred Senators, judges, and local officials. I’ve curated a list of websites to provide students with the background knowledge on the election process that will prepare them for the day they’ll be asked to cast their vote and decide the future. The first few explain elections in general and the next teach the process through gamification.

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Three holidays are fast-approaching–Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. If you’re a teacher, that means lots of tie-ins to make school festive and relevant to students.

Here are ideas for Halloween projects, lesson plans, websites, and apps (check here for updated links):

Websites and Apps

1. 30-day Halloween fitness challenge
2. Build a Jack-o-lantern (in Google Slides)
3. Carve-a-Pumpkin from Parents magazine – Resolute Digital, LLC (app)
4. Enchanted Learning
5. Halloween games, puzzles–clean, easy to understand website and few ads!
6. Halloween Kahoot Games (video for teachers)
7. Halloween Science
8. Halloween Voice Transformer (app)
9. Make A Zombie – Skunk Brothers GmbH (app)
10. Meddybemps Spooky
11. Pumpkin Patch Games
12. WordSearch Halloween – AFKSoft (app)

Projects

1. ASCII Art–Computer Art for Everyone (a pumpkin–see inset)
2. Lesson Plan: Halloween letter for grades 2-5
3. Make a Holiday Card
4. A Holiday Card
5. A Holiday flier

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Here are resources to help you teach about letters (click here for updates to list):

1. Alphabetimals–learn the alphabet with animal sounds
2. Find the letter–easy, medium, hard
3. Hands on Learning--20 letter websites
4. Learn Letters with Max (video)
5. Owl and Mouse Learn Letters
6. Starfall Letters

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One of the most popular applications of math is through spreadsheets (like Excel) that make those numbers relevant to everyday life. We’re going to provide a series of lessons on spreadsheet basics you can use in your K-8 classroom. Here are some of the topics we’ll cover:

1. #74: Mastering Excel (for Beginners)
2. #71: Beginning Graphs in MS Excel
3. #70: Create a Timecard in Excel for Grade Two and Up
4. #73: How to Graph in Excel
5. #12: Create Simple Shapes in Excel
6. #75: Tessellations in Excel
7. #72: How to Check Your Math in Excel
8. How to Use Excel to Teach Math Arrays
9. #62: Email from Word (Or PowerPoint or Excel)
10. #79: Excel Turns Data Into Information

Today:

#74: Mastering Excel (for Beginners)

There are 22 common Excel skills easy enough for fourth and fifth graders. When they’re done, they–and their parents (and you, by the way)–will feel that they’ve accomplished much more.

If the lesson plans are blurry, click on them for a full size alternative. (more…)

October is National Bullying Prevention Month. Bullying is no longer relegated to the playground or the neighborhood. It now regularly happens in the cyberworld. Kids don’t expect that and often don’t know how to handle it.

In October 2006, thirteen-year-old Megan Meier hung herself in her bedroom closet after suffering months of cyberbullying. She believed her tormentors’ horrid insults, never thought she could find a way to stop them, and killed herself. She’s not the only one. In fact, according to StopBullying.gov, 52 percent of young people report being cyberbullied and over half of them don’t report it to their parents.

Everyone knows what bullying is — someone being taunted physically or mentally by others — and there are endless resources devoted to educating both students and teachers on how to combat bullying. But what about cyberbullying? Wikipedia defines “cyberbullying” as:

the use of information technology to repeatedly harm or harass other people in a deliberate manner

Cyberbullying occurs on not just social media like Twitter, Facebook, and topical forums, but multiplayer games and school discussion boards. Examples include mean texts or emails, insulting snapchats, rumors posted on social networking sites, and embarrassing photos or videos.

How serious is it? (more…)

How complicated is it to make the right decisions for students, that are supported by parents, and doable in the time frame you have? The Ask a Tech Teacher team has some ideas:

The Art of Making Smarter Decisions in the Classroom

Image credit: Pexels

Every teacher makes hundreds of small and big decisions every day — which activity to start with, how to group students, or when to adjust a lesson plan. These decisions shape how well students learn and how engaged they feel. Yet many teachers admit they rely mostly on instinct and experience when making those choices.

The challenge is that classrooms change constantly. What works for one group of students may not work for another. Relying only on memory or routine can make it hard to see what truly improves learning outcomes. The good news is that smarter classroom decisions don’t depend on expensive tools or complex systems. They begin with simple habits that help teachers observe, reflect, and act on what’s actually happening in their classrooms.

Smarter decision-making is not about perfection; it’s about awareness. When teachers start to notice patterns, ask the right questions, and test small changes, they begin to understand what drives real learning. This article explores how educators can make clearer, more confident decisions using practical, everyday strategies that keep students—and their needs—at the center. (more…)

Education has changed. No longer is it contained within four classroom walls or the physical site of a school building. Students aren’t confined by the eight hours between school bells or the struggling budget of an underfunded program. Now, education can be found anywhere — teaming up with students in Kenya, Skyping with an author in Sweden, or chatting with an astrophysicist on the International Space Station. Students can use Google Earth to take a virtual tour of a zoo or a blog to collaborate on class research.

Learning has no temporal or geographic borders and is available wherever students and teachers find an Internet connection. This vast landscape of resources is offered digitally, often free, but to take that cerebral trek through the online world, children must know how to do it safely, securely, and responsibly. This used to mean limiting access to the Internet, blocking websites, and layering rules upon rules hoping (vainly) to discourage students from using an infinite and fascinating resource. It didn’t work.

Best practices now suggest that instead of cocooning students, we teach them to be good digital citizens, confident and competent. Here are projects to teach kids authentically, blended with your regular lessons, the often complicated topic of becoming good digital citizens, knowledgeable about their responsibilities in an Internet world.

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Ask a Tech Teacher has a passel of online resources to help you introduce, teach, and reinforce digital citizenship to your students. Here’s our long list–and click here for updates if you arrive at this page late: (more…)

Digital Citizenship Week — October 20-24, 2025

You can get a lot of great ideas from Common Sense Education on their Digital Citizenship Week page:

• Digital Citizenship Week calendars, with fun activities and suggested lessons for each day
• AI literacy resources, like AI foundations course for educators, and AI literacy lesson collection for students
• Webinars and events to help build your teaching practice and implement digital citizenship in your classroom
• Family engagement resources to share in your community

Here at Ask a Tech Teacher, we will offer three days of Digital Citizenship resources and lessons. I’ve provided links, but they won’t work until live:

• Digital Citizenship Week: What to Teach When–a video (this one)
• Digital Citizenship Resources–Lots of Them
• 8 Projects to Teach Digital Citizenship–by Grade

We’ll start with a great video (40 minutes) we use in training, available for free today to Ask a Tech Teacher readers. It is a reprint so you may have seen it last year. If not, enjoy!

Digital Citizenship: What to Teach When

Summary

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