by Kerri Lambert, Teacher Specialist, Office of Instructional Technology
This is the second in a two part article on digital holiday activities. To read Part 1, click here.
We love the idea of having students conduct research on holidays around the world as explored in
Part 1 of this article, but sometimes you want something more specific. Keep reading for ideas that fall under that category.
Giving Thanks
As Thanksgiving approaches, we often reflect on the people and things we are grateful for over the last year. Wixie offers many Thanksgiving activities that are perfect for reflecting and sharing on family traditions. Students can complete a
gratitude journal,
fill a cornucopia, share a special
family recipe, or even
reflect on their blessings. Can’t decide on which you like best? Give your students their choice, using the
primary or
elementary choice board. Wixie has plenty of ideas to choose from for November (and all the other months!) in their Month-by-Month folders under curriculum templates. Templates are easily assigned to students directly in Wixie, or through Brightspace.
Older students thrive on utilizing their creativity and love social media. Tap into those tendencies and have them create an Instagram Stories-like project reflecting on the things they are grateful for.
Ditch that Textbook has a great tutorial and template in Google Slides that you can use. Been researching what really happened that first Thanksgiving? Have students “
tweet” as if they were really there, complete with hashtags. This can even be turned into a collaborative activity by having students respond in character to one another.
Looking for a quick warm-up that’s Thanksgiving themed? Students struggling with grammar? Discovery Ed comes to the rescue for primary students with their
Thanksgiving Fix-It Studio activity. Need something for older students? Use the
November Daily Fix-it that explores not just Thanksgiving, but other important historical events that take place during November.
Winter Magic
As winter break inches closer and the weather gets colder, have students warm up by designing their very own ugly sweater using this
template from Wixie. After the fun of designing the sweater, host a digital gallery walk. Have students pull up their creations on their Chromebook screens, and hand out post it notes. As students walk around the room admiring each other's sweaters, they leave comments for their classmates. This would make festive community building activity, or you could have students take notes and then write descriptive sentences about their favorite ugly sweater.
Speaking of writing, have students write holiday themed stories in Google Docs. Sound boring? Not if you include emojis!
Eric Curts from Control Alt Achieve has all the details on writing Winter rebus stories
here, including a template if you want to control what emojis your students use in their stories. Another option for wintery writing is this digital
Magnetic Poetry option from
Kasey Bell at Shake-up Learning. This Google Slides template draws inspiration from the class refrigerator magnet game, where students have to write poetry using a limited word bank.
While you’re on Eric’s page, be sure to also check out his Pixel Art Ornament activity using
Google Sheets. This activity has students creating art within a spreadsheet, and then figuring out the fractional parts of what they design. You can add a literary element to the task, by having them design an ornament based on a story or character read about in class. Feeling intimidated by the idea of Google Sheets? Wixie once again comes to the rescue with an
ornament template.
Finally, as the year winds down, it’s not unusual for us to reflect on the past year, and look forward to the next by setting goals. As an alternative to setting New Year’s Resolutions, have your students create a
vision board to help them set goals and visualize them. This is something that can evolve throughout the rest of the year as they work towards their goal.
