Hot Topic: Christmas

Resources on TKI

Christmas and New Year Celebrations Around the World
This is an integrated series of activities that fit within the New Zealand curriculum. The activities involve researching, comparing, and contrasting Christmas and New Year celebrations around the world using ICT.
http://www.tki.org.nz/r/wick_ed/themes/celebrations.php

Exemplar - Technology Level 1 - Production and Process, Materials: Candles for Christmas
This technology exemplar involves students designing and making a candle, understanding the purpose of a production line, and recognising a sequence of steps is involved in making candles. It is a sample of authentic student work annotated to illustrate learning, achievement, and quality in relation to level 1 of Technology in the New Zealand Curriculum.
http://www.tki.org.nz/r/assessment/exemplars/tech/products/pp_1a_e.php

Why Celebrate? (ESOL version)
This ESOL Online unit has been adapted from the Social Studies Online unit of the same name. It is intended for years 5-6, level 3. Students explore a variety of events that people all over the world celebrate such as New Year, a wedding, a harvest or other festival, and learn about how they have similar purposes.
http://www.tki.org.nz/r/esol/esolonline/primary_mainstream/classroom/ units/celebrate/home_e.php

Why Celebrate?
In this level 3 unit, intended for year 5-6, students explore a variety of events that people all over the world celebrate such as New Year, a wedding, a harvest or other festival, and learn about how they have similar purposes.
http://www.tki.org.nz/r/socialscience/curriculum/SSOL/celebrate/index_e.php

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Other Resources

Celebrations and Commemorations
This is an Internet project designed to help students discover their own cultural identity by looking at events that their own and other cultures celebrate.
http://www.abc.net.au/civics/celebrations/

Christmas Around the World
This website looks at the different ways that Christmas is celebrated in different countries around the world. Information is given on the following countries: Ireland, Spain, St. Lucia, Mexico, Norway, Kenya, Sweden, Britain, Finland, Ukraine, Italy, Austria, Lebanon, France, Germany, New Zealand, South Africa, Australia, Czech Republic, and Switzerland.
http://northpole.net/world.htm

Holy Days
From the BBC religion and ethics section, this website gives information about the holy days celebrated by Christians, including Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday, Lent, Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter, and Christmas.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/holydays/

Mrs Claus' Workshop
This website provides an email facility where students can email Mrs Claus and receive a response. Includes reindeer facts, a slide show, links to reindeer sites, a reindeer quiz, lesson plans, books, letters to Mrs Claus, ask an expert, riddles and jokes, craft ideas, Christmas clip art, and awards and resources. An Internet project from Loogootee Elementary West school, Indiana.
http://www.siec.k12.in.us/~west/proj/claus/leader.html

The 6 Hats of Christmas
This website uses De Bono's 6 hats methodology in relation to Christmas. The activities are designed to make the children think.
http://www.brainways.co.nz/Chrisweb/hats/hathome.htm

The Christmas Story
This is an interactive feature specially designed to explore the story of the birth of Jesus Christ - online through various artworks from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Each page also has readings by Philippe de Montebello, director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
http://www.metmuseum.org/explore/Christmas_story/xmas_hmpg.html

The Polar Express - Teacher's Guide
This site contains ideas and notes for teaching this Chris van Allsburg book.
http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/features/thepolarexpress/ tg/polar.shtml

Using ICT in the Classroom at Christmas Time
A collection of ideas and resources compiled to help early childhood and primary teachers integrate Information and Communication Technology (ICT) into the classroom programme at Christmas time.
http://www.discover.tased.edu.au/ec/teachers/Xmas/Default.htm

What We're Reading - The Twelve Books of Christmas
From the Children's Literature Web Guide, a list of 12 favourite Christmas story books, with a brief summary of each one. Recommended by David K. Brown.
http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/wwr/christmas/index.html

Twelve Days of Christmas – Christmas Packaging
This online project is based around the song, The Twelve Days of Christmas. The aim is to select a food with an association with the song and construct a suitable Christmas package to send this food to a friend or relative. The project could be a technology and ICT-based classroom study and is suited for a wide age range.
http://education.otago.ac.nz/nzlnet/xmas_project/home.html

Please note: These links were valid when this page was posted. However the Web is very volatile, and TKI has no control over outside websites. Please let us know if you find anything inappropriate, if you find a broken link, or if you have an update for a link by emailing links@tki.org.nz. Te Kete Ipurangi recommends that teachers view all websites we link to before using them with students.

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