Monday 28 January 2013

December 21, 2012 - Holiday Fun

Happy Holidays Everyone!
In light of the upcoming festivities, I have chosen a few fun and kid friendly websites for you this week. 
The first one is NORAD Tracks Santa (http://www.noradsanta.org/en/ also available as an app on the iPhone and iPad). The North American Aerospace Defense Command has set up Santa’s sleigh with a radar system so they are able to track him as he travels around the world making his deliveries.  This is great fun for students to watch as he travels all the countries of the world and there are even some videos of him visiting important landmarks.  Until he begins his journey, the website lets you play some games and learn more about Santa. 

p.s. this is a great tool for parents too – ‘Oh look he’s in Finland…you better get to bed quickly.  He will be here soon.’

The second website is New Year’s Traditions Around the World (http://www.fathertimes.net/traditions.htm). This website contains brief descriptions of New Year’s traditions from countries around the world as well as how to say ‘Happy New Year’ in many different languages.   What a great way to remember that the world is a much larger space that what we interact with on a day-to-day basis. 

Finally, here is a fun website to keep the kids entertained during the break.  Make –a-Flake (http://snowflakes.barkleyus.com/) is a virtual snowflake making website.  You use the track pad and buttons or a mouse to control your scissors and create your flake.  When you are done, click ‘preview flake’ and it unfolds to show you what you have created.  You can e-mail it to yourself, view it as a JPEG file and save or print it, or you can download it to use in a graphics file.  It’s just as creative and fun as making traditional snowflakes, but no messy paper bits to clean up after!

I hope you have a relaxing and quiet break.
Cheers,
S

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