| Volume Three Issue Two | December 2002 |
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Global Connections Inspiring Stories Featured Themes Teacher Discoveries Student Explorations The Lighter Side |
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Global Interactions Foster Talented Students
Welcome to December!
The Christmas season is in full bloom! Evidence of this can be seen in communities throughout North America. Here in Miramichi, we ushered in the month of December with our annual Parade of Lights and Santa Claus parade. The streets of our community are alight with the spirit of the Christmas season.
As Christians embark on another Christmas season and our Jewish friends prepare for the celebration of Hanukah, it is our hope that the spirit and magic of the holiday season brings peace to you, your family, your community and our global community.
So welcome aboard! Join us as we explore the many resources the World Wide Web offers to help celebrate the holidays of Christmas and Chanukah.
In addition to this newsletter, keep checking Vital Picks. We have been highlighting resources teachers will find useful for the classroom. We have also been highlighting accomplishments of teachers and urge you to nominate teachers for our Vital Award.
Don't forget to visit our resource links! Visitors may now search for resources based on the grade level and subject they teach. We've included the best we can find on the World Wide Web. We will continue to add more and welcome any sites you may wish to submit.
This month we also have a special gift awaiting you and your students in the Activity section of Teacher's Corner. Check it out, and if you have activities that you would like to share with other teachers, please send them along. We'll make sure to post them immediately and to give you credit.
Send your ideas to teachers_corner@vitalknowledge.com.
"I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel; I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to every-body! A happy New Year to all the world! Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!"
- Scrooge: A Christmas Carol
The spirit of Christmas and Hanukah knows no boundaries. Families from around the world will be celebrating these special holiday seasons. We searched the web to find examples of these celebrations in our global community and the following is what we found.
For the past three years we have been featuring The International School in Denmark. They create a Christmas Calendar each year with contributions from students from around the world. A new page for each month in December explains how Christmas and other winter holidays are celebrated in different countries and cultures.
We also continue to be impressed with the Viking Network in Ireland. They had a Christmas project in 2000 where schools from around the world emailed selections of their Christmas customs.
Christmas.com's WorldView started in 1994 as an effort to share how Christmas is celebrated around the world. Their goal is to have information from every country in the world!
The North Pole offers you an opportunity to visit 30 countries to see how they celebrate Christmas. We think you will enjoy a visit!
For over 40 years, NORAD has contributed to the magic of Christmas by tracking Santa through his annual journey around the world. Encourage your students to visit their site as part of their family's Christmas Eve celebrations.
Pay a visit to Chanukah: World Traditions to discover how this special season is celebrated in our global community. Kid's Health also offers information on this topic, as does Girl Power!
- Author Unknown
In September 1960, I woke up one morning with six hungry babies and just 75 cents in my pocket. Their father was gone. The boys ranged from three months to seven years; their sister was two. Their Dad had never been much more than a presence they feared. Whenever they heard his tires crunch on the gravel driveway they would scramble to hide under their beds.
He did manage to leave $15 a week to buy groceries. Now that he had decided to leave, there would be no more beatings, but no food either. If there was a welfare system in effect in southern Indiana, at that time, I certainly knew nothing about it.
I scrubbed the kids until they looked brand new and then put on my best homemade dress. I loaded them into the rusty old 51 Chevy and drove off to find a job. The seven of us went to every factory, store and restaurant in our small town. No luck.
The kids stayed, crammed into the car and tried to be quiet while I tried to convince whomever would listen that I was willing to learn or do anything. I had to have a job.
Still no luck.
The last place we went to, just a few miles out of town, was an old Root Beer Barrel drive-in that had been converted to a truck stop. It was called the Big Wheel. An old lady named Granny owned the place and she peeked out of the window from time to time at all those kids.
She needed someone on the graveyard shift, 11 at night until seven in the morning. She paid 65 cents an hour and I could start that night. I raced home and called the teenager down the street that baby-sat for people. I bargained with her to come and sleep on my sofa for a dollar a night. She could arrive with her pajamas on and the kids would already be asleep. This seemed like a good arrangement to her, so we made a deal.
That night, when the little ones and I knelt to say our prayers, we all thanked God for finding Mommy a job. And so I started at the Big Wheel.
When I got home in the mornings I woke the baby-sitter up and sent her home with one dollar of my tip money-fully half of what I averaged every night.
As the weeks went by, heating bills added another strain to my meager wage.
The tires on the old Chevy had the consistency of penny balloons and began to leak. I had to fill them with air on the way to work and again every morning before I could go home. One bleak fall morning, I dragged myself to the car to go home and found four tires in the back seat.
New tires!
There was no note, no nothing, just those beautiful brand new tires. Had angels taken up residence in Indiana? I wondered. I made a deal with the owner of the local service station. In exchange for his mounting the new tires, I would clean up his office. I remember it took me a lot longer to scrub his floor than it did for him to do the tires. I was now working six nights instead of five and it still wasn't enough.
Christmas was coming and I knew there would be no money for toys for the kids. I found a can of red paint and started repairing and painting some old toys. Then I hid them in the basement so there would be something for Santa to deliver on Christmas morning. Clothes were a worry too. I was sewing patches on top of patches on the boys pants and soon they would be too far gone to repair.
On Christmas Eve the usual customers were drinking coffee in the Big Wheel. These were the truckers, Les, Frank, and Jim, and a state trooper named Joe. A few musicians were hanging around after a gig at the Legion and were dropping nickels in the pinball machine. The regulars all just sat around and talked through the wee hours of the morning and then left to get home before the sun came up.
When it was time for me to go home at seven o'clock on Christmas morning I hurried to the car. I was hoping the kids wouldn't wake up before I managed to get home and get the presents from the basement and place them under the tree. (We had cut down a small cedar tree by the side of the road down by the dump.) It was still dark and I couldn't see much, but there appeared to be some dark shadows in the car-or was that just a trick of the night?
Something certainly looked different, but it was hard to tell what. When I reached the car I peered warily into one of the side windows. Then my jaw dropped in amazement. My old battered Chevy was filled full to the top with boxes of all shapes and sizes. I quickly opened the driver's side door, scrambled inside and kneeled in the front facing the back seat.
Reaching back, I pulled off the lid of the top box. Inside was a whole case of little blue jeans, sizes 2-10! I looked inside another box: It was full of shirts to go with the jeans. Then I peeked inside some of the other boxes: There were candy and nuts and bananas and bags of groceries.
There was an enormous ham for baking, and canned vegetables and potatoes. There was pudding and Jell-O and cookies, pie filling and flour. There was a whole bag of laundry supplies and cleaning items. And there were five toy trucks and one beautiful little doll.
As I drove back through empty streets as the sun slowly rose on the most amazing Christmas Day of my life, I was sobbing with gratitude. And I will never forget the joy on the faces of my little ones that precious morning.
Yes, there were angels in Indiana that long-ago December. And they all hung out at the Big Wheel truck stop.
From: Inspiring Stories
Visit the following web sites to find great resources for celebrating Christmas and Hanukkah with your students. Many of them we feature every year, while some we have discovered for the first time!
Check out the multi award-winning Santa's Official Web site for loads of Christmas fun! Whatever you need to help celebrate the Christmas season can likely be found at this site. Stories, songs, letters to Santa, coloring, recipes, Christmas in 70 languages, an interactive toyshop, videos, voice messages from children around the world, and much, much, more! This site is one of the most comprehensive Christmas sites on the web.
Visit Chanukah on the Web to find resources for celebrating the Jewish Festival of Lights. Read the story of Chanukah, light candles on a virtual menorah, and spin the dreidel. Find resources such as music, coloring, gift ideas, recipes, greeting cards, and more! Join a mailing list, or send holiday greetings at this award winning web site.
All About Christmas for Kids and Teachers contains lots of resources and great links for the classroom. Find stories and traditions about Christmas celebrations around the world. You'll also find clip art and graphics, lesson plans, coloring, worksheets, poems, games songs, crafts, and more!
Visit Christmas.com to learn how Christmas is celebrated around the world by looking at symbols, recipes and greetings in various languages. Find holiday entertainment such as songs, online games, coloring books, and Santa's CyberSleigh. Get into the Christmas spirit with party tips, recipes, decorations, gift suggestions, greeting cards, and more!
Visit Ohr Somayach Chanukah to view Menorahs from around the world, find examples of miracles, laws and rituals, get deeper insights into the philosophy of Chanukah, entertain your students with songs, games, poetry, and more in preparation for the Jewish celebration of Chanukah.
Check out Santa's Village for more Christmas fun! This graphically rich site contains plenty of resources. Check out Mrs. Claus' kitchen, the interactive toy workshop, or Santa's stories and songs. Watch some of Santa's cartoons, learn about his reindeer in the Reindeer Barn, or go to Elf School for lots of educational resources. Claus.com is definitely one of the best Christmas sites on the web!
More resources for the celebration of Chanukah can be found at Aish HaTorah. Find basic information about Chanukah, true stories and historical articles. Light an animated Menorah, send electronic greeting cards, find that special recipe, plan parties and more!
Pro Teacher: Seasonal Holiday Lesson Plans contains links to great Christmas and Chanukah resources specifically for the classroom. If you haven't yet found what you are looking for don't despair. If it can be found on the web, you can most likely link to it from this site. Find lesson plans, games, stories, poems, coloring, greeting cards, crafts, activities, and more! Pro Teacher has a wide variety of resources for all grade levels and all subject areas for any time of year.
Finally, pop on in to Christmas on the Net to find other great resources for celebrating this special time of year!
The beginning of the Christmas season is a sure sign that winter has arrived. Many teachers implement units with winter themes into their curriculum and we thought we would surf the web looking for resources to assist you in doing so. The following is what we found:
As part of their theme library, Teacher Vision offers a wide variety of activities, worksheets and other printables, all with a winter theme!
Patricia Knox and Susan Silverman are back again this year with Frosty Readers. Check out this great project!
Teachers of preschool children may wish to visit Gayle's Preschool Rainbow. She suggests a number of great activities with winter themes!
Once again, ABC Teach has a wide variety of thematic units including one for winter! Be sure to bookmark this site!
Visit Kid's Domain for great winter fun. You will find clip art, interactive games, winter holidays, printables, and more!
A to Z Teacher Stuff has a wide variety of thematic units and other activities with winter themes. You will find similar great resources at Teach-nology!
Finally, Big Chalk has identified a number of cross-curricular lesson plans and activities, all with a winter theme!
During the Christmas season, our thoughts often turn to those less fortunate than us. Your students probably involve themselves in school and community events to raise funds to ensure all children have a happy Christmas. Indeed, it is our youth who often set examples of these acts of kindnesses.
The following are only a few examples of how young people reach out to those in need at Christmas time. May they be an inspiration to us all and help us to understand the true meaning of giving throughout the year.
Check out this news story from the Fort McMurray Today. Since 1985 students from Father Patrick Mercredi Community High School in Alberta have been packing hundreds of packages for the less fortunate at Christmas time. Indeed, they are an inspiration to us all. Read more about it at Santa's Anonymous History. Last year they delivered 650 hampers!
Students at Canso High School in Halifax have a fundraiser every year in support of Christmas Daddies. In Foothills Alberta, students at Foothills Composite High School have become Christmas Angels. Students at Brookside School in Edmonton participate in a similar undertaking.
Finally, check out the efforts of the students at Mount Royal College in Montreal. Their efforts are just another example of our youth reaching out to those in need.
At Vital Knowledge, we extend sincere wishes for the holiday season. May you experience the peace and joy this special time of year offers and may you follow the examples provided by our youth, such as those we have highlighted above.
Who is never hungry at Christmas?
The turkey - he's always stuffed!
Mother: "I bought a huge turkey for Christmas dinner."
Father: "That must have cost a fortune!"
Mother: "Actually I got it for a poultry amount."
How do sheep greet each other at Christmas?
A merry Christmas to ewe.
What game do reindeer play in their stalls?
Stable-tennis!
From: Christmas Jokes
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