December's Task

[Sharon Tonner]

What shall we do for December's task? What on line tool shall we use? When should we complete the task since we will all be on holiday at different times?

Put your suggestions below and remember to give time for others to place there suggestions on the forum before making your mind up.

This week will be suggestions and next week will be choosing the one for December.

Sharon

[Katarzyna Wizgacz]

Our Polish Christmas holiday starts on the 20th December and we meet in January :)

[Anna Karidi Pirounaki]

Greek holidays: 23/12-7/1

[Amanda Marrinan]

Our school year closes on Dec 5, so we might be struggling to take part in the December task. As we don't start our new school year until Jan 28, we'll unfortunately be out of the picture until February

[Vicky Sedgwick]

My suggestion for the task would be to have the children create their own snowflakes. They could cut them out of paper and have them photographed or draw them in a drawing program or on paper or create them in Word or create them using an online tool:
http://snowflakes.barkleyus.com/ - Can be downloaded and saved
http://www.popularfront.com/snowdays/ - Can print as a PDF and convert to image
http://www.noggin.com/games/snowflakemaker/ - Use print screen to capture

Then record them singing a song about snow or snowflakes. We could use Let It Snow or one of these:
Snowflakes Falling Down http://www.songs4teachers.com/snow.pdf
Snowflake Dance or I'm a Little Snowflake http://www.everythingpreschool.com/themes/snow/songs.htm
Snowflakes, Snowflakes
(to the tune of "Are You Sleeping?")
Snowflakes, snowflakes,
Snowflakes, snowflakes,
All around,
All around--
Whirling, twirling snowflakes,
Whirling, twirling snowflakes,
Hit the ground,
Hit the ground.

The song & pictures could then be combined into a Smilebox Slideshow. Teachers can get a free Smilebox account at: http://media.smilebox.com/teachers/welcome

This can't "really" be embedded in a website though - you embed a link to the show which goes to the Smilebox site to actually play the slideshow.

Our Christmas break starts at noon on 12/19 and we're back on 1/5.

[Kairi Laane]

Tere, everyone!

My idea is to sing the song "Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree." I would like to think that most of us should know this well known song.
Kids should sing the song and you should make a video of their singing.
We will make it using www.dotsub.com there we can add subtitles in our own language. I made a quick example, hope it will explane my idea better.




I thought we can add subtitles in our own language, so kids can sing along, but we can use English as well (no, I think native language is better :))
Our Christmas holiday starts on the 20th of Dec and we'll be back at school on the 5th of Jan.

Greetings,
Kairi

[Kairi Laane]

Sorry, will post the previous post again, forgot to add the example of my idea!

Tere, everyone!

My idea is to sing the song "Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree." I would like to think that most of us should know this well known song.
Kids should sing the song and you should make a video of their singing.
We will make it using www.dotsub.com there we can add subtitles in our own language. I made a quick example, hope it will explane my idea better.

You can see the example here http://dotsub.com/view/4f5ff3ac-f261-4a62-9798-c68d1b4abc86

I thought we can add subtitles in our own language, so kids can sing along, but we can use English as well (no, I think native language is better :))

Our Christmas holiday starts on the 20th of Dec and we'll be back at school on the 5th of Jan.

Greetings,
Kairi

[Katarzyna Wizgacz]

In Poland we don't have the Polish version of "Oh Christmas tree" - we'll see which tasks would be chosen. I would just have problem with that song - it's my small remark to your quite nice idea :)

[Sharon Tonner]

Hi Kairi, remember internet safety where many schools are not allowed to place children's faces on Internet so some sort of graphic representation would be required.

Sharon

[Kairi Laane]

Okay, in that case we can make a video with paintings/photographs for example. Still it's doable, in example video there's only one pic (no faces) too.

[Kairi Laane]

Also this video can be done recording just objects, Christmas tree, children paintings etc and children voices can be heard.

[Jane Lowe]

I love your idea Kairi. It caters for countires that don't have snow at Christmas time and the Christmas tree is a great symbol for Christmas that I'm sure most Children are familiar with. I like the idea too of having the subtitles in your native language too.
I listened to your Dotsub and I think this will be a great task!
Our school year finishes on December 18th and our new year starts on Feb 2nd (which for me will be with a new class) so I will probably miss the January task.
Great idea.
Thanks

[Cathy Francis]

Hi Sharon et al,
We break up Dec19 in Moray.
Sorry to be a bore but there's a problem with any Christmas or snow idea! It is that this is really not relevant to all or indeed many children around the world. It's similar to the hallowe'en ideas for Oct/November...great ideas but not really appropriate?! What does everyone else think?
Cathy