| Advent Calendars for the Interactive Whiteboard |
| Written by Sarah |
| Monday, 24 November 2008 18:12 |
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So now in the run up to Christmas I've been considering which Advent calendar to use with the children on the interactive whiteboard. Obviously one that helps to teach the children some information about the festival of Christmas at the same time would seem to be the ideal choice, but there are now so many free advent calendars to choose from! I looked at the one Scholastic are offering, but wasn't impressed, it has verses and activity suggestions behind each door, but not really very exciting for the children to open and be told 'Make a Christmas wish card'! Another site has a countdown to Christmas, with a story about what Santa's helpers are up to every day leading up to Christmas, with the advent calendar not yet there to look at! I'm not sure I want to read these to the class every day before December, but I'll look again on December 1st to see what the calendar is like. Fresher schools have some versions to download in zip files, either 25 day or 31 day versions, that look very colourful. Northumberland have a great selection to offer, I particularly like their 2005 version with information about how Christmas is celebrated in a different country behind each door. Fiery Ideas will soon have their latest offering available, but unfortunately it isn't yet there, as I write this. If your web connection is not always reliable then a downloadable powerpoint calendar might be better, in which case I recommend you scroll down the page and download this one from Communication4all, it tells you facts about Christmas traditions behind each door in clear wording with colourful pictures. Woodlands will be making their annual offering available from the 1st December and is usually excellent, with information behind each door on Christmas celebrations around the world. So it looks like I won't be able to make my final decision until 1st December when all the calendars are online! I will also be letting the children use the Kent advent calendar on the classroom computer, as it has lots of fun activities for them to do on the PC behind each door, things like catch the presents in the moving chimney or paint an online Christmas picture, great for Early Years or KS1 children! And of course, Stuff4teaching links to all the best free classroom teaching resources on the web and we have loads of ideas for Christmas in our Festivals category.
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I think I must be a visual learner myself because I use my classroom interactive whiteboard for as many things as I can. I find it much more interesting to have colourful pictures to represent what I'm teaching and if the board can be used interactively as well, all the better!