What it is: It is December! This means the beginning of Advent along with the anticipation and excitement that it brings. The Internet is full of interactive advent calendars that you can use in your classroom to teach about how the Christmas season is celebrated all around the world. These advent calendars reveal fun facts, interactive activities, and stories.
Santa’s House Advent Calendar– This advent calendar tells a fun story. Each day reveals another secret about what goes on inside Santa’s home on the 24 days leading up to Christmas. In each picture, there is a little mouse hiding. When students click on his ears, he jumps out.
Christmas Around the World Advent Calendar– Each day students click on the date to reveal a fun fact about how countries around the world celebrate Christmas. The facts are accompanied by great illustrations and pictures. This site shows up very small inside my Internet browser (Firefox). To remedy this problem, click on “view” in your menu bar and choose “zoom”. You may need to zoom in several times.
Christmas Mice Advent Calendar– This calendar tells the story about a mouse family who celebrates Christmas. Each day a little more of the story is revealed. Each picture includes some animation.
Santa’s Advent Calendar– On this advent calendar, each day reveals a new song or activity for students to complete. There are some fun Christmas themed mysteries to solve, stories to read, and activities to work through.
French Carols Advent Calendar– This is a French advent calendar. Each day contains a new French Christmas carol sung by children. This advent calendar would be a fun one to include in a study of Christmas around the world.
Christmas Around the World Advent Calendar Quiz– This advent calendar tests students knowledge about how other cultures celebrate Christmas. Each day students are asked a question and given hints to help them answer. When the answer is revealed, students can click on links to learn more about the Christmas celebrations in that country. This site also includes great activities and teaching resources for Christmas.
Christmas Advent Calendar– Follow the adventures of Zac the elf as he tries to find a Christmas present for Santa. Each day a little more of the story is revealed.
Christmas Activity Advent Calendar– This advent calendar has fun little games and activities to play each day. The games and activities are quick and easy to complete, building mouse and keyboard skills. This advent calendar would be a good one for the classroom computers as a center activity.
How to integrate Interactive Advent Calendars into the classroom: The season of Advent is always filled with eagerness and expectancy. Build some of that anticipation into your school day by allowing students to unlock a new secret on the advent calendar each day. Use these advent calendars with the whole class on an interactive whiteboard or projector, or set them up as a quick center activity that students can visit. Use the advent calendars that reveal a story to practice looking for foreshadowing clues, using context clues to guess what will happen next, or as story starters for students own stories. The Christmas around the world advent calendars are wonderful for teaching students some of the history of Christmas and the way that other cultures celebrate the familiar holiday.
Tips: Each of these advent calendars has some fun goodies and hidden surprises, find the one that best fits your classroom needs.
Leave a comment and share how you are using Interactive Advent Calendars in your classroom.
Here is an Advent Calendar for teachers, created by Mary Fraizer, Tech Integration Specialist in the Buhler, Ks School District. Check it out and Join the fun.
This Countdown to Christmas wiki, an advent calendar for teachers, is my Christmas gift to you this year. I hope you experience the thrill of clicking on each page as a new link becomes active each day and seeing something new (or maybe something old) that you’ll be able to use in your classroom and in your home!
You will be able to respond to each topic by clicking on the Discussion Tab on each page. Please share how you might use this in your classroom. We’ll learn so much from each other by sharing in this manner!
Join the wiki and you’ll be able to upload photos of any of your projects. You should see the words Join This Wiki in the upper left hand corner. Further instructions are on the first page of the wiki.
http://christmascountdown.wikispaces.com/
These are great! Thanks for sharing! 🙂
Very useful, thanks. I always wonder if there’s a tool out there to make these interactive advent calendars?
Johanna
thanks for the great selection of calenders i use them at the start of the day with my year 7 class, problem is they get toooooooo excited!!!! thanks again.
Ian
Awesome collection of calendar. Thx 4 ur posting
These are fantastic activities; great for both interactive whiteboard and also individual classroom computers. Definately part of my classroom work for December!