Holidays - December 7th

December 7th is Cotton Candy Day, Letter Writing Day, Civil Aviation Day, and Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. There are a variety of activities that you can do with children to celebrate any of these "holidays." You may want to make home-made cotton candy (which does not require a machine), write a letter to a solider or loved one, or do an activity to teach about civil aircrafts or Pearl Harbor.

Helpful Links for Cotton Candy Day:

A great recipe, which is a bit confusing, so I would recommend watching the video below to better understand these instructions:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/jacques-torres/jacques-homemade-cotton-candy-recipe/index.html

A helpful video that shows the process and mentions some helpful tips:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-bG59cITaY

If you'd rather, you can find various cotton candy machines on the market. Kmart sells a countertop electronic cotton candy machine, which is listed for $29.99 (not including tax and shipping); however, right now, you can get 4% cash back for Kmart through ebates. You may also be able to find relevant coupon codes at one of the coupon code sites in my list of links.

Helpful Links for Civil Aviation Day:

The ICAO page is very technical, especially for children; however, this page is easier to understand and gives a good overview of Civil Aviation Day:
http://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/un/international-civil-aviation-day

Some easy aircraft-related activities from TLC:
http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/family/aviation-activities-for-kids.htm

A site, if you want to show kids some pics of civil and military aircraft, so they can see the differences:
http://www.aircraftguru.com/aircraft/

A page with lots of coloring pages; however, not all of the planes shown are originally civilian: http://coloringbookfun.com/planes/

Helpful Links for Pearl Harbor Day:

A few activities relating to Pearl Harbor (Again, some younger children might not understand this event or might be frightened by it.): http://www.lovetolearnplace.com/SpecialDays/PearlHarbor/Activities.html

A comprehensive site from Scholastic, which is great but not geared towards most younger children:
http://teacher.scholastic.com/pearl/index.htm

This site has a variety of activities on Hawaii, not directly pertaining to Pearl Harbor, and you could probably find something for any age-group:
http://www.atozkidsstuff.com/hawaii.html

Helpful Links for Letter-Writing:

A great idea for making a letter-writing kit for kids:
http://www.parents-choice.org/article.cfm?art_id=258&the_page=editorials

A page where younger kids can learn more about letter writing and even write to their favorite Arthur character:
http://pbskids.org/arthur/games/letterwriter/

A page with a variety of resourcs and ideas for writing letters:
http://www.teachervision.fen.com/letters-and-journals/resource/26369.html

For letter-writing, I really like the idea of having a child write a letter to their favorite author or musician/music group, a President, a soldier (There are a variety of sites and organizations that provide this service.), Santa, or even a fictional character (if you just want the child to practice writing a letter). If you want to locate the address for a real-life person, such as an author, musician/music group, President, you can usually locate their addresses online, with a simple Google search: (mail OR contact OR address) AND name. For example: (mail OR contact OR address) AND George W Bush

Enjoy!
-Sus.