National Doughnut Day

I first heard about this day on Facebook when a former student mentioned it on his page. I thought of a number of ideas and thought, with the school-year about to end and Summer around the corner, why not serve students a bit of history and a treat.

National Doughnut Day is not only a day where doughnut shops treat customers to free doughnuts, it was a holiday to recognize the women who served World War I soldiers. The Salvation Army helped to organize this occasion in honoring those women.



Here are few activity ideas:
* Research various doughnut recipes you can create in the classroom and mix the dough in class.

* You can purchase plain doughnuts from your grocery store and provide different toppings the students can use to make their one of a kind doughnuts. Some stores sell a glaze or you can whip up an easy glaze like this one.

* For younger, and perhaps a healthier route, treat student to doughnut shaped cereal.

* Use doughnut shaped cereal to make lanyards or necklace treats by stranding the cereal through a colored yarn or string.

* Read a children's book about doughnuts to your students and have them discuss or create a circle chart about the story. Like Who Needs Donuts? by Mark Alan Stamaty Other books can be found at your library.

For activities that inspire creativity, but without the sugar:

* Create various circle and pie charts catering to the theme of World War I, Women in World War I, and facts about the Salvation Army.

* The Salvation Army does so much to help others, why not create a Doughnut Poster thanking them for what they have done in history and today?

* Students can draw or paint their own doughnut design. Encourage various designs. How cool would it be to eat car-shaped dougnuts, huh?

* Visit the nearest doughnut shop. Krispy Kreme dougnuts is a great location for students to see the doughnut making process. Inside their stores they have bakers and a factory style conveyor belt to display the doughnut making process. Plus, kids get a spiffy hat.



There are all sorts of ways to make learning fun (and edible)!

NOVEMBER: National "unfriend" Day

Technically National Unfriend Day is not something official, but when a celebrity with his own talk show, who was once on a popular Los Angeles radio station, and is known by face and name, the likes of Jimmy Kimmel can make anything happen.

(Just give it some time before this occasion gets posted on Wikipedia)

For example, he can get the California (soon-out-of-office) State Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to (humorously) be part of the Unfriend Day occasion:



How would this occasion be applied to educators?

I suggest to take this time to discuss social networking and the pro and cons of "friending" and "unfriending" people online. This would also be a great opportunity to discuss with your students how we do this outside the social networking world and how that effects people in our society.

Discuss the meaning of friendship and what it means in person and what it means online. For example, my nephew accepted the "friend request" from someone who says is annoying at his school. He explained to me that although this kid is annoying at school, the kid is not harmful and does not disrespect his peers. For those reasons, he accepted the classmate's request.



Address the benefits of social networking, and how people abuse it causing people to "unfriend" others.

Some people get offended when others "delete" people from their social networking profiles. Perhaps create activities of how this would reflect the person who did the deleting and the person who was deleted.

There is so much to cover regarding social networking, and as the internet grows and network connections expands, considering "unfriend" Day. As stated in this CNN.com article:

"Facebook was once the social networking site we chose over MySpace to connect with our real friends; but over the years, many of us have accumulated dozens, if not hundreds, of Facebook friends that are, in fact, not actually our friends."

Something to think about.