January 4 - January 8, 2021
Theme: Calendars from around the World
Skill Building: Using Calendars
Person-Centered Thinking & Safety
Monday January 4, 2021
Today is: National Trivia Day
54 Fantastic Facts For National Trivia Day
Explore some fun facts that you might get to use in your next trivia game!
Check In - Show & Share:
Happy New Year! (15 Minutes)
Take the next ten minutes to describe your New Year Celebrations:
- Did you celebrate with family or friends that you live with?
- Did you have a virtual countdown with friends in different places?
- Where were you when the ball dropped on 2021?
- What are some goals you are looking forward to achieving this year?
Presenter Note: Feel free to share your own goals or ideas for goals that you'd like to work towards in 2021. Examples of this could be to learn a new skill, practice a foreign language for 10 minutes a date, read 30 pages every day.
Take this time to share and discuss your goals and anything excited that happened over your new years weekend!
Tomorrow‘s Show & Share:
Calendars from My Home or Calendar I found
Tomorrow be prepared to share either a calendar you have in your home, a calendar you discovered online that we did not talk about today, or which calendar you found the most fascinating from our discussion today!
Theme of the Week (20 Mins):
Theme: Calendars from around the world
Skill Builder: Using Calendars to Track Dates
This week we are going to explore calendars from around the world. These calendars share alikenesses and differences. They were used to track holidays in different cultures, seasonal cycles for growing crops, and to identify important dates.
Presenter Note: Review and discuss the calendars from the following resources. Questions can be asked while reviewing the short (4 min) video and/or the Britannica article.
Video: A Short History of The Modern Calendar
Article: Calendars and Their History - Britannica
- What were some Calendars that you saw in the video?
- How were dates measured in the past?
- What do you wish we would still use today?
- Why were calendars important for cultures?
- Which calendar is your favorite?
- Which calendar do you think was not good?
- How are the calendar different?
- How are the calendars similar?
Skill Builder (15 min)
Person-Centered Life Planning - Keep Track of Time Past & Present
Presenter Note: In the next month we will be using a Hope to Home Portfolio Planner to keep track of important days, meetings, and program-oriented activities. Use the next 15 minutes to revisit the topic of keeping track of our dates and times and considering the following questions with participants.
Calendars are used to keep track of time using specific levels of measurement such as days, months, years, or simply minutes! Many cultures both past and present use calendars every year to celebrate holidays and keep track of important dates both as a community and individually.
- What dates or time have you kept track of in the past? If so, how did you do it?
- What are some ways you keep track of time?
- Why do you think Calendars have changed over time ?
- What are some ways we can begin to track our dates starting this month?
- How do you think we could take some ideas from past calendars and put them into present?
- What holiday or date will you track first and why? (Birthday, Halloween, fun day, etc.)
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What did we learn today?
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What are we doing this afternoon?
Civics & Community Awareness
Tuesday, January 5th 2021
Photo by Jisun Han on Unsplash
Today is: National Whipped Cream Day
How to Celebrate National Whipped Cream Day Like It Deserves to Be Celebrated
Check out some fun recipes and facts about Whipped Cream! Includes vegan options.
Check In - Show & Share
Calendars from My Home or Calendar I found online. (15 Minutes)
Share a calendar you have in your home, a calendar you discovered online that we did not talk about yesterday, or which calendar you found the most fascinating from our discussion yesterday!
Tomorrow‘s Show & Share:
Tomorrow's show and share will look at how can track our dates and the habits we complete every day be a healthy decision for our wellness? Think of ways that looking back on habits you compelte every day would make you feel. Tomorrow we will review a few examples of habit trackers people have created.
Which Calendar, Which Culture? (20 Minutes)
Let's do a quick review of yesterday's activity:
Video: A Short History of The Modern Calendar
Article: Calendars and Their History - Britannica
Presenter Note: While reviewing the calendars from yesterday, allow participants to conduct a search for different calendars from different cultures. This activity can also be done as a search and sharing of your screen.
Calendars from the Past to consider:
We identified that different cultures often used calendars as a way to keep track of important dates and times. These tracking systems were in the form of calendars
- What were some of the things that people tracked in the past?
Now we are going to match calendars with the culture that they belonged to in the past. Bonus points if you can reminder how the culture tracked and why!
Holiday's Observed in Hope to Home Program (15 Minutes)
Presenter Note: Navigate to the attached Hope Services' Holiday Calendar for this activity. Let participants know that this is the calendar that Hope uses to let people know which dates in 2021 that program will not occur.
PDF Download for Zoom Annotation: Holiday 2021 Calendar.
While reviewing the Holiday 2021 Calendar what are things we notice?
- Are some holidays always celebrated on the same day?
- Which holidays are celebrated on the same day?
- Which holidays are celebrated on different days each year?
- Why is it important to check the date of the holiday if it is not a specific date each year? For example: Christmas is always December 25th, but Thanksgiving 2020 was November 26th. What day is Thanksgiving in 2021?
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What did we learn today?
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What are we doing this afternoon?
Well Being and Social Connection
Wednesday January 6th, 2021
Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash
Today is: Sherlock Holmes' Birthday
The Official Site of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Sherlock Holmes
Want to learn more about one of the most famous detectives in history? Explore Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's description of Sherlock!
Check In - Show & Share (15 Minutes)
Tracking Our Habits
One good way to see how we've developed our skills or learned new skills over time is to track our habits. There are many ways that we can track our habits over time to see our progress.
Presenter Note: The website you can explore offers examples of different ways that some people have tracked their habits in bullet journals. Inform participants that their from Hope to Home Portfolio Planners will contain a basic habit tracker for them and that the bullet journal habit trackers are examples of ideas for them to think about for future (or if they would like to create one simliar for their portfolio planners)
Article: Bullet Journal Addict: 50 Tracker Ideas for Bullet Journals
- What are are some habits you'd like to track?
- Which habit tracker looks the coolest?
- Which habit tracker would you like to create?
- How can we use habit trackers like these in the future?
Tomorrow‘s Show & Share:
My Important Dates
Tomorrow we will share dates important to ourselves. These dates can be anything from a beloved pet's birthday, Chinese New Year, Christmas, or a special anniversary. Be ready to share your important holiday.
Life Skills Stories (25 Minutes)
Why Keeping Track of Dates is Important
Presenter Note: Review the attached life skill story to ask the following questions.
Keeping Plans - Three Times the Fun
Covid Mitigation Moment (5 Minutes)
On Wednesdays we will always take a few minutes to discuss our Covid Mitigation moment. This week we want to talk about ways
I know that we have spent a lot of time in the last year talking about ways to keep COVID-19 contained, but now is a better time than ever to review simple ways we can all help with battling Covid.
One of the best ways to mitigate covid? Wash your hands! Review more about handwashing below:
CDC - When and How to Wash Your Hands
Website also has additional languages for participants to review!
- Do you remember any other ways to help fight Covid individually?
We will continue Covid Mitigation Moments each Wednesday!
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What did we learn today?
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What are we doing this afternoon?
Rights & Self Advocacy
Thursday January 7th, 2021
Today is: Old Rocks Day
23 Incredible Natural Rock Formations
Rocks might seem like a boring thing to celebrate, but rocks have been important to humans throughout history! Humans use rocks for marking locations and crafting tools.
Check In - Show & Share
Our Important Dates (15 Minutes)
What are some dates important to you? Today we are going to share examples of dates and describe why they are important to us.
Presenter Note: Allow participants to share their unique celebrations with photos, examples of their creations, or personal descriptions. Questions below can be used to guide the show and share for today.
Questions for Participants:
- What date do you celebrate?
- Why is this date important to you?
- Are you celebrating yourself or someone (or a pet?!)
- How do you celebrate? Is there a special food or item you create?
Tomorrow's Show & Share:
Review this Week
Friday's show and share will be a look back at topics we've covered this week. Did you find something about calendars from other cultures exciting? Was a habit tracker you discovered something you want to use in the future? Tomorrow you will be able to share a bit more about something that caught your eye this week
More important, sort of important, Less important activity (20 Minutes)
Presenter Note: Share that you are going to review different holidays or dates that occur each year and the participants are going to have the opportunity to vote with Zoom annotation on if they consider the holiday more important or less important. Engage participants if they voted for important or not important.
For this activity, we will use Zoom to vote on which date we think is more important or less important. After each round, participants can answer the questions below and explain why they voted the way that they did.
More Important, Less Important Link
Explore the holidays (some well known and some you might not know!)
Questions for Participants:
- Why did you vote for that day to be more important?
- Why is that day less important to you?
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What did we learn today?
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What are we doing this afternoon?
Knowledge & Fun
Friday January 8th, 2021
Tomorrow is: Word Nerd Day (January 9th)
Are you a word nerd? Do you like learning new vocabulary? Explore why word nerd day is so fun for some people!
Check In - Show & Share
What Did You Like Most This Week? (15 min)
Presenter Note: Do a quick run down of this week's topics with participants.
Questions for Participants:
- What calendars did we explore?
- Why is tracking on our calendars important for us to do?
- How/ What are some things we can track on our own calendars/ portfolio?
- Which calendar did you find the most fascinating, or coolest? Why was that calendar so cool to you?
Monday's Show & Share:
Do you plan? How do you do it? Monday's show and share is about how you've kept track of things in the past. What are ways that you've remembered dates? We reviewed calendars from our home earlier this week, now is a time for you to share the way you keep track of the date on that calendar! Do you use stickers? Do you X out days that are done? Get ready to share your planning style with the team.
Jeopardy Activity (35 Minutes)
Wrap up the week (5 Minutes)
Every week we will review what we went over as a quick recap to our week.
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What did we learn today?
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What are we doing this afternoon?
Choosing Fun Stuff to Do
Need some help deciding on an afternoon activity?
The activities are numbered. These numbers corrospond to brief activity descriptions listen in the linked document below.
