Fun on the Weekend

Not all of their time is spent in school. Your students might feel that all they do is school work but they have fun times on weekends that they can discuss with their keypals. Are slumber parties common with girls all over the planet?

How do your students spend their time outside school on the weekends? What kinds of things do they do for recreation? Does your local community have programs for youth to provide safe yet fun activities? Do their keypals have youth programs where they live?

Making a Survey

Encourage the students to tell each other how they spend their weekends. Have them make a survey and send it to their online friends. Sample questions might include:

1. How much time on the weekend do you spend in recreation at your home with friends?
2. How much time on the weekend do you spend in recreation at the home of a friend?
3. How much time on the weekend do you spend in sports activities?
4. How much time on the weekend do you spend in community recreational facilities such as movies, skating rinks, swimming, skiing, etc?
5. How much time on the weekend do you spend working?
6. How much time on the weekend do you spend by yourself watching TV or reading or other quiet activities?
7. How much time on the weekend do you spend in shopping?
8. What is your favorite way to spend the weekend?
9. If time and money were no obstacle, what would you like to do on a weekend?

Gather and Organize Data

After your students and their online keypals have shared what they do on weekends, have them prepare a table or chart with the data they collect. Then it is time to make some comparisons. Are your students and their keypals spending their recreational time in similar fashions? Can they make this assumption? In what ways are they not the same? By using the data they collect from each other, the students should be able to draw some conclusions about the activities of kids in their survey on weekends.

Build a Resource of Fun Places For Kids

Suggest that your students and their online keypals build a resource together of fun places to visit on the web. Below are a few sites to get them started.

The students can visit the sites and tell each other about the best places to visit and why they like the site. In www.funbrain.com the students can challenge each other and see who gets the best scores in the games.

Museums

1. Museums Around the World - from Kids World 2000
2. Museum of Science in Boston
3. Science Museum - London
4. New York Hall of Science
5. The Exploratorium San Francisco
6. Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Washington, DC

Zoos and Aquariums

1. Zoos and Aquariums from America's Best Online

Educational Games

1. Fun Brain - educational, online games for kids
2. Squigly's Interactive Games for Kids

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Patti Weeg
www.globalclassroom.org
April 17, 2004