Celebrate National Twins Day

Did you know that August 5 is celebrated as National Twins Day? More generally, the first weekend of the month of August is Twins Days, which is a festival held in Twinsburg, Ohio, each year to celebrate twins of all types. The event has taken place since 1976 and routinely attracts up to 2,000 pairs of twins. (Dressing alike is, apparently heavily encouraged but not required.)

If you want to celebrate twins at home or at school, check out some books about twins! This collection was gathered by Twin Mom and More, and includes a nice collection of picture books for twins and about twins. These would be great to give at a baby shower for a twin mom, if you happen to know one of those.

Maybe you’ll want to learn some fun facts about twins as well. About 3 percent of births are twins. Identical twins develop from a single egg and share all of the same DNA, while fraternal twins develop from two separate eggs, so they do not share all their DNA. Twins are more likely to be born premature, and they’re also more likely to be left handed (22 percent of twins compared to 10 percent of single babies are left handed).

I couldn’t find a lot in the way of activities for Twin Day, but of course lots of matching games would be appropriate. Childhood 101 and Activity Mom both have good collections of printable matching games if you don’t already have a collection of your own.

You could also practice doubling numbers or dividing things in half. Stories by Storie has some great ideas for games, songs and other activities for learning about doubling numbers that would be fun for your very own twin day.

Add in a little throwback TV and introduce your kids to “Rugrats” while you eat your Twin Pops and your twins day will be complete!

[Image by 1035352 from Pixabay]

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Bastille Day Activities for Kids

Holidays are a great time to pull in some themed STEM projects. Even kids who aren’t usually into science can get excited about making a reindeer fly or making a Christmas tree out of 3D shapes. Check out these fun Christmas STEM activities to try in your classroom or at home.

Speaking of making reindeer fly, there are lots of different takes on this engineering challenge. In the instructions from The Educator’s Spin on it, kids make a reindeer from recycled materials, then use a string to make it “fly.” You can also do this with a balloon, like in this version from Team Cartwright.

And that Christmas tree project? That one is from Steamsational, and it calls for making a bunch of 3D triangles you then assemble into a tree. The post includes all the tips you’ll need and a printable template for making the triangles.

Another cute idea from Steamsational is making Santa’s sleigh out of an egg carton. Give kids design challenges such as that Santa must stay in the sleigh, it should be able to move and pull weight. It’s so fun to see what kids come up with.

Science Sparks has a printable book full of Christmas-themed experiments with templates kids can cut out and use to make spinning sleighs, shadow puppets, a paper tube to test how much weight it can hold and more. These activities are really low prep beyond the printing, so they’re great when you need to fill a little time at home or at school.

If you have Legos and jingle bells you can make a simple engineering challenge by having kids build mazes that the bells can roll through. Get the details from Innovation Kids Lab. (And check out this fun book of Lego Christmas ornaments!)

Of course you can also put a Christmas spin on classic STEM activities, like making a baking soda volcano in a plastic or glass ball ornament (Little Bins for Little Hands), red and green magic milk (Fun Learning for Kids), Borax crystal ornaments (Go Science Kids) and more!

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