Celebrating Ada Lovelace Day

I can’t really figure out why, but the second Tuesday in October is celebrated annually as Ada Lovelace Day, a day to recognize the accomplishments of women in STEM and encourage women and girls to explore STEM careers. (It’s definitely a worthy day I just don’t know why it is this particular day. She was born Dec. 10, 1815 and died Nov. 27, 1852, so the day had no clear connection to her.)

It’s a great day to celebrate the legacy of Ada Lovelace, the daughter of the poet Lord Byron (though he was not involved in her life and her education was directed by her mother) who was a pioneer in early computing. She worked with Charles Babbage on his proposed Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computer that was never built. She recognized that the computer could be used as more than just a calculator, and she wrote the first algorithm for a computer to follow, making her the world’s first computer programmer.

Science Sparks has a good printable fact file on her that you can use to get started learning about her and her accomplishments. Kids Konnect has fact sheets and printables you can use in the classroom or at home to talk about her life and work.

Get a free set of printable punch card numbers to use for number recognition with an early-computing twist from Playground Parkbench.

Teach Starter has a basic coding activity using pattern recognition that little kids can do. Any activity involving coding without a computer would be a great thing to do to celebrate this day. Or use scratch to build a poetry generator, with this project from the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

Check out a BrainPop video on Ada Lovelace below.

If you need more resources, there are tons of printables related to Ada Lovelace on Teachers Pay Teachers, including reading passages, coding projects and other STEM activities and more.

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I did a post earlier this year with activities and ideas for teaching the alphabet, but a lot or learning letters and recognizing them just has to do with seeing them and working with them a lot.

That means coloring, tracing, identifying things that start with different letters and more.

One way to reinforce the letters is through little activity books like these cute printable alphabet books from Life Over Cs.

These are available for free when you subscribe to her newsletter, and I’d say that’s well worth it if you have a little one (or a group of little ones!) working on the alphabet and letter recognition.

Each mini book includes a collection of things that start with that letter to color, color and read with words that start with the letter, tracing the letter, finding the letter in a grid and other coloring pages with objects that start with that letter.

These little books are super useful reinforcing the different letters and giving kids different activities related to the letters.

If you do a letter of the day or letter of the week you can use a new book for each one, and then keep the copies in your reading center or in a basket where kids can look at them again.

And of course you can add in all the other letter activities you like, go on a scavenger hunt for items that start with that letter, read alphabet books, practice writing letters in rice or with pompoms or playdough or whatever sensory activities you like.

You can grab the free printables when you enter you email address at Life Over Cs, and check out her other great alphabet resources and activities while you are over there.

Do you have favorite activities for teaching letters to kids? I’d love to hear about them!

[Photo: Life Over Cs]

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