Celebrating Terry Fox Day

In our continuing exploration of lesser known holidays, let’s take a look at Terry Fox Day, which is probably one you know if you’re Canadian.

Terry Fox was a Canadian athlete who had a leg amputated at age 18 because of cancer and then did a cross-country run to raise awareness and funding for cancer research. He was born July 28, 1958, and the first Monday in August is celebrated as Terry Fox Day in Manitoba.

Fox is considered a kind of folk hero in Canada despite the difficulties of traveling across Canada on foot (no one on his team spoke French, for example, the weather was often bad and cars would force him off the road) and the low number of donations at the beginning of his run. He ultimately had to end his run after 143 days and 3,339 miles, or 5,373 km, because his cancer had returned and spread to his lungs, but he raised $1.7 million, and a telethon a week after he ended his run raised $10.5 million.

Check out some Terry Fox quotes collected by My Little Desire. You can learn more in this video from CBC Kids, and listen to the Terry Fox song illustrated by a first grade class.

Twinkl has a bunch of Terry Fox related activities in both English and French, including an activity pack with a maze and word search, a coring challenge, a fact sheet and coloring page.

Most of the resources I could find were at Teachers Pay Teachers, but you can learn more about the activity pack for grades 1-3 that Mrs. Bremer’s Class has made, which tells his story and has kids write things they learned and discuss why they think he is a hero.

Creative Classroom Core has a few paid resources include writing activities, reading comprehension and a Terry Fox fact book.

That Fun Reading Teacher has a K-2 singalong with a differentiated reader and activity to teach kids about him.

You can also celebrate Terry Fox Day by talking about what makes a person a hero and who the kids in your home or classroom think of as heroes. And if you’re Canadian, there are Terry Fox runs in more than 650 communities in September, so you can make plans to participate or cheer on the runners to remember his legacy.

The notion of the importance of teaching kids how to write cursive seems to wax and wane. While some schools have taken it out of their curriculum, many still see the value of learning how to write and read script. My daughter learned how to write in cursive and though she doesn’t need it often, I’m glad to know she has those skills anyway.

If you’re a teacher or you want to teach your own children how to write in cursive, I found this great resource from The OT Toolbox that I think will help. They did a whole series of 31 days of posts about writing cursive and breaking down the skills that are needed to know how to form letters in cursive. It starts with the most basic elements — how and where a child is sitting, and how their paper is positioned.

It includes gross motor activities to get kids warmed up for writing, letter families and the starting lines used to start to form letters, tips for left handed students, letter identification, pencil grasp, writing speed and assessing problems, among other things.

You’ll also find some cursive letter flash cards that can be used to help with writing practice or letter identification.

You can find the whole series at The OT Toolbox.

Looking for more tools to help kids learn cursive? I love these free cursive letter practice printables from Living Loving Lancaster, which include practicing individual letters and tracing letters to write quotes.

Or grab individual letter practice worksheets that just include the letter in upper and lower case for kids to practice. These are from Everyday Chaos and Calm and are a great way to start practicing the individual letter forms. They also include a little map at the top that shows which way to form the letter or in what order if there are multiple strokes involved.

[Photo via The OT Toolbox]

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