HOLIDAYS(LINCOLN,NEWELL+FONDA)

-which holidays they celebrated at this time of the year
The students from Newell Fonda Elementary were celebrating Christmas, exclusively. They explained they are a small, mostly rural community and as such, there is not much diversity when it comes to religion.

-how the weather affected the way they were celebrating them
However, because their part of Iowa gets a lot of snow they were excited about the holiday in a more traditionally-U.S. way. All the songs we have learned about Christmas or most of the books we have read include a real wintry setting. Thus, just about everything they do means being indoors. The students from Newell Fonda did make one very important point about this kind of weather, though, a storm (blizzard) can keep extended family members from gathering to celebrate the holiday. This in not something any of the kids at Lincoln had thought of.

-student reactions to the activity
Most of the students from 2D (Lincoln) enjoyed the activity. None had ever done a Skype call with another class and were very interested to not only ask in-depth questions but to share very detailed information about their own experiences. Naturally, some were frustrated by there not being more time to interact and the number of questions was limited by the sizes of the classes and the short amount of time we had do to schedules and time zone differences.