Celebrate Australia Day!

Each year, when school returns we are immediately plunged into Australia Day celebrations – and at such a busy time of the year!

Below are some terrific resources that require little preparation, so you can grab and go and impress your new class with exciting and informative lessons.

The ABC has a terrific page full of news and information about Australia Day, suitable for high school students, with a special focus on our Australian of the Year. Find out how Australia Day is celebrated, read about what the day means to others, and explore what it is like to be a young Aussie living in a regional area.

Explore with students how they each celebrate Australia Day, and then use the Australia Day website to explore how people across the nation celebrated. This site also features Australian history, teaching resources and digital learning objects for students to complete.

Celebrate by sharing some wonderful Australian literature; this Pinterest board links to a number of titles , for younger and older readers, which would be great to share, as we reflect on our heritage and celebrate all that it is to be Australian. Many of these titles are available to borrow from the ResourceLink library for those who work in Brisbane Catholic Education, or to download from our BCE Digital Library.

Simple printable activities for early years’ students are available for download here. Rather than simply colouring the images in, why not have the students find photos of the flora or fauna online, and try to replicate their colours as closely as they can, or colour, cut out and create simple jigsaw puzzles to test their friends?

Why not search Trove for a fantastic range of photos, articles and digitised resources that show students how Australians have celebrated this day throughout history? A classic example is this photo reported to have been taken on the ‘first Australia Day’ in 1901:

A.N.A. Day 1901. The first Australia Day
Colquhoun, James, fl. 1896-1915, (photographer.)

There are so many ways to explore and celebrate Australia Day – why not share your ideas and experiences in the comments?

Postscript:

A wonderful colleague has alerted me to the fantastic wealth of resources available on the TES Australia website; with links for Primary and Secondary learning activities, video clips such as the one below and links to other resources, it is definitely one to check out.