Symbolized Holiday Resources - Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Christmas

December 2, 2024

This year, we've put together symbolized Holiday resources that celebrate diversity. Using Widgit Online and Communicate: In Print, we created songs for Hanukkah and Christmas, and an article about Kwanzaa that you can use in your classroom.

We were really excited as we put these together, seeing just how vast Widgit's symbol library is. Widgit has a range of symbols for religious vocabulary from the Menorah to the Virgin Mary.

Whenever there wasn't a symbol available, like for the word "Latkes" in our Hannukkah resources, we easily imported an image from the web to use right in our document.

Symbolizing - Pro Tips

When putting together your own symbolized resources, keep these tips in mind.

You Don't have to symbolize every word. You can leave words like is, as, in, the, and, without symbols. Too many symbols can crowd the page and confuse. Symbolize key words to convey meaning and support new/difficult vocabulary. But if new vocabulary is small words that are easily confused -- prepositions, articles etc. -- than symbolizing might be appropriate.

Swap symbols to improve meaning. Sometimes, the symbols associated with words don't quite make sense in the context of what you're writing about. For example, in the Silent Night song, there's a line that says "Holy infant so tender and mild". The symbol that's associated with the word "mild" doesn't fit with the abstract meaning suggested in the song - quiet, and peaceful.

line from the Silent Night song, symbolized with Widgit Symbols

So we used the symbol for the word "quiet" for "mild". And we used the symbol for "nice" to represent "tender" .

line from Silent Night Song, symbolized with Widgit Symbols

No symbol to support your vocab? Import! In some cases, you just can't find the right symbol to properly convey the meaning of a word. Or you might want to use pictures for specific concrete objects. That's okay. In Widgit Online or In Print, you can easily grab an image from the web, camera or other source and use it to symbolize your word, like we've done with "Latkes" below.

Using an image from the web in Widgit Online