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National East Asian Languages Resource Center
http://nealrc.osu.edu

The National East Asian Languages Resource Center (NEALRC) at The Ohio State University has generated and made available learning materials for more than a dozen less commonly taught languages. Its online resources include At Home in Japan, a web-based tutorial that gives a basic orientation to Japanese culture; Orient Yourself, an online catalog of East Asian languages study abroad opportunities; Beginning and Intermediate Mandarin Chinese; Advanced Mandarin Chinese; Intermediate and Advanced Japanese; and Pathways to Korean, a project to produce first-level materials. The NEALRC site also features assessments and teacher training videos.

Environmental Health Activities in Spanish
http://toxtown.nlm.nih.gov

Tox Town is an interactive guide to environmental health concerns and toxic substances that we may encounter in everyday life, wherever we may live, work, or play. This site from the U.S. National Library of Medicine is also accessible in Spanish. The teachers’ resources include clip art, information about careers in the field, and classroom activities—some of which are also available in Spanish.

Poems and Songs in French
http://bonne-rentree.sitespourenfants.com

The Bonne rentrée site has resources intended for younger children, and it features poems about school, and songs about topics such as food, hand washing, and brushing teeth. There are also links to school programs in France.

Vietnamese New Year Resources

Tet, the Vietnamese New Year (which falls in the first week of February) is an important national holiday that officially lasts for three days but may be celebrated for even longer. 2011 is the Year of the Cat, and a number of websites, including several travel company sites, have information about how the holiday will be celebrated in Vietnam.

One site is Threeland Travel, which has information about Tet as well as other Vietnamese festivals and events at http://www.threeland.com/vietnam_festivals_events.htm.

Vietnam Awesome Travel provides the dates for the Tet Lunar New Year up to 2020, as well as information about the different kinds of cats in the Vietnamese horoscope at http://www.vietnamawesometravel.com/detail_product.aspx?product_id=2276.

The More Fun Travel site also has information about the Tet holiday as well as a beautiful video with a song at http://www.funinvietnam.com/vietnamese-new-year-2011.

The Adopt Vietnam website has an introduction to Tet, as well as links to articles, crafts, and photos of the celebration at http://www.adoptvietnam.org/vietnamese/tet-links.html. There are also links to craft projects such as making and racing a Vietnamese dragon boat and making a dragon puppet.

A lesson plan on the Celebrations website about the Vietnamese New Year was authored by Tracy Ward, and is intended for grades 3 and 4.  It can be found at http://teacherlink.ed.usu.edu/tlresources/units/Byrnescelebrations/wardtet.html.

The Germania Project at MSCD
http://www.mscd.edu/~mdl/gerresources/Welcome.html

The Germania Project from the Metropolitan State College of Denver’s Modern Languages Department is a compilation of online German resources. Among the many topics included on the site are culture, language, literature, music, history, current events, mythology and fairy tales, dictionaries, countries, libraries, and famous people.

Blogs about Russia
http://rbth.ru/rubrics/blogs.html

The Russia Beyond the Headlines site includes blogs about life in Moscow, culture, the economy, the weather, and other topics. The site is accessible in Russian, English, Italian, Spanish, and French.

Quiz About Money in French and Spanish
http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/center/quiz/mm/eng/index.htm

Monetary Mania is an interactive quiz show about money created by the International Monetary Fund. It includes 20 questions, and can be played in English, French, or Spanish.

Alphabets in Five Languages
http://www.alphabetpage.com

The Alphabet Page has English, German, Italian, French, and Spanish alphabets, and by clicking on each letter you can hear the correct pronunciation.

Japanese Language and Culture Network
http://web.mit.edu/jpnet/index.html

Among the resources for educators from the Japanese Language and Culture Network (JP NET) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are the StarFestival multimedia program about Japan, the Kanji Project, the Nikoniko Net online community, and a collection of articles about Japanese language teaching. The student resources include web-based curriculum materials and information about the MIT Japan Program and the Japanese Association of MIT.

Free Rice—Language Learning and Philanthropy
http://www.freerice.com

The Free Rice site has language learning games in French, German, English, Italian, and Spanish. Clicking on a correct answer gives you a harder question, and clicking on a wrong answer gives you an easier question. What makes the site so special is that for each correct answer given, 10 grains of rice are donated to the United Nations World Food Program. In addition, there are blogs and stories with the latest news about fighting hunger around the world.

World Geography Quizzes
http://www.lizardpoint.com/fun/geoquiz/index.html

This site has clickable map quizzes for testing knowledge about the geography of different continents, countries, states/provinces/territories, and cities.