For Elementary School Teachers & All Librarians:
No Rouz ~ Nowruz ~ Persian New Year
Multicultural ~ Spring ~ World Holiday
Lesson Plans
Haft Seen - Table of 7 S's -- grades K - 5
Chahar Shanbeh Suri - Fire Jumping -- grades K - 3
Celebrating Spring Essay -- grades 2 - 4
Elements of a Holiday -- grades 1 - 4
-or- What Makes a Holiday
Links to other very good No Rouz Lesson Plans
Harvard University discussion of No Rouz and five class activities
University of Arizona a day in the life of an Iranian child
Kennesaw State University compare and contrast New Year holidays of the world
Teaching Aids & other Useful Links
No Rouz words, phrases, & Symbolism Page
Map of the Middle East - from Univ of Texas, Austin
Iranian / English Calendar maker - by payvand.com
Equinox date & time table - by US Navy
Explanation of Equinoxes - by Eric Weisstein
- the QuickTime video of the earth's movement is very good (near the bottom of the page)
No Rouz Calendar of events 2010
Other new year holidays -- Kennesaw State Univ's lesson plan -- includes extensive links about other new year holidays around the world
No Rouz words Matching Page (use words and phrases page as the key)
Other Persian New Year LINKS
These are on our links page -- information about Persian New Year, events, parades, radio stations, & Iranian associations.
2011 Persian New Year / No Rouz
will be Sunday, March 20, 2011 at:
23:21 Universal Time (formerly Greenwitch Mean Time)
In the United States (daylight saving time):
7:21 pm Eastern Time
6:21 pm Central Time
5:21 am Mountain Time
4:21 am Pacific Time
This is the exact moment of the Spring Equinox,
when the sun passes over the equator.
A note on words and spelling
“No Rouz” (pronounced no rooz) is the name of the Persian New Year celebration. “No” means new and “rouz” means day. “New Day” is a fitting name since No Rouz is a celebration of Spring, life, and renewal.
Because “No Rouz” is from Farsi (or Persian) — to write it in English we use transliteration. That means we listen to how it sounds and write down what letters make those sounds.
Since there are several ways to spell certain sounds, “No Rouz” has many different spellings. (Wikipedia records 22!) (In addition, different countries pronounce No Rouz differently.) This is how there are so many different ways to spell No Rouz, and none of them are an official or standardized spelling.
“Nowruz” is the most common spelling; however many Iranians are arguing for “No Rouz” because an English speaker would be more likely to pronounce it properly.
