June Holiday Resources (the FEATURED stuff)

Featuring a few resources (either brand new, newly-updated, or unique holidays) for June in a separate post with more details or examples to give you a better idea what to expect.

Jay LeBlanc

6/8/20264 min read

Juneteenth resources from the Smithsonian's National Museum of African-American History & Culture

While I have done an article on summer classroom resources in the past, it has usually been a quick overview figuring that few teachers were both a) still teaching, and b) still looking for "holiday" resources rather than focusing on required curriculum. Now that I am doing these blog posts year-round, though, I get a chance to "dig deeper" into June, July, and August resources. I mention that because while I know the African-American Smithsonian museum has continued to add new content since they opened, I had not realized just how much they had available on the culture of the Juneteenth holiday (not just the history). Here are a few examples below:

“Juneteenth” portal, National Museum of African American History & Culture, 2026, https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/moments/juneteenth

A couple of subpages I would particularly feature there:

“Press Play on History: Juneteenth” (a secondary lesson plan based on listening to and creating themed playlists around the Juneteenth experience), Smithsonian Learning Lab and the National Museum of African American History & Culture, 2026, https://learninglab.si.edu/collections/press-play-on-history-juneteenth/sq7aFVyT4f6ohjEe

“NMAAHC Kids Understanding & Celebrating Juneteenth" (an early childhood education set of resources on teaching elementary students about Juneteenth, in PDF form), National Museum of African American History & Culture, 2026, https://nmaahc.si.edu/sites/default/files/2021-12/nmaahc_kids_juneteenth_resource.pdf

Two Other Juneteenth resources from the June list . . .

“Juneteenth: Why financial literacy needs to be part of the holiday celebration”, CNBC, Jun 2022, https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/18/juneteenth-why-financial-literacy-needs-to-be-part-of-the-holiday.html

"Emancipation and Juneteenth, 1862–1865” (lesson plans), Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History, https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/lesson-plan/emancipation-and-juneteenth-1862-1865

Some Shopping Statistics about the Impact of Fathers' Day

Just a note - some of these are updated to 2026, but most of them are still using 2025 data (since we are still 2 weeks away, many of the sites have not been updated yet):

“Fathers Day – Holiday and Shopping Trends”, National Retail Federation, Jun 2025, https://nrf.com/research-insights/holiday-data-and-trends/fathers-day

“Fathers Day Fun Facts”, May 2026, U.S. Census, https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/sis/resources/fun-facts/fathers-day.html

“3 things to know about Father’s Day this year”, National Retail Federation, Jun 2024, https://nrf.com/blog/3-things-know-about-fathers-day-year

New Links and Resources - "2026 FIFA World Cup"

Here I am mostly emphasizing items that have been released since my June resource post last week. I'm going to start with an interesting video clip (at least I found it interesting) on the work going on behind the scenes to make the games possible . . .

“Why FIFA Is Staking Its $3.8B World Cup on This Grass Experiment”, Wall Street Journal, Jun 2026, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GLJW2It52s&t=29s

“Mapped: The 48 Nations Playing in FIFA World Cup 2026”, Visual Capitalist, Jun 2026, https://www.visualcapitalist.com/every-country-playing-in-the-2026-world-cup/

“How FIFA Makes Money: Global Football and Licensing”, Investopedia, Mar 2026, https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/070915/how-does-fifa-make-money.asp

“The World Cup Won't Boost the Economy (Don't Let Anyone Tell You Otherwise)”, Monday Morning Economist, Jun 2026, https://www.mondayeconomist.com/p/world-cup-gdp

As I mentioned in the main resource post, there were not a lot of lesson plans in June - so I'm going to focus on resources below for the three main events of the month . . .

1) The start of the World Cup in North America (and as I suspected, there are several new resources released just in the past week - since my resource post - for the 2-3 days before games begin on Thursday).

2) Juneteenth coming up a week from Friday (June 19th), and

3) Fathers Day (the same weekend on Sunday, June 21st).