May the Fourth has Star Wars, and it looks like September 25 is quickly becoming Dolly’s day. The date 9/25 is a perfect nod to her iconic “9 to 5,” and fans, businesses, and even Tennessee lawmakers are already embracing the idea. So I figured TCEA TechNotes readers should get in on the fun, too.
Dolly gives us plenty to work with. Her story includes music, movies, books, business, philanthropy, the Smoky Mountains, Dollywood, the Imagination Library, and enough wonderfully unexpected facts to inspire four vibe-coded activities in Celebrating Dolly.
🦋 Fact or Fiddle
How well do you really know Dolly?
Work through 14 statements and decide whether each one is a FACT or a FIDDLE (false). The fun is in the reveal. After every answer, you get a little more of the story behind Dolly’s childhood, career, songwriting, philanthropy, and some of the wonderful details of her life.
🦋 Which Happened First?
This challenge gives you two moments from Dolly’s life and asks one simple question.
Which happened first?
Across eight rounds, you compare events from different parts of her life and career. It is a quick way to test your chronological thinking without having to build an entire timeline.
🦋 9 to 5
Of course, I had to do something with 9 to 5. This activity has two levels.
In Level 1, decide where the numbers 9 and 5 belong in statements about sports, shapes, the alphabet, elements, and more.
A regulation baseball game has ___ innings, while a basketball team has ___ players on the court.
Then comes Level 2, Find the 95. This time, you tackle ten multiple-choice questions that take the number 95 into science, math, geography, technology, pop culture, and even outer space.
🦋 Timeline Scramble
The final activity pulls everything together. Arrange ten major moments from Dolly Parton’s life from earliest to latest. You can drag, tap, or use arrow controls to move the events into place.
As you work, Dolly Facts provide extra details about each milestone. There is even an option to hide the years in the fact pop-ups if you want a little more of a challenge instead of simply sorting dates.
Once the timeline is complete, you can see just how much one life can hold.
Dolly Parton was a firecracker of a woman. She was smart, funny, generous, and never afraid to stand her ground. She built an extraordinary career, gave back in ways that changed lives, and somehow managed to stay completely herself along the way.
So maybe 9/25 is a good day to remember this: be sharp, be kind, know your worth, and when the moment calls for it, be a little more Dolly.
Featured image and activity graphics created with ChatGPT by OpenAI.