March is all about rebirth, renewal…and basketball. This year, March Madness, aka The Big Dance—the annual national obsession with college basketball—began on March 16th. The three week, single elimination series concludes with the final tip-off on April 7th. That game will decide the 2014 NCAA Division 1 Men’s Basketball Champion. (The women’s series is played […]
“The early bird catches the worm.” Benjamin Franklin, the famously frugal Founding Father and proponent of productivity, would surely agree with that idiom. However, for many people, getting up was just a bit more difficult last week. Sunday, March 10 at 2 a.m. marked Daylight Saving Time across most of the United States. That meant […]
Nina Joines, Tulsa Oklahoma How to cultivate learning that lasts for a lifetime. How do you encourage students to give back? Some teachers organize fundraising events for their classrooms throughout the year, as a way of giving back to the community. One student collected shoes for the needy, and turned it into an annual giving […]
Kathy Asper, Keller Texas When I first started homeschooling, I ran my kids classes like a public school; and as a teacher, it came easy to do. We would use traditional text books and paper curriculum. I even had a desk for each kid and decorated the walls as a teacher would. But in recent […]
Among classical composers, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart stands out for his unique genius, creativity, and an amazing talent for his life’s work from a very young age. The history of this musical genius is a fantastic story. Students will listen to works of Mozart as they explore the life of this gifted composter. The different styles […]
Last week, the calendar advanced from February—African American History Month—to March—Women’s History Month. Who better to lead us from one historic month to the next than Rosa Parks, Mother of the Civil Rights Movement? This past week was an historic one for Rosa Parks. On Tuesday, February 27, Rosa Parks became the first African American […]
No aquarium, no tank in a marine land, however spacious it may be, can begin to duplicate the conditions of the sea. And no dolphin that inhabits one of those aquariums or one of those marine lands can be considered normal. ~ Jacques Yves Cousteau Aquariums entertain and educate us with beautiful exhibits of fish, […]
What do these locations have in common: Newtown, Aurora, Tucson, Blacksburg, Nickel Mines, and Red Lakes Reservation? If you answered that these locations were scenes of mass shootings, you are correct. Unfortunately, these locations are just a few of the many sites of recent mass shootings in the United States. When tragedies like these occur, […]
Spies and detectives – mention these two jobs to any sixth grader and you will have their attention. Sixth grade is already a tumultuous year as 11 and 12 year olds adjust to middle school life. Factor in the jump to prealgebra and higher-order mathematical principles and you may just find a group of stressed-out, […]
This March—Women’s History Month—revisit one of the twentieth century’s most influential works authored by a female—The Diary of Anne Frank. Listed among the best books of the century by Goodreads.com, The New York Public Library, The Guardian, and The National Review, The Diary of Anne Frank is a complex and important text. It is at […]