Olympic Teaching Plans

This may be a little late, but if you are looking for a special Friday project, check out this livebinder on activities around the 2010 Olympics.

OLYMPIC LESSON PLANS

Gardens at School

Spring is another 6 weeks away, but that doesn't mean we can't get ready for it. Nice job by 'ianjod' who create a livebinder on all these great resources for gardening at your school. He has included some handouts in colorful PDFs that give examples of what schools have done to participate in the gardening activities. It also includes the pedagogy behind these outdoor - tactile activities. There are even some lovely pictures from some example school projects.

Any teacher who is thinking about engaging the kids in a garden project will want to check out this livebinder.

School Gardens

Sugar - the bitter truth videos

I found this binder with a great collection of Youtube videos showing a powerpoint presentation given by Robert H. Lustig professor of pediatrics at UCSF talking about recent research on the effects of sugar. He not only explains what sugar does to your body, but also how high concentrations of sugar in the form of corn syrup, and fructose are even more deadly. This will change the way you eat and live your life.

Please view these videos and become informed for yourself and your family.

Sugar – how bad is it?

Another binder on learning the States

Here is another binder put together covering all of the facts on the different states in the US. There is even a very useful and engaging interactive game in the last tab that will help quiz your kids about all of the state capitals.

Click on the link or binder icon below to launch:

States: facts and links

Decimal fractions

The user 'redhills' put together a useful collection of websites that help high school and middle school students understand decimals. There are some fun interactive applications that help kids understand placement and how that can change the value of a number. There are also some sites that help with decimal plotting on graphs.

Decimal Fractions

Study Resources on Pearl Harbor

Found another great binder by 'xmath' who has combined a rich resource of links on the history of Pearl Harbor. If you are teaching a class on this subject, you might want to start by looking at this binder:

Teaching Pearl Harbor

Colonial America Resources

My daughter is in the 4th grade and we just recently went to Philadelphia and Boston for Thanksgiving. Her teacher recommended we stop and visit some historical sites because they will be covering the colonial period later this year. We really enjoyed visiting downtown Philadelphia, visiting the Betsy Ross home, Liberty Center where we saw the Liberty Bell, Benjamin and Deborah Franklin's tombstone and the location of their last home. We also saw the oldest rent district in the US - Elfray's Alley. There have been residence occupying the buildings since the 1700s.

There is a wonderful collection of resources from 'lthurber' covering the colonial period. I would recommend checking out these references if your child is working on a history project for this time period.

Colonial America