My daughter, Eliana, fell in love with elephants at the age of 2. Watching her with her elephants made me realize the connection with learning: Big elephant ears help you learn by listening and an elephant never forgets! There are countless other analogies - Come and open up your elephant ears and never forget to learn large with my daughter and me!
On this day in 1706, Benjamin Franklin was born. Anyone who studies science, history, or has frequented a library, has encountered the ideas, the works, and discoveries of Benjamin Franklin.
Whether you find his fascination with electricity equally as fascinating, or his love for books a complete sheer and utter delight; the man accomplished enough in one lifetime to pass on enough material for months of lessons.
Get your kids and students, or you for that matter, involved at a hands-on level with these freebies that will save you time and money. After all, as Benjamin Franklin would say:
Time is money
Spend your time learning with your children because the legwork of research has already been done for you in gathering this list of information. Following are some links to some awesome sites across the web that deliver free lesson plans and printables to make your job as a parent and/or educator that much easier:
Teacher Appreciation Week this year (2012) is this week (May 7 to 11).
It's a great time to thank a great teacher for all he or she has done.
It's also a great time to be a teacher. Many businesses offer Teacher Appreciation Week savings. Some of these businesses are nationwide. However, many are local. So, look around and see who is offering teacher specials this week in your area.
This new site is amazing! It allows teachers to customize lesson plans and use videos and slides from this site - TED-Ed http://ed.ted.com/lessons/ .
There is something for almost every subject. I just looked at it to check it out and have not delved deeper. However, I saw lessons on science, art, Business, health, math and more.
Check out this lesson plan and video on the size of an atom:
Female workers make up half of the workforce. But, when STEM programs began, they made up less than 25% of careers workers in science, technology, engineering, or math fields. The US has lost ground with other progressively-moving countries in the fields of Science and math. While these subjects are taught in school, little progress seemed to have been made. That's where after school programs stepped in. These programs make learning subjects like science, technology, engineering, and math fun. Not only fun, but promising. With the downturned economy, careers in IT technology have remained a viable option. However, without the training, these jobs are difficult to land.
Started out of an effort to draw girls, in particular minority girls, into careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), after school programs were started. Today, interest in the programs soar. Read more at:
"Is it snowing yet? Snow, will we get snow? Snow, tomorrow? Why didn't we get a white Christmas?" These are all questions my 9 year old asked this year as we continue to experience an unseasonably warm winter so far.
If you were lucky enough to have a white Christmas, you may not need (or want) to produce your own snow. For the rest of us (who rung in the new year at 60 degrees), you just might want to experiment by making your own pretend snow.
All you need are a few items (mostly found in your kitchen or bath room). You might not be able to build a snowman, fort, or have a snowball fight with your home-made snow. However, it will be a fun learning experiment.
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We had a lot of fun reviewing this product. And, now we want to offer Wikki Stix to you. I want to share a 24-pk Rainbow Wikki Stix with you. Read through this blog to find out how you can win!
My children and I had the privilege of reviewing a product called Wikki Stix. The good people at Wikki Stix sent me some samples and away we went. The kids have since begged to "play" with the Wikki Stix. What a fun way to learn! They are non-allergenic, clean up easily and easy to work with for little fingers. Not only that, they are very affordable and reusable over and over again. They have endless uses.
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There are numerous other packs to purchase and put to educational use. There are even party paks to use at birthday parties and Curious George workbooks. I especially loved the idea of the adult stress reducer pak. There are alphabet cards, number cards, holiday kits, dinosaur and oceans kits, glow in the dark stix, single color paks, rainbow paks, neon paks and more.
What do you know about Japan? With all the recent events in Japan, I started thinking about Japan. What do I actually know about the country and what my kids know? Or, I should say what they don't know. Geography has never been my strong point, so teaching it to my children is - well, interesting. Without a globe, your guess is as good as mine on many regions of this world. But, I found there are some things I know. And, what I don't know I can learn and teach my kids. In case you're like me and want to know more about Japan, here's some sites I found helpful:
You can now have access to over 20,000 free learning through videos! That's right - Absolutely free! Take the ceiling off of your learning and teaching opportunities by this non-profit site. The co-founder of Wikipedia has launched a brand new site called WatchKnow.org.
Every subject and every age group is covered for K-12.
I explored this Website today and found it to be so exciting. I have placed a permanent link to the site on this blog. You can enjoy all the learning videos at any time with no commitment and no expense. It's all free!
I have a daughter. We call her our miracle because she came to us after losing 3 pregnancies to miscarriage. She is our youngest child and keeps us hopping. From the time she was about 2 years old, she fell in love with elephants. The moment she laid her eyes on her very first WebKinz elephant, she was hooked. Now, she claims her mission is to go from thrift store to thrift store rescuing all of the elephants in the world. Our house needs an additional room to fill her collection.
Throughout the course of elephant collecting, it dawned on me how elephants have a huge (no pun intended) impact on learning.
They are said to never forget (memory is a part of learning)
They have large ears (listening plays an important role in learning)
And, there are probably countless other connections I have yet to discover. But, for the time being, this blog is being prepared to share learing in many forms. So, sit back, open your large elephant ears and get ready to add some education into your memory so you never forget...
