I’m not a sports fan. I almost never care who wins the Super Bowl. I’ll admit this year I rooted for the Pats, but that’s mostly because the older I get, the more I appreciate Tom Brady’s longevity. But regardless, when the Super Bowl comes, I want to see the ads. This year my favorite … Continue reading
You can tell my friends know me well when I receive children’s books and puppets for Christmas. This year I received both. One of the books, Bread Bread Bread, reminded me of an experience I had visiting Paris last year. At the time I visited, an International Festival of Bread was being held just across … Continue reading
Here’s a special post for those of you who, as I do, live in places facing record-breaking windchill temperatures this week. All of us wait anxiously to learn which activities are moving forward and which are cancelled due to snow. And, of course, everyone listens for school snow days. This week some clever administrators from … Continue reading
Whew! Is anyone else feeling as if the new year is progressing at warp speed? After several weeks of madly finishing fall semester, celebrating the holidays, and building courses for the winter semester, classes have started and I can take a breath again. Fortunately, along came Google Doodle to make me smile–and perhaps provide just … Continue reading
I love it when I hear stories of students whose creative contributions astound me and bring me hope. That’s how I felt when I read about the students in the Creative Musical Arts and Sciences program at Arcadia High School in Phoenix, AZ. These students, in high school, are earning music credits while essentially operating … Continue reading
Halloween seems to get bigger every year. While I’m saddened to see the free-range trick-or-treating of my childhood wane, I still love the imagination with which so many young people (and their parents!) embrace the season. And, of course, in my household full of black cats, I need to put up a few appropriate decorations. … Continue reading
The biggest pumpkin ever grown in Michigan weighed in at over 2000 pounds. It must have been a pumpkin like that that inspired Wendell Minor’s How Big Could Your Pumpkin Grow? This is a story to delight and inspire any pumpkin lover’s imagination. Minor starts with an image of a typical festival-winning giant pumpkin, then … Continue reading
When I was a little girl I was entranced by the story of King Tut. Before I could read independently, I begged my father to read my All About Archeology book over and over (and over!). I loved picturing the gold glinting in the just-opened tomb, but almost as fascinating were the questions raised by … Continue reading
By now some who have followed this blog for a while have figured out that in our house, a perfect date night may well include dinner and browsing in a book store. Recently I did just that, armed with a discount coupon for a book of choice. I had a hard time deciding, so after … Continue reading
Last week I wrote about my hope that helping students see the variety of historical perspectives—and the conflicts that ensued—might allow them to more readily navigate today’s often-gridlocked perspectives on multiple issues. One source for doing so was the Stanford History Education Group’s website, Reading Like a Historian. In the February 2017 issue of Educational … Continue reading
