Construct A Nest

Materials:
•String
•Dried grass
•Twigs
•Scraps of paper
•Cloth

Birds´ nests are more than just straw baskets--they´re great engineering works. The weaver bird of Africa builds a spiraling, hanging nest with a special trapdoor. The albatross makes mud chimneys in which to lay its eggs. Storks make huge 6-foot nests on the roofs of houses in Europe, where they´re considered good luck. Your local birds may not make such exotic nests, but they´re no less wondrous.
•When the leaves have fallen from the trees in your area, take a walk and see how many nests you can find. (Don´t confuse them with the ill-engineered nests of squirrels, which tend to be in the high forks of trees.) Perhaps you´ll find a nest that has fallen to the ground, or one that´s low enough to study.
•To appreciate the engineering feat, have your child try building a nest of his or her own, with twigs, string, dried grasses, scraps of paper, and cloth. Difficult, isn´t it? Just imagine trying to do it with your mouth!

September 5 Activities

•Be Late For Something Day - For creating a release from the stresses and strains resulting from a constant need to be on time. For more info, contact: Les Waas, President, Procrastinators´ Club of America, Inc., Box 712, Bryn Athyn, PA 19009
•Anniversary of the First Continental Congress Assembly - In 1774, this first assembly of the forerunner of Congress took place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
•Jesse James´ Birthday - (b 1847) Western legend and bandit, known for bank, stagecoach and store robberies.
•Arthur Charles Nielsen´s Birthday - (b 1897) Marketing research engineer.
•Voyager I -US - In 1977, Voyager I set a new distance record when it reached 6.5 billion miles from Earth.

November 6 Activities

•James Naismith´s Birthday - (b 1861) Inventor of the game of basketball.
•Saxophone Day - A day to recogneze the birthday of Adolphe Sax, Belgian musician and inventor of the saxophone and the saxotromba. Sax contributed an entire family of brass wind instruments for band and orchestra use.
•John Philip Sousa´s Birthday - (b 1854) American composer and band conductor, remembered for stirring marches such as "The Stars and Stripes Forever," "Semper Fidelis," and "El Capitan."
•Gustavus Adolphus Day - Honors Sweden´s King and military leader killed in 1632.

Games

Games are a child-friendly way to learn. . There are so many wonderful games on the market. Aristoplay is one of our favorite game publishers. I also like the "file folder" type games you can pick up at teacher supply stores.

November 30 Activities

•Barbados Independence Day - Commemorates independence from Great Britain in 1966.
•Lucy Maud Montgomery´s Birthday - (b 1874) Author, known for her Anne of Green Gables series.
•Bonifacio Day - Philippines - Also known as National Heroes´ Day, it commemorates the birth of Andres Bonifacio (b 1863), the leader of the 1896 revolt against Spain.
•Mark Twain´s Birthday - (b 1835) Celebrated American author, born Samuel Longhorne Clemens, whose books include: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and The Prince and the Pauper.
•Margot Zemach´s Birthday - (b 1931) Illustrator, she won a Caldecott for Duffy and the Devil.

September 3 Activities

•Douglass Escapes To Freedom - Dressed as a sailor, Frederick Douglass boarded a train at Baltimore, MD and Wilmington, DE where he caught a steamboat to the free city of Philadelphia. He then transferred to a train for New York City and entered the Underground Railroad.
•Anniversary of the Surrender of Italy - In 1943, General Giuseppe Castellano signed a "short armistice" surrendering unconditionally in WWII.
• Qatar Independence Day - Commemorates the severing of treaties with Britain in 1971.
•San Marino National Day - In honor of St. Marinus, the traditional founder of San Marino.
•The Treaty of Paris Ends the American Revolution - In 1783, a treaty between Britain and the US was signed at Paris, ending the Revolutionary War.

Class-Made Mendel Experiment

Gregor Mendel was a 19th century scientist who developed modern genetics. He discovered that new colors of sweet pea could be formed when mixing different varieties of the plant. Try to do the same in class, when studying about genetics.

- Plant different colors of sweet pea.
- When they flourish, cross-pollinate, mixing the two, and find if you can make new colors.

More about Mendellian genetics and about other possible experiments can be found at: Mendel Experiments

Arts/Crafts - Cool Bookmark

This is how to make a bookmark: Cut a narrow strip from an old greeting card. Then affix pieces of self-adhesive magnetic strip (from craft store) to the short edges. Then fold the rectangle in half so the magnetized ends meet.

September 8 Activities

•Andorra National Holiday - Honors our Lady of Meritxell.
•Anniversary of the Galveston Hurricane - In 1900, this national disaster was the worst in US history with more than 6000 lives lost.
•International Literacy Day - Celebrated worldwide to promote reading and its benefits.
•Northern Pacific Railroad Completed - In 1883, after 19 years of construction, the No. Pacific Railway became the second railroad to link the east and west coast of the US.
•Anniversary of the TV Premiere of "Star Trek" - In 1966, the first 79 episodes of Star Trek began airing on NBC.

Need a Boost For Your Honors Class? (hs)

Assign an independent project at the beginning of each grading period - to be completed and turned in at the end of each grade period. Need an example?

For Algebra - assign a ratio/proportion project in which students make a scale model of a household object and write a report about how they determined what scale to use, about what jobs require such knowledge, etc.

Television Stories

Use a large cardboard box, a length of butcher paper, two paper towel tubes and drawing pencils, felt markers or crayons to make a TV. Turn the box so that the bottom is facing towards you. That is the "front" of the television. Cut out a large square to be the "screen." Decorate the front with buttons and dials as desired. Cut vertical slits on the sides of the box (near the front). The students will scroll the butcher paper through these slots to make their television documentary.

November 7 Activities

•Anniversary of the Completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway - In 1885, at 9:30 AM, the last spike was driven at Craigellachie, British Columbia, completing the Candian Pacific Railway´s 2,980-mile transcontinental track between Montreal, Quebec, in the east and Port Moody, British Columbia in the west.
•Marie Sklodowska Curie´s Birthday - (b 1867) Polish chemist and physicist. In 1903, she was awarded, with her husband Pierre, the Nobel Prize for physics for their discovery of the element radium.
•Anniversary of the Election of the First Black Governor - In 1989, L. Douglas Wilder was elected governor of Virginia, becoming the first black elected governor in US history. Wilder had previously served as lieutenant governor of Virginia.
•Anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution - This holiday in the old Soviet Union was observed for two days with parades and military displays and appearances by Soviet leaders. According to the old Russian calendar, the revolution took place October 25, 1917. Soviet calendar reform causes observance to fall on November 7 (Gregorian). The Bolshevik revolution began at Petrograd, Russia, on the evening of November 6 (Gregorian), 1917. A new government headed by Nicolai Lenin took office the following day under the name Council of the People´s Commissars. Leon Trotsky was commissar for foreign affairs and Josef Stalin became commissar of national minorities. In the mid-1990´s, President Yeltsin issued a decree renaming this holiday the "Day of National Reconciliation and Agreement."
•Anniversary of the Republican Symbol - In 1874, Thomas Nast used an elephant to represent the Republican Party in a satirical cartoon in Harper´s Weekly. Today the elephant is still a well-recognized symbol for the republican Party in political cartoons.
•Anniversary of the Election of Roosevelt to His Fourth Term - In 1944, defeating Thomas Dewey, Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first, and only, person elected to four terms as President of the US. Roosevelt was inaugurated the following January, but died in office April 12, 1945, serving only 53 days of the fourth term.

November 8 Activities

•Cortes Conquers Mexico - In 1656, after landing on the Yucatan peninsula in April, Spaniard Hernan Cortes and his troops marched into the interior of Mexico to the Aztec capital and took Aztec emperor Montezuma hostage.
•Edmund Halley´s Birthday - (b 1656) Astronomer and mathematician. He observed the great comet of 1682 (now named for him), first conceived its periodicity and wrote in his Synopsis of Comet Astronomy: "...I may venture to foretell that this Comet will return again in the year 1758." There have been 28 recorded appearances of this comet since 240 BCE. Average time between appearances is 76 years. It is next expected to be visible in 2061.
•Montana Admission Day - Montana became the 41st state in 1889.
•X-Ray Discovery Day - In 1895, physicist Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen discovered X-rays, beginning a new era in physics and medicine. Although X-rays had been observed previously, it was Rontgen, a professor at the University of Wurzburg (Germany), who successfully repeated X-ray experiments and who is credited with the discovery.

November 15 Activities

•Brazil Republic Day - Commemorates the Proclamation of the Republic in 1889.
•Shichi-Go-San - Japan - An annual children´s festival, the Shichi-Go-San (Seven-Five-Three) rite is "the most picturesque event in the autumn season." Parents take their three-year-old children of either sex, five-year-old boys and seven-year-old girls to the parish shrines dressed in their best clothes. There the guardian spirits are thanked for the healthy growth of the children and prayers are offered for their further development.
•Georgia O´Keeffe´s Birthday - (b 1887) Described as one of the greatest American artists of the 20th century, O´Keeffe painted desert landscapes and flower studies.

Slopes and Angles

Materials:
Sand
Gravel
Dirty clay
Cup

Amazing fact: If you slowly pour a cup of sand on one point ten different times, the resulting piles will always have the same shape.
Why is this? It has to do with the fact that every material has a specific "angle of repose." Engineers define this as the limiting steepness beyond which particles will slip downhill. In other words, a pile of sand cannot get any steeper than a certain angle, no matter how carefully you pour it. The angle is steeper for larger and irregular or wet particles. So gravel has a steeper angle of repose than sand, and sand has a steeper angle of repose than dry clay (which has finer particles). See for yourself with gravel, sand, and dirt in your garden or at the beach. Now then, what´s your angle?

ECE - K-2 Shape Search

Learning to recognize shapes isn´t just an activity for preschoolers. The ability to find a common shape among several objects is one key to learning to read; we recognize many words by their "shape". To help your child get better at recognizing shapes, try this:

Draw a simple shape (like a rectangle) and have the child see how many examples of that shape he/she can find in your home. Encourage them to look beyond simple matches. For example, a place mat might be a rectangle, but so is the center leaf of the oval dining room table.

ECE - Pre-Reading

One stage in learning to read is making a connection between each letter and the sounds it represents. That´s the basic idea behind phonics. Here´s an activity that helps reinforce the learning she´ll be doing at school.
•Draw large block letters on 12x12-inch pieces of poster board. Cut them out. Start with a few letters, such as the ones in your child's name.
•Choose one letter and help your child locate small items that begin with that letter sound. For example, glue buttons and beads on a letter B. Or, make handprints with tempera paint on the letter H.
•At first, you can name the object for a letter. Later, ask your child which of two objects starts with the letter´s sound. Finally, have your child find the objects.

October 27 Activities

•Enid Bagnold´s Birthday - (b 1889) Novelist and playwright. National Velvet
•James Cook´s Birthday - (b 1728) English sea captain and explorer who discovered the Hawaiian Islands and brought Australia and New Zealand into the British empire.
•Anniversary od the New York City Subway - In 1904, running from City Hall to West 145th Street, the New York City subway began operation. It was privately operated bu the Interborough Rapid Transit Company and later became part of the system operated by the NYC Transit Authority.
•Theodore Roosevelt´s Birthday - The 26th president of the US, succeeded to the presidency on the assassination of William McKinley. He was the youngest man to have ever served as president of the US. Roosevelt was the first president to ride in an automobile(1902), submerge in a submarine (1905), and to fly in an airplane (1910). Although his best remembered quote is "Speak softly and carry a big stick," he also said, "The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight."
•Saint Vincent of the Grenadines Independence Day
•Turkmenistan Independence Day - Commemorates independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.