Turn Your Passion into Action
1. Understand the situation. Each school is unique and it’s important to get involved with yours to understand the situation. Music programs can be compromised for many reasons:
a. competition for instructional time
b. shortage of qualified teachers
c. lack of community support
d. diversion of school funds to subjects evaluated by province-wide testing,
Learn about your school’s music program. Bring up the subject at Parent Teacher Association meetings and let teachers and administrators know how much you value having a quality music program.
2. Let Us Help You. Our FREE Grassroots Advocacy Guide is an easy-to-use tool to help you design and execute your action plan. Use it as a starting point in discussions with other concerned parents and community members. Click here to download or order. Download today and take action BEFORE cutbacks are threatened.
3. Showcase Student Success. Effective advocacy will emphasize the positive and the best interests of students. Look for opportunities to publicize and promote student performances and their points of view with parents, at school board meetings, media and in the community. Not every administrator or policy maker has had the chance to experience the benefits of music education.
4. Form a local group/coalition. Every voice counts. Consider forming a group to increase available resources and ideas. Groups can consist of parents, students, teachers, community members and local artists concerned about the status of music education.
5. Let your local and provincial representatives know the benefits of quality music education programs and the need for ongoing investment. It’s been said that 10 letters to a public official or decision-maker will put issues on their radar, 25 letters will make them explore an issue, 50 letters can change a vote. Click Here for helpful tips as well as letter templates and government contact links. Our website provides further helpful research and support.
6. Show your support. Numbers have power with policy-makers and the media so your participation in Coalition initiatives is very important. Here are two ways you can help:
a. Participate in Music Monday on the first Monday of each May
b. Sign up for the National Effort
Learn in more detail what you can do and Take Action Now. Click Here.


The report by a presidentially appointed committee on arts education makes the case that art education not only helps young people find their voice but also is an effective tool in improving student achievement in all subjects. It even ends up helping the private sector too.
The report, released by Obama’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities and called Reinvesting in Arts Education: Winning America’s Future Through Creative Schools, is the first federal analysis of arts education data in more than a decade and was 18 months in the making.
It makes the following five recommendations that serve as a blueprint for schools to increase arts education in public schools and integrate the arts into an array of other subjects:
1) Build robust collaborations among different approaches to arts education
2) Develop the field of arts integration
3) Expand in-school opportunities for teaching artists
4) Utilize federal and state policies to reinforce the place of arts in K-12 education
5) Widen the focus of evidence gathering about arts education
To see the entire report, click here: http://www.pcah.gov/sites/default/files/photos/PCAH_Reinvesting_4web.pdf


Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) is one of the most highly esteemed historical artists, yet during his life he was barely recognized, and only sold one painting. He was a poor and troubled artist, who suffered bouts of depression and often relied on his brother Theo for financial support.
Van Gogh committed suicide at the young age of 37, leaving behind 900 paintings and 1100 drawings (although a new book claims that he may have been shot by someone else).
Today, Van Gogh’s paintings are worth millions of dollars. In 1990, one painting (Portrait of Dr. Gachet) sold for over 80 million dollars.
I have always admired the energy and color in his paintings. He was an artist with integrity who was honest with his art, and only found comfort in creating. He once wrote in a letter to his brother Theo “The only time I feel alive is when I'm painting”. This is something I can relate to, and I am sure many other artists can as well. His paintings were his comfort zones in a life of heartache, rejection, mental turmoil, and financial hardship.
Most of his most famous artworks were created in the final two years of his life, during his stay at a mental asylum at Saint Remey. His main themes included sunflowers, wheat fields, cypresses, flower still lifes, landscapes, and self-portraits.
There are three things that stand out for me about Van Gogh’s life as an artist.
- Vincent Van Gogh documented his life as an artist. During his life, he wrote over 800 letters to his brother Theo and others. Without these we would not know much about Van Gogh’s life and the inspiration behind his paintings. Van Gogh probably did not intend these as a record of his life, but they do serve that purpose for art historians and critics eager to learn more about his art, and the inspirations for his paintings.
I think all artists should document art in some way. Write about your art in a journal or sketchbook. Today, there are many great ways of documenting our art for future generations, including blogging, creating videos for Youtube, self-publishing art books and writings, and artists websites.
- Van Gogh believed that he could not be a true artist until learning how to draw. His earliest art education began at the age of 13 when Constantijn C. Huysmans, a famous teacher and Paris artist, first taught him to draw.
Van Gogh continued drawing till his late twenties, and only then began painting for the first time.
I realize some artists these days have abandoned learning traditional methods of drawing. But, I believe drawing and sketching still should be a solid foundation for all forms of visual art.
- Van Gogh painted even through times of mental anguish and depression. The story of Vincent Van Gogh’s life is a sad one filled with heartache, depression, health problems, alcohol abuse, and mental anxieties.
In spite of all his problems and rejection by the art community, he continued to paint. It appears that painting was what got him through these tough times, especially during his stay at Saint Remey. He painted most of his most famous artworks there, including Starry Night, and it even appeared he was recovering. But, only two months after being released he died from a gun shot wound, never getting the recognition he deserved in life.
There are many very talented artists today who do not get the recognition they deserve. Like Vincent Van Gogh, don’t let rejection distract from your art. Keep creating and grow as an artist. Paint even through the tough times.
Through your art, let the world know that you exist.


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Geometry can be found all around us and in this colorful set of books that makes mathematics fun! These nonfiction readers feature high-interest nonfiction text, problem-solving activities, supporting graphics, highlighted content-area vocabulary, sidebars, photographs, graphs, glossary, and index. Set of 6 books includes Looking for Shapes, Shaping Up, Traveling on a Train, Traveling on an Airplane, Building a Playground, and The Fort. 32 pages each.


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A research and educational unit of the Smithsonian Institution promoting the understanding and continuity of diverse, contemporary grassroots cultures in the United States and around the world.
The central education website of the Smithsonian Institution.
A professional organization of music and movement educators dedicated to the creative teaching approach developed by Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman.
A education program offering free, standards-based teaching materials for use in and out of the classroom, as well as professional development resources, student materials, and guidelines for arts-based instruction and assessment.
A consortium of college, conservatory, university, and independent musicians and scholars interested in all disciplines of music. Its mission is to promote music teaching and learning, musical creativity and expression, research and dialogue, and diversity and interdisciplinary interaction.
An organization with members in over 60 countries that promotes music education world-wide.
The world's leading publisher of music and movement curricula for parents and their children, ages newborn to 7 years old.
Music educators working for the education of America's children.
A national organization whose mission is to enrich the quality of life of the people of the USA through music education by promoting the philosophy of Zoltán Kodály.


Traditional Hawaiian kapa cloth is made out of the pounded bark of trees and then decorated with intricate geometric designs and patterns. Originally, kapa cloth was made for wearing, but now is cherished as decoration for the home. Here, your child can learn how to make her own kapa cloth and explore her understanding of geometric shapes and pattern.
What You Do:
- Start by looking at examples of kapa cloth with your child online or at the library. This will give her an idea of what kapa cloths usually look like.
- Although kapa cloth is made from bark of a tree, reusing a paper bag will work just as well. Cut a used paper bag to create a piece of 12" x 12" paper.
- Encourage her to sketch out her kapa design on the paper bag before painting. Often kapa cloths have a nature-themed picture in the center and a border of various geometric designs. They can also have other embellishments such as straight or zigzagged lines.
- Pour a small amount of black or brown tempera paint onto a paper plate and have her begin creating her design, starting with the outside border.
- If she wants do some printing, she can use cookie cutters, blocks, or even toilet paper rolls for circles. Just dip them in the paint and press onto the paper bag.
- Set the finished design aside to dry.
Once the kapa cloth has dried, it can be framed and displayed in her room as a unique and beautiful decoration!
Sarah Lipoff has a K-12 Art Education degree and enjoys working with kids of all ages.


|The Bauhaus, a progressive art school in Germany that sought to redefine art education, is the major source of development in color theory. There, master Johannes Itten and one of his students, Joseph Albers began a indepth study of color theory. These Pages explore the fundamental color theory ideas and exercises that they developed.|
Color is constantly changing. Color is always being seen in relation to the colors it surrounded by. It is almost impossible to see a color by itself and not interacting with its sorroundings. For instance the green in the following diagram appears as two very different shades of green even though both of the squares are the same shade of green. The green is interacting with the backgrounds it has been placed on. The reason the green appears so different on each background is that each color influences the green differently. The following exercises will help demonstrate how color is decieving and susceptible to its surroundings.
Color is understood through experience. We need to train our eyes to understand color and begin to see the differences between colors. Through comparison and contrast of different colors one begins to understand how colors interact and how to apply this to color usage.
The picture to the left, originally made by Josef Albers is a great example of how color is decieving. We need to train our eyes to understand what is happening. It is color interacting. The picture looks like four different colored squares with a transparent folded square on top of them. The transparency is actually just different blocks of color that are just slightly different then their sorroundings, placed on top of the squares. Ultimately you have to remember that color is absolute and that it is always relative to its sorroundings.
|Goethe's Triangle applet||Alber's Plate 1|


An Eye Level education starts with seeing things from student's eye level.
This is a story about a teacher who lowered his height. A man was appreciating the art at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC. As he approached each painting he would kneel down and look up at it. A curious visitor asked him why he was looking at the paintings from his knees. He replied, I am an elementary school teacher and I will bring my students here tomorrow. I was wondering how my students would enjoy the paintings from a student’s eye level.
Eye Level is based on an
educational principle where students learn at their own pace. When a teacher understands the learning needs of a student, the teaching are most effective.
● Problem Solvers
● Critical Thinkers
● Lifelong Learners
Eye Level is a systematic, individualized program that caters to students of all abilities utilizing a unique and proven learning method. This allows each child to have a customized starting point depending on their ability, regardless of his/her age and/or school grade. Each child's study progression will depend on the student's pace of learning.
Eye Level focuses on building each student’s foundation in Math and English, as well as helping students to gain self-confidence, interest in learning, and develops a child’s critical thinking and analytical skills.
All concepts and skills in the Eye Level program are interrelated. Mastery of basic foundational skills is necessary before advancing to more complex skills, resulting in improvement of a child’s accuracy and speed when completing more complex questions.


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The psychological measure of the magnitude of a SOUND or SOUND OBJECT including its SPECTRUM (frequency and intensity), harmonic content, duration and spatial properties.
Any process that encourages a person to listen more discriminately, particularly to sounds of the environment. The term was originally used by R.M. Schafer in his book Ear Cleaning (Toronto, BMI Canada, 1967) to contrast with the traditional practice of ear training in music education which concentrates on the identification and reproduction of intervals, chords, melodies and so on.
A recent development where, in contrast to the conventional analog TAPE RECORDER, the audio SIGNAL is sampled within a set of pre-defined limits. It is thus the reciprocal process to that described as digital SOUND SYNTHESIS. Digital sampling is also used is some digital SOUND SYNTHESIZERs.
The subjective impression of FREQUENCY, in the same sense that LOUDNESS is the subjective sense of the INTENSITY or AMPLITUDE of a sound. As such, pitch is a psychoacoustic variable, and the degree of sensitivity shown to it varies widely with people. Some individuals have a sense of remembered pitch, that is, a pitch once heard can be remembered and compared to others for some length of time; others have a sense of absolute pitch called PERFECT PITCH.


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In terms of attacking the underlying causes of the massive unemployment of the time, it was an enormous success that could be a model for future situations. In terms of actual results, it was minimal.
The massive unemployment of the Great Depression was the result of a vicious cycle started in the 1920s. Business owners and corporations were charging more for their products and services than consumers were earning. When this resulted in a drop in consumer spending, businesses responded to the declining revenue by cutting costs, which only compounded the problem. The New Deal sought to alleviate this problem, but without breeding dependency (a problem with welfare). The Works Progress Administration (WPA) and other programs (e.g. CCC) were workfare, i.e. you had to work to earn your payments, but the payments were redistributions of income from progressive taxes.
In results, the WPA and other workfare programs barely made a dent in the unemployment rate. The principles were good, and it even aimed to make the point to private enterprises that increasing consumer incomes would restore the consumer spending that drove profits. Unfortunately the message fell on deaf ears, and the Government couldn't level a steep enough progressive tax to fully alleviate unemployment without harming businesses that could reduce the demand for such programs.
It was definitely a success because the WPA eventually employed approximately one-third of the nation’s 10,000,000 unemployed, paying them about $50.00 a month. Unemployment decreased massively. Which is a massive change during the Great Depression. The program highlighted the production of works of art rather than art education, and it was the first art project ever sponsored by the Federal Government. The contribution from the Federal Government expanded and redefined their role. The government was attempting to put money back into the economy in the form of wages for the unemployed.
The new Deal programs didn't diminish Great Depression but it eased the hardships that many were facing.
Furthermore, the AAA (Agriculture Adjustment Administration), established in 1933, a relief, Its purpose was to help farmers by reducing production of staple crops, thus raising farm prices and encouraging more diversified farming. It raised the value of crops. This system lessened the effects of the Great Depression on farmers, it slowed, the overproduction that was crippling many farmers.
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The laptops are designed for use by children in the developing world
The UN in the Gaza Strip has begun distributing thousands of laptop computers to children in its schools.
The rugged laptops are made by the non-profit organisation One Laptop Per Child, which aims to give a computer to every child in the developing world.
One Laptop Per Child say computers are a good way of improving the education of children living in poverty.
Humanitarian conditions have deteriorated in the Gaza Strip in the last three years, the UN says.
Israel and Egypt maintain a blockade on Gaza, which was tightened in 2007 after Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip, and all but humanitarian supplies are prevented from entering.
Unrwa, the UN agency for refugees, began distributing 2,100 laptops on Thursday in Rafah, a town in the south of the strip.
This is part of a wider ambitions to distribute 500,000 laptops to children in Gaza by 2012.
One Laptop Per Child has built the energy efficient XO laptop especially for children in developing countries.
"The XO laptop has a special place in children's education in regions that are disrupted by ongoing violence," said Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the organisation.
"With the XO the children can continue to stay connected and gain the skills and knowledge required to participate fully and thrive in the 21st century - even when getting to school is impossible."
The UN agency which looks after Palestinian refugees, UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) provides housing, health services, education and emergency food supplies to more than four million refugees in five countries.
The computers are to be loaded with textbooks and teaching aids that cover the primary school curriculum, a statement from UNWRA said.


In the Summer of 2001 Dame Marie Clay, creator of the New Zealand based Reading Recovery program, and her entourage came to the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC, to speak with House Education Committee Staffer Bob Sweet. Her purpose was to ascertain whether Reading Recovery would be eligible for Reading First funding once the bill was passed. Bob explained to Ms. Clay that explicit, systematic phonics instruction had to be included in any program eligible for RF funding because it was one of the necessary key components of reading instruction that had been established through decades of carefully conducted quantitative research. ... He encouraged her to provide the leadership within the RR family to make the modifications necessary, and thus make RR eligible for RF funding consideration. With a stare as cold as ice, Marie Clay replied that RR would not be making any changes to their program; however, Mr. Sweet could be certain a new description of its components would be written in such a way as to bring it into compliance with the RF law. Momentarily dumbfounded, he maintained that Reading Recovery could not be eligible for RF funding without modification, and his initial estimation then still stands today.By Nancay Salvato in the National Ledger.
That's the peferred way to bring your curriculum into compliance with the research, rewrite the "description of its components" to make it appear like it conforms. Here's the comical fruition (doc) of those efforts.
For those of you new to the reading wars, Reading Recovery is the ultra expensive program that uses predictible text, i.e., the stories are deliberately written so that they repeat many times certain words, phrases, or sentences, and have highly descriptive pictures, which kids use to guess the words based on these contextual clues. Phonics is thrown in as an afterthought; howeer, the phonics is neither systematic nor explicit in the manner contemplated by the research.
Engelmann has written about a demonstration that he did showing how confusing the approach is to naive kids:
We went into a first grade classroom where a teacher had worked on four different selections. Each had an illustration and the text. The kids could "read" all selections perfectly. We then switched the illustrations (paired them with different texts) and tested the kids. About half of the kids pointed to the words one at a time and, with great fidelity, recited the passage that was appropriate for the picture. In other words, half the kids didn't have the faintest idea of what reading was all about.And, that would be the reason why Reading Recovery was excluded from reading First funding.


Music and group work might be fun but when it comes to teaching math, basic drills and worksheets may work best. That’s the takeaway of a new study co-authored by UC Irvine education professor George Farkas. He and his colleagues found that first-grade teachers may need to change their approach to improving the math skills of students who struggle with the subject.
The study revealed that teachers in U.S. classrooms with higher percentages of math-challenged students are actually more likely to use ineffective instructional strategies. They tend to employ manipulative/calculator and movement/music activities, which the researchers found do not boost math skills in children at any level of proficiency.
“Math educators have created many competing curricula, and we have very limited understanding of their relative effectiveness,” Farkas said. “However, activities such as routine practice or drill, math worksheets, problems from textbooks and math on the chalkboard appear to be most effective, probably because they increase the automaticity of arithmetic. It may be like finger exercises on the piano or ‘sounding out’ words in reading. Foundational skills need to be routinized so that the mind is free to think.”
The study appears online in Educational Evaluation & Policy Analysis, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association.
The research showed that only frequent use of teacher-directed instruction – focusing on textbooks, worksheets and other tools to convey facts, skills and concepts – is associated with significant gains for students with math difficulties. The most successful methods are routine practice and drill. The results hold true for first-grade students who had either persistent or transitory trouble with math in kindergarten.
The so-called “math curriculum wars” pit teacher-directed and student-centered activities against each other. The latter involves children working together to discover math skills on their own. This is ineffective when students struggle with comprehension, Farkas said: “Not all children achieve understanding in student-centered activities, and many fail to achieve automaticity with basic arithmetic facts and techniques.”
The growing reliance by first-grade teachers on non-teacher-directed instruction is surprising and troubling, he noted, given what prior research has shown about the learning needs of math-challenged students.
For their study, the researchers analyzed survey responses from 3,635 teachers and data from a subsample of 13,833 children in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99, a nationally representative data set maintained by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics.
It’s important that students with math difficulties be brought up to speed at an early age in order to reach their educational and career potential. Students who complete high school with relatively low math achievement are more likely to be unemployed or paid lower wages, Farkas said, even if they have good reading skills.
Teacher-directed instruction is also linked to gains in children without a history of math trouble. But unlike their math-challenged counterparts, they can benefit from some types of student-centered instruction as well – such as working on problems with several solutions, peer tutoring, and activities involving real-life math.
While previous research has identified instructional practices that increase reading achievement in students both with and without reading problems, few prior studies have examined which teaching methods are best for boosting math skills.
“Our findings provide teachers an indication of what works,” Farkas said. “Students with math difficulties would benefit more from explicit teacher-directed types of instructional approaches rather than from other kinds of approaches that we see teachers using.”
He co-authored the work with Paul L. Morgan and Steve Maczuga of Pennsylvania State University. Funding was provided by the National Center for Education Statistics and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development, one of the National Institutes of Health.


Africa’s young women represent the continent’s greatest under-utilized asset in its push for generating growth and opportunity. When you educate girls, the effect is disproportionately positive.
Around the world, girls who have one more year of education than the national average earn 10% to 20% more – more than the increase for boys. In particular, girls with a secondary education have an 18% return in future wages, against 14% for boys. According to a World Bank study, investing in girls’ education and opportunities could boost a country’s entire gross domestic product by 1.2% in a single year. In Nigeria, that amounts to over $3 billion. Or to take yet another example, a UN report shows that crop yields in Kenya could rise by over one-fifth if women farmers had the same education and opportunities as men farmers.
Myriad studies around the world show that girls who are educated marry later, have fewer children, enjoy better health and are more likely to take part in politics. How a society educates its girls is a litmus test of its past and future vigour and prosperity.
Perhaps it is this very insight that leads extremists to try to disrupt girls’ education. In my own country, Pakistan, the Taliban attacked a young girl and her classmates for speaking out against their ban on girls’ education. The shocking incident in Nigeria, where over 200 young women taking an exam in school and working towards their bright futures, were kidnapped by a group whose very name declares education sinful, has an eerie similarity. But the outrage in much of society and the rejection of such beliefs, both in Pakistan and Nigeria, gives hope for the future. Education is never sinful.
Given the evidence on the importance of educating girls, how is Africa faring? The Global Gender Gap Report shows that, as a region, sub-Saharan Africa has the worst gender gap in the world when it comes to educating girls. This is echoed in the World Inequality Database on Education, where African countries account for 8 of its list of 10 weakest countries for female education. In these places, 9 out of 10 of the poorest young women have not completed school. This is social injustice and squandered opportunity, as well as a reflection of the complex, interlocking factors that get between a girl who is eager to learn and a seat at the front of the classroom.
The reasons are often short-term economic constraints at the household level, even if the payoffs long term may be substantial for the individual and their communities. Parents with little money to spend on education might prioritize sending their sons to school, in cultures where boys are expected to become breadwinners. Lack of transportation, water access and sanitation can also play a role. The gender gap plays out in its various forms in every country and region in the world, and Africa is far from alone in fighting to unlock the full potential of its people.
Our data shows that the situation has improved slightly in recent years for women and girls in Africa, when you take into account not just education but other factors such as political empowerment. Among the early moves of Africa’s first elected female head of state, the president of Liberia – and Nobel laureate – Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, was to make elementary education free and compulsory for all children, boys and girls. Bineta Diop, a UN special envoy, was instrumental in ensuring gender parity in the African Union Commission. There are yet more stories of young women and men dedicated to improving education and entrepreneurship opportunities for African girls and women, whether it’s teaching girls to code in Zambia or setting up a thriving, female-run social enterprise selling bamboo bikes in Ghana.
Many other leaders and inspiring individuals will come together at the World Economic Forum meeting in Abuja, to bring their collective insight and experience to address the continent’s greatest challenges and opportunities, including girls’ and women’s empowerment. When you educate girls, the benefits ripple out far beyond the walls of the classroom, from improved lives to stronger communities and more competitive economies. Today’s schoolgirls will build tomorrow’s Africa.
Author: Saadia Zahidi is senior director, head of Gender Parity and Human Capital, at the World Economic Forum.
Image: A girl displays traditional paintings on her hand in in Nigeria’s northern city of Kano. REUTERS/Akintunde Akinleye


Think your little one is too young to learn about simple machines? Try this easy activity to make a pulley and they will learn as they play and discover how it works.
We at Kids Activities Blog believe that science for kids should be hands-on and always fun.
Simple machines have always fascinated my son. He loves to build them and explore them. After making him a mobile for his room, I looked at the empty ribbon spool that was left from ribbon on the mobile. It would be perfect I decided for making pulley.
My son and I gathered a few other supplies to create a homemade ribbon spool pulley.
Here is what we gathered:
- Two band-aids
- Empty ribbon spool
- Plastic Applesauce cup
- Hole punch
- Plastic army men
Make a Pulley
How did we put it together:
- Punch three holes into the applesauce cup.
- Cut three pieces of yarn the same length.
- Tie one end of each of the pieces of yarn through a hole in the cup.
- Tie the loose ends of the yarn together.
- Tie a really long piece of yarn to the three pieces you just tied together.
- Tape the other end of the long piece of yarn to the inside of the ribbon spool.
- Wrap the yarn around the ribbon spool.
- Place a band-aid at each end of the chopstick. The band-aids will keep the chopstick from rubbing against the wood of the banister or where ever you secure the pulley.
- Slide the ribbon spool onto the chopstick.
- Find a location to use your pulley. The length of your chopsticks may determine that.
Science For Kids
Once you have created your pulley you will need set it up in location you want to use it in. We set ours up on our stairs. The chopsticks were placed behind two sections of our Bannister. If you have headboard of a bed or chair with slats, you could set up your pulley there.
To work the pulley my son pushed the spool towards himself with one hand and held one end of the chopstick. Just rolling the ribbon roll would have worked too.
It is more fun when you have something to lift with your pulley. We placed a couple of plastic army men in ours. They are light and small. They made great items to lift.
More Kids Activities
There are several types of simple machines and even young kids can enjoy learning about them with the right hands-on activity. We’d love to hear if your child tried to make a pulley. For more fun science kids activities, we think you’ll enjoy these ideas:


This multi-disciplinary database provides full text for more than 4,500 journals, including full text for more than 3,700 peer-reviewed titles. PDF back files to 1975 or further are available for well over one hundred journals, and searchable cited references are provided for 1,000 titles.
This growing EBSCO multidisciplinary ebook collection, currently contains over 83,000 full length ebooks.
The Educational Resource Information Center (ERIC) contains more than 1,194,000 records and links to more than 100,000 full-text documents.
This database contains over 7,000 full length videos and 78,000 short(several minutes) video segments from producers including Films for the Humanities & Sciences, Shopware, PBS and CNBC.
This database offers well-researched information covering all aspects of human impact to the environment. Its collection of scholarly, government and general-interest titles includes content on the environmental effects of individuals, corporations and local/national governments, and what can be done at each level to minimize these effects. Multidisciplinary by nature, GreenFILE draws on the connections between the environment and a variety of disciplines such as agriculture, education, law, health and technology. Topics covered include global climate change, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more.
This covers the latest technologies, developments, instruction and coaching breakthroughs in the field of education. Included in this set are 250 journals.
Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts? LISTA indexes nearly 690 periodicals, plus books, research reports and proceedings. Subject coverage includes librarianship, classification, cataloging, bibliometrics, online information retrieval, information management and more.
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Designed for professional educators, this database provides a highly specialized collection of 520 high quality education journals, including nearly 350 peer-reviewed titles. This database also contains more than 200 educational reports.
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PhysTEC Digital Library
The PhysTEC Library is the world's largest collection of digital resources related to physics teacher preparation. It includes important articles, reports, websites, conference presentations, and videos. Many of the resources have been created by leaders of PhysTEC Supported Sites or others in the teacher preparation community.
- Early Teaching Experiences
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Elementary Teacher Education
Many institutions that are leaders in high school physics teacher preparation have also improved the physical science course taken by elementary education majors.
You can also suggest a resource for the library.


Waldorf educators are not alone in their call for developmentally appropriate learning in early elementary education. The month of May adds another study on the pile of research supporting the benefits to delaying overzealous academics in early childhood.
This report from New Zealand, covered by The Telegraph, says, “Pupils kept out of formal schooling until the age of seven perform just as well those subjected to normal lessons at five… In some assessments of reading skills, those with a later start actually overtook their peers by the age of 10, figures show.”
This study release comes close on the heels of recommendations by Dr Richard House, a senior lecturer at Roehampton University’s Research Centre for Therapeutic Education, to delay formal schooling for bright kids.
This article summarizes his recommendations, saying, “…gifted pupils from relatively affluent backgrounds suffered the most from being pushed ‘too far, too fast.’ He quoted a major US study – carried out over eight decades – that showed children’s ‘run-away intellect’ actually benefited from being slowed down in the early years, allowing them to develop naturally.”
The Harvard Education Letter harps on these issues as well. The results from this study, answer these questions: “Have kids gotten smarter? Can they learn things sooner? What effect has modern culture had on child development? The surprising answers—no, no, and none.”
This prompted Jerlean E. Daniel, executive director of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, to say: “Above all, young children need time—time to manipulate objects and ideas, time to make the information their own,” says Daniel. The Gesell study, she says, “is a resource to people who want to find greater balance in kindergarten.”
Why find greater balance? Because, as the Harvard Education Letter also reports, there are serious concerns about the current state of the early education environment, including:
— A narrow range of literacy and math skills
— Eliminated recess or physical education
— Scripted curricula
This piece says these have caused, “Several prominent early childhood organizations [to issue] reports on the importance of incorporating developmentally appropriate practice into elementary school classrooms, based on what research has confirmed about early learning.”


Nearly 20 years ago a small study advanced the notion that listening to Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major could boost mental functioning. It was not long before trademarked “Mozart effect” products appealed to neurotic parents aiming to put toddlers on the fast track to the Ivy League. Georgia’s governor even proposed giving every newborn there a classical CD or cassette.
The evidence for Mozart therapy turned out to be flimsy, perhaps nonexistent, although the original study never claimed anything more than a temporary and limited effect. In recent years, however, neuroscientists have examined the benefits of a concerted effort to study and practice music, as opposed to playing a Mozart CD or a computer-based “brain fitness” game once in a while. Advanced monitoring techniques have enabled scientists to see what happens inside your head when you listen to your mother and actually practice the violin for an hour every afternoon. And they have found that music lessons can produce profound and lasting changes that enhance the general ability to learn. These results should disabuse public officials of the idea that music classes are a mere frill, ripe for discarding in the budget crises that constantly beset public schools.
Studies have shown that assiduous instrument training from an early age can help the brain to process sounds better, making it easier to stay focused when absorbing other subjects, from literature to tensor calculus. The musically adept are better able to concentrate on a biology lesson despite the racket in the classroom or, a few years later, to finish a call with a client when a colleague in the next cubicle starts screaming at an underling. They can attend to several things at once in the mental scratch pad called working memory, an essential skill in this era of multitasking.
Discerning subtleties in pitch and timing can also help children or adults in learning a new language. The current craze for high school Mandarin classes furnishes an ideal example. The difference between m¯a (a high, level tone) and mà (falling tone) represents the difference between “mother” and “scold.” Musicians, studies show, are better than nonmusicians at picking out easily when your m¯a is màing you to practice. These skills may also help the learning disabled improve speech comprehension.
Sadly, fewer schools are giving students an opportunity to learn an instrument. In Nature Reviews Neuroscience this summer, Nina Kraus of Northwestern University and Bharath Chandrasekaran of the University of Texas at Austin, who research how music affects the brain, point to a disturbing trend of a decline of music education as part of the standard curriculum. A report by the advocacy organization Music for All Foundation found that from 1999 to 2004 the number of students taking music programs in California public schools dropped by 50 percent.
Research of our brains on music leads to the conclusion that music education needs to be preserved—and revamped, as needed, when further insights demonstrate, say, how the concentration mustered to play the clarinet or the oboe can help a problem student focus better in math class. The main reason for playing an instrument, of course, will always be the sheer joy of blowing a horn or banging out chords. But we should also be working to incorporate into the curriculum our new knowledge of music’s beneficial effect on the developing brain. Sustained involvement with an instrument from an early age is an achievable goal even with tight budgets. Music is not just an “extra.”


El día de los niños/El día de los libros (Children's Day/Book Day), commonly known as Día, is a celebration every day of children, families, and reading that culminates yearly on April 30. The celebration emphasizes the importance of literacy for children of all linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
Día is a nationally recognized initiative that emphasizes the importance of literacy for all children from all backgrounds. It is a daily commitment to linking children and their families to diverse books, languages and cultures. The common goals of all Día programming are to:
- Celebrate children and connect them to the world of learning through books, stories and libraries.
- Nurture cognitive and literacy development in ways that honor and embrace a child’s home language and culture.
- Introduce families to community resources that provide opportunities for learning through multiple literacies.
- Recognize and respect culture, heritage and language as powerful tools for strengthening families and communities.


DELTA KAPPA GAMMA SOCIETY
DELTA KAPPA GAMMA SOCIETY. The Delta Kappa Gamma, an international honorary society for women in education, was founded by Annie Webb Blanton and eleven other Texas women on May 11, 1929, at the University Faculty Women's Club in Austin. The organization, originally called Kappa Gamma Delta, was chartered under its present name on August 15, 1929, after founders learned that the original name was being used by an aeronautics society. Exclusive rights to the name were not finally secured, however, until 1941. Blanton, a professor of rural education at the University of Texas, founded the society as a vehicle for its members to counter discrimination against women in education and to give recognition for excellence. Its purposes were also to provide women with a sense of unity and cooperation, to secure legislation supporting improvements in education, to help women gain equal representation in professional organizations, and to provide financial assistance for women preparing for careers in education. As Delta Kappa Gamma grew, it concentrated increasingly on providing intellectual and financial support for its members and on recognizing excellence.
Seventeen chapters were formed the first year; by 1987 the society had over 3,000 chapters in fifty states and thirteen countries. Nearly 300 of those chapters were in Texas. Blanton, the first president, decided that the society's name, symbols, and initiation ritual would remain secret to outsiders. Her invitations to potential members were signed with the pseudonymous initials KGD rather than with her own name. Initiates originally were required to have at least five years of experience in elementary, secondary, or postsecondary education; this was later changed to three years. Blanton hoped to attract members with a variety of experiences. Among the original twelve founders were an elementary teacher, three elementary principals, one mathematics and two history teachers, three college instructors (of physical education, elementary education, and psychology), and a dean of women.
Delta Kappa Gamma has chapter, state, regional, and international bodies, and its governance and operation are controlled by an executive board of 120 people. It holds biennial regional and international conventions. The society offers several awards and scholarships, including the annual International Achievement Award for leadership; the Educator's Award, given for the outstanding book on education by a woman; and more than twenty annual scholarships for members pursuing graduate study. It also makes several yearly awards through its World Fellowship Program to women from other countries studying at universities in the United States and Canada. The Delta Kappa Gamma Foundation was established in 1964 as a source of grants, scholarships, and fellowships and to support such educational projects as providing a reading teacher for the Navajo community college. The society publishes a quarterly Bulletin, a periodic newspaper called News, and numerous brochures and pamphlets. The group's collection of "pioneer figurines," dolls representing significant women in education, is displayed at its international headquarters in Austin. Its national headquarters are in Denton. Its membership grew from twelve in 1929 to 162,000 in 1987.
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A Picasso or a Pre-schooler? : ways of seeing the 'child as artist'
Boone, Danielle J. (2007) A Picasso or a Pre-schooler? : ways of seeing the 'child as artist'. In 2007 Philsophy of Education Society of Australasia Conference "Creativity, Enterprise and Policy - New Directions in Education", 6- 9 December 2007, Wellington, New Zealand.
Children’s art is a commonly featured in early childhood classroom and care centres. Adults readily display the art of young children in prominent locations for others to admire. This practice of displaying young children’s visual art poses several questions about the child and his or her artistic expression. Are these children likened to professional artists? How do children feel about their own art being displayed? What methods of display are appropriate, if any?
A review of early childhood art education literature offers ways of seeing the "child as artist." Artistic learning is complex in and of itself, and to complicate matters art education has not progressed in a linear fashion and lacks a unified organizational structure. However, the place of art in the curriculum and the best way of teaching art to young children are central debates within the field of early childhood art education.
This paper draws on doctoral research that attempts to explore ways of seeing the "child as artist" within the context of early childhood art education and presents an argument for new understandings of young children’s experiences with the display of their own visual artwork.
Impact and interest:
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|Item Type:||Conference Paper|
|Additional Information:||For further information, please contact the author: Dr Danielle Twigg, Faculty of Education, School of Education and Professional Studies, 176 Messines Ridge Road, MT GRAVATT QLD 4122, Queensland, Australia. Telephone +61 (0) 7 3735 1021. Email: firstname.lastname@example.org, Room: M10_4.02C, Griffith University - Mount Gravatt, www.griffith.edu.au|
|Keywords:||early childhood, art education, display of children's artwork|
|Subjects:||Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification > PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGIOUS STUDIES (220000) > HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF SPECIFIC FIELDS (220200) > History and Philosophy of Education (220202)
Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification > EDUCATION (130000) > EDUCATION SYSTEMS (130100) > Early Childhood Education (excl. Maori) (130102)
Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification > STUDIES IN CREATIVE ARTS AND WRITING (190000) > OTHER STUDIES IN CREATIVE ARTS AND WRITING (190999) > Studies in the Creative Arts and Writing not elsewhere classified (199999)
|Divisions:||Current > Research Centres > Office of Education Research
Current > QUT Faculties and Divisions > Faculty of Education
|Copyright Owner:||Copyright 2007 Danielle J. Boone|
|Deposited On:||14 Feb 2008|
|Last Modified:||09 Jun 2010 12:55|
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R. Murray Schafer is Canada's pre-eminent composer and is known throughout the world. In an era of specialization, R. Murray Schafer has shown himself to be a true renaissance man.
Born in Sarnia, Ontario in 1933, Murray Schafer has won national and international acclaim not only for his achievement as a composer but also as an educator, environmentalist, literary scholar, visual artist and provocateur. After receiving a Licentiate in piano through the Royal Schools of Music (England) in 1952, he pursued further studies at the Royal Conservatory of Music and the University of Toronto, followed by periods of autodidactic study in Austria and England which encompassed literature, philosophy, music and journalism. A prolific composer, he has written works ranging from orchestral compositions to choral music as well as musical theatre and multi-media ritual.
His diversity of interests is reflected by the enormous range and depth of such works as Loving (1965), Lustro (1972), Music for Wilderness Lake (1979), Flute Concerto (1984), and the World Soundscape Project, as well as his 12-part Patria music theatre cycle. His most important book, The Tuning of the World (1977), documents the findings of his World Soundscape Project, which united the social, scientific and artistic aspects of sound and introduced the concept of acoustic ecology. The concept of soundscape unifies most of his musical and dramatic work, as well as his educational and cultural theories.
His other major books include E.T.A. Hoffmann and Music (1975), Ezra Pound and his Music (1977), On Canadian Music (1984), Voices of Tyranny: Temples of Silence (1993), and The Thinking Ear: On Music Education (1986). He has received commissions from numerous organizations as well as several prizes. He was the first winner of the Glenn Gould Prize for Music and Communication as well as the Molson Award for distinctive service to the arts. In 2005 he was awarded the Walter Carsen Prize, by the Canada Council for the Arts, one of the top honours for lifetime achievement by a Canadian artist.
Murray Schafer's new creation (opera), "Patria 8 - The Palace of the Cinnabar Phoenix" was very successfully premiered September 13-16, 2001 in four shows, recorded by CBC Radio. Eight shows were presented from August 31 to September 10, 2006, in Haliburton Forest and Wildlife Reserve. It was magical and beautiful (see photos and press reviews).
[Home] [Patria 8]


March is Music in Our Schools Month, but Youngsville Elementary Middle School (YEMS) Music Teacher Patty Bush and her students agree it's important throughout the school year.
Bush's sixth grade music class took time Monday morning to show off their talents, playing The Monkees' "I'm a Believer" on ukulele before talking about why music is an important part of education.
"Music is important because it helps us to express our culture," student Jasmine Etter said.
Times Observer photo by Jacob Perryman
Uke an’ sing it too
Students in Patricia Bush’s sixth-grade music class provided a rendition of The Monkees’ “I’m a Believer” before discussing why music is important during Music in Our Schools Month on Monday.
"Music is a way to kind of express how we feel," student Paul Schwanke pointed out.
According to the students, music has some important academic side benefits as well.
"I think the music helps you to relax," student David Tremblay said. "Like, if you're taking a test, it helps you not worry about getting bad grades."
Bush said music is an integral part of a complete education.
"Music education, as a part of overall education, it just gives you a well-rounded education, which is important," Bush said. "It's been proven that students that are involved in music excel at their academics. Not to mention that it's fun and it's something they can carry with them for the rest of their life."
Broadening student horizons through music programs isn't restricted to Youngsville though.
Three of five Pennsylvania Music Educators Association (PMEA) District Chorus students from the Warren County School District are advancing to regional competition. Warren falls in PMEA District 2, which covers seven counties. PMEA Districts 2 and 3 form PMEA Region II, which contains 13 counties.
Additionally, eight students plus alternates are meeting weekly in preparation for PMEA ChorusFest at Fort LeBoeuf on April 5.
Students at Sugar Grove Elementary School are preparing for their Spring Concert on April 11.
According to Director of Choirs and Middle Level Orchestra Denise Pearson, 23 percent of students at Eisenhower Middle/High School participate in chorus/choir.
"Senior choir is singing especially well this year, and is doing a fabulous job with a capella music," Pearson said.
The Youngsville Area High School Marching Band is traveling to Ireland again to march in a St. Patrick's Day parade.
In Sheffield, efforts to re-start a steel drum band are coming to fruition.
At Warren Area Elementary Center (WAEC), concerts are given for individual grade levels in December, February and April. Additional concerts for grades 4 and 5 chorus, orchestra and band are given in December and April. WAEC is also the home of the Warren County Summer Music School in June.
The Russell and Sugar Grove band and strings are slated to perform a spring concert on March 26.
Grade 6 through 12 band and strings students at Eisenhower Middle High School are slated to perform their spring concert May 2.
WAEC Principal Ruth Nelson pointed out some of the benefits of music education.
"Music has an enormous impact on child development and learning," Nelson said. "Music is a science, for it is exact and specific. Written music is a chart or graph that indicates frequencies, intensities, changes, and time. Music is mathematical for it is based on rhythms and fractions. It can be a foreign language since the notations are generally in Italian, German, or French. Music involves physical education with coordination of fingers, hands and arms and facial, back, stomach, and chest muscles. Music is an art. It allows students to create and show feeling as well as develop social presentation skills. Music is tied into nearly every aspect of learning."
YEMS student Ethan Morningstar made the most critical endorsement, saying, "Music is cool to listen to and it's even cooler when you can actually play it."


Jelina Ciara Cubilla De Vega
Bachelor in Elementary Education
Major in Preschool Education
University of Santo Tomas
A system for sending and receiving messages electronically over a
computer network, as between personal computers.
A collaborative website whose content can be edited by anyone
who has access to it.
A social bookmarking service is a centralized online service which enables users to add, annotate, edit,
and share bookmarks of web documents. Many online bookmark management services have
launched since 1996; Delicious, founded in 2003, popularized the terms "social bookmarking" and
"tagging". Tagging is a significant feature of social bookmarking systems, enabling users to organize their
bookmarks in flexible ways and develop shared vocabularies known as folksonomies.
HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is the main markup language for creating web
pages and other information that can be displayed in a web browser.
A podcast is a type of digital media consisting of an episodic series of audio
radio, video, PDF, or ePub files subscribed to and downloaded through web
syndication or streamed online to a computer or mobile device. The word is a
neologism derived from "broadcast" and "pod" from the success of the iPod,
as audio podcasts are often listened to on portable media players.
Short for Voice over Internet Protocol. A protocol for transmitting the human voice in digital
form over the Internet or other networks as an audio stream, instead of using traditional
telephone lines. VoIP uses the Internet Protocol (IP), but is not limited to communication by
computer—even phone-to-phone communication can be conducted using this technology.
Online chat may refer to any kind of communication over the Internet that offers a real-time transmission of text messages
from sender to receiver. Chat messages are generally short in order to enable other participants to respond quickly.
Thereby, a feeling similar to a spoken conversation is created, which distinguishes chatting from other text-based online
communication forms such as Internet forums and email. Online chat may address point-to-point communications as well
as multicast communications from one sender to many receivers and voice and video chat, or may be a feature of a web
Abbreviation for World Wide Web. Is a system of interlinked hypertext
documents accessed via the Internet. With a web browser, one can view
web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia
and navigate between them via hyperlinks.
A technology for transferring data so that it can be received and
processed in a steady stream: live streaming video.
A journal written on-line and accessible to users of the internet.
A website that allows subscribers to interact, typically by requesting that
others add them to their visible list of contacts, by forming or joining subgroups based around shared interests, or publishing content so that a
specified group of subscribers can access it
Uniform Resource Locator: a protocol for specifying addresses on the
A web feed (or news feed) is a data format used for providing users with frequently updated content.
Content distributors syndicate a web feed, thereby allowing users to subscribe to it. Making a collection
of web feeds accessible in one spot is known as aggregation, which is performed by an aggregator. A web
feed is also sometimes referred to as a syndicated feed.


Jonathan Glazzard, Jane Stokoe
2013 Critical Publishing
An essential guide for all primary trainees and teachers. The text addresses the specifics of teaching English in the early years and importantly places systematic synthetic phonics within the context of early English as a whole. It starts by examining the fundamental role of communication and language in laying the foundations for literacy development. It explores the importance of early sound discrimination, rhyme, alliteration, oral blending and oral segmentation, as well as the importance of developing children’s visual discrimination skills. The text critically examines the role of systematic synthetic phonics as an approach for teaching children to read, and its application in both reading and writing is fully covered. Other key chapters include literacy through the wider learning environment, supporting children with literacy difficulties and assessing English in the early years.
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Extensive research from Ofsted states when planned and implemented well, learning outside the classroom contributed significantly to raising standards and improving pupils’ personal, social and emotional development (Ofsted, 2008).
London UK (PRWEB UK) 19 March 2014
The Gruffalo launched into bookstores in 1999 (and screens in the UK in 2009), since then it’s become one of Britain’s best loved children’s picture book. Playground Basics today announces its collaboration with the Gruffalo team; producing a new range of outdoor school signs to encourage play by learning.
Playground Basics adds this new collection to an already established group of products which aim to reinforce literacy and numeracy skills in children, during playtime.
Chantal Onur, Brand Manager at Playground Basics says: “We are ecstatic to be partnering with the world-famous Gruffalo team to present this range of exclusive outdoor playground signs to inspire and bring imagination to life within school and nursery playgrounds”.
According to a survey by Learning Through Landscapes school grounds improvements were seen to have had a positive impact on overall attitudes to learning; academic achievement; behaviour; social interaction; self-esteem; and a significant reduction in bullying.(Learning through Landscapes, 2003)
Playground Basics’ Gruffalo range features an extensive mix of playground cut-outs of the characters, interactive spin wheels, full story boards, alphabet and number friezes, personalised welcome signs, chalkboards and whiteboards for children and teachers.
Extensive research from Ofsted states when planned and implemented well, learning outside the classroom contributed significantly to raising standards and improving pupils’ personal, social and emotional development. (Ofsted, 2008).
Popular children’s picture book and film; The Gruffalo, by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, is an award-winning and modern classic tale of a little brown mouse who imagines a Gruffalo creature, only to later discover he actually exists. The picture book takes children on a journey through the forest to meet an array of woodland characters using rhyme and rhythm to enchant its readers. Playground Basics emulates this experience through their creative signs – offering school children an interactive way to learn rhyming text from the book and trigger their imaginations.
Daryl Shute, Brand Director at Magic Light Pictures says "We're delighted to be partnering with Playground Basics on the new range of outdoor signs. Reading and learning is at the heart of the programme and we're always looking for great opportunities to bring The Gruffalo to local schools and nurseries to inspire young minds."
The Gruffalo products are available online at http://www.playgroundbasics.co.uk. For more information or a copy of their latest catalogue contact Playground Basics on 01509 211 953 or admin(at)playgroundbasics(dot)co(dot)uk.
Playground Basics are market leaders in the UK, supplying schools and nurseries with high quality outdoor playground signs. Our colourful designs support the delivery of the national curriculum and create an exciting outdoor learning environment which encourages interactive play. Our exclusive range is manufactured using the latest digital technology and are UV light and weather resistant.


See note below.
Full-text article database designed for elementary school libraries. All full-text articles are assigned a reading-level indicator (Lexiles). Full text is also available for over 100 student pamphlets. This database also provides the American Heritage Children's Dictionary, 3rd Edition from Houghton Mifflin, and an image collection of 107,135 photos, maps, and flags. Many full-text titles are available in native (searchable) PDF, or scanned-in-color. Full-text backfiles go as far back as 1989, while indexing and abstract backfiles go as far back as 1984. Note: This database has minimum browser requirements: http://support.epnet.com/knowledge_base/detail.php?id=25 Also, Mac users will need to install the following plug-in for the "Linked Full Text" feature to function properly: http://www.schubert-it.com/pluginpdf/
Elementary Education; EBSCO


The Saint Joseph's University GeoKids LINKS program involves a partnership with the Wagner Free Institute of Science (WFIS) and the School District of Philadelphia. Fellows work with WFIS children's educators and elementary school teachers to develop and present science lessons to children in grades K-5. The lessons are organized into semester-long units, which include Environmental Science themes. Fellows and their SJU faculty mentors serve as content resources for the WFIS educators and the public school teachers, and are role models and teachers for the children. In addition, WFIS educators and public school teachers assist Fellows in becoming familiar with pedagogical methods in K-5 education and with the special educational needs of urban minority children.
College of Arts and Sciences


1400 Mill Creek Road, Gladwyne 2.18 acres with three historic buildings Class I Historic Resource on Lower Merion’s Historic Resource Inventory/Mill Creek National Register District
The land where the Barker Mill sits used to be part of the property of John Roberts, a Welsh Quaker. Roberts sold the land to J. Abraham Nippes in 1807 for the development of a gun-manufacturing mill that operated until 1865 and produced rifles that were used in the War of 1812. Several years later, William Booth bought the mill with his half-brother Thomas Barker. The Booth-Barker Mill was converted to a carpet yarn mill. In 1924, the mill was sold to the Barker family, who ran it until 1956.
The building had a number of uses since then, including a recording studio and office space. O’Neill Properties purchased the building in 2003 with plans to convert it to a condominium complex. While an approved development plan does exist, the project has not yet begun.
Perched on the banks of Mill Creek, Barker Mill is one of the last visual reminders of Lower Merion’s industrial past — Mill Creek alone once had more than 20 mill buildings along its banks. It is one of the few rifle mills extant in the United States, and was the longest functioning mill in the area. This, along with its location on the edge of Rolling Hill Park, lends itself to being an educational tool for adults and children alike to convey the physical, economic, and social transformations that have taken place over time in Lower Merion Township.
This year marks the sixth time that the Barker Mill has been listed on the Preservation WatchList. Though the property is a Lower Merion Township Class I Historic Resource and a contributing property to the National Register of Historic Places Mill Creek Historic District, it is still at risk for loss due to long-term vacancy and continued deterioration.
A revised development plan proposed by O’Neill Properties includes a reduction in the number of units and the possible use as rental units. O’Neill is currently looking for a development company to either purchase their approved development plan or become equity partners to make the plan come to fruition.
Like all of the properties on this year’s WatchList, Barker Mill must be re-imagined to honor the past of the site, while becoming vibrant and useful for a new group of people. A new use for the building would offer an opportunity to save a historic resource and add another layer to Lower Merion’s already rich and important history.
The Lower Merion Conservancy will continue to work with the developer and Realtors to find a sensitive purchaser. Through public programming events and elementary education programs we will advocate for its sensitive reuse.
The Conservancy held a tour and lecture at Barker Mill on June 5th. Led by Rutgers Professor Richard Demirjian, the event highlighted the rich history of the mill and America’s early economy. Read more about it here.


The Common Core Standards can feel overwhelming at times. A few simple organizational tricks can really make it so much easier. Above is an organizational list of all of my Common Core informational text centers for grade 3. Each center is aligned to each specific grade 3 Common Core standard. By keeping a checklist, it is easier to make sure that each student is working on the literacy center that best fits their needs during center time.
Prepare labels and charts for small groups ahead of time. Phonics, comprehension, and fluency are already categorized on these charts to make life sooo much easier. I can easily determine which students need more time with the Common Core Foundational Skills or learning standards. After I fill out a page, I cut them, attach them onto index cards, and place them in a mini index card box organized with each student's name.
Use Common Core aligned checklists and rubrics. They are fantastic for specific communication with parents and for ensuring that students respond to each entire standard.


Science for Kids
Science for Kids offers 150 hands-on activities, puzzles, and games for students and teachers in grades 2-6. Activities cover chemical & physical change, states of matter, motion & energy, Earth, human body, art & toys, and interviews with chemists. Each heading includes a test your knowledge section. Every activity is in PDF format. Many activities are available in Spanish.
“Lose the Blues with CO2!” under chemical & physical changes describes how students can test for CO2 using an acid indictor made with cabbage leaves. The activity includes a follow up activity and safety tips.
With “Stretching to Make a Point” under motion & energy, students investigate how far a rubber band will stretch as more weight is added. The results are graphed to determine if accurate predictions can be made.
In “News Paper Collage” under art & toys, students make art when they use vinegar to transfer newspaper pictures onto white paper.
Interviews with 15 chemists are collected in “What Chemists Do.” Students can meet Abimael “Maelo” Cordova, a toy chemist in the Mattel chemistry lab where he creates new elastic and rubbery materials. He worked on the slime for the movie Flubber.
Articles for Kids is a collection of 50 articles on aspects of chemistry in PDF format for students in grades 4-6.
Puzzles for Kids is a collection of 22 games (matching, crosswords, word finds, mazes, and more) for students in grades 4-6.
Games are 6 interactive online nutrition, environmental, and chemistry games for students in grades 4-6. In Avogadro’s Element Hunt students have three minutes to explore three rooms and match elements to objects.


California’s visual and performing arts standards were approved in 2001 before much of today’s technology had been developed or used in the classroom, and before the state had adopted the Common Core State Standards in English language arts and math.
Senate Bill 725, introduced by Sen. Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, asks the state to begin reviewing those standards and adopt, reject or modify them by 2017. The bill is currently in the Senate Appropriations Committee. If it is approved, it will then move to a vote before the entire Senate.
Those in the arts community who are promoting the bill are hoping that the new standards will look more like the preK-12 national standards developed by the National Coalition for Core Arts Standards. The coalition includes art teachers and professors from across the country, with major input from California educators, according to Armalyn De La O, director of the RIMS California Arts Project, which provides professional development for teachers. De La O was involved in writing the national standards for music. Research on the standards in all four areas – music, visual arts, dance and theater – was done by the national coalition and the College Board. The national standards were released in 2014.
“We spent time looking at the Common Core standards so that we are moving in the same direction,” said De La O, who is also president-elect of the California Art Education Association. “The national standards are broader and more conceptual in nature.”
If California’s standards were more like the national standards, “we would ask (students) to think more critically and deeply about their work,” said Armalyn De La O, who was involved in writing the national standards for music.
Like the Common Core, the national standards focus on critical thinking and putting students more in charge of their learning.
If California’s standards were more like the national standards, educators “would still be teaching kids to read music, draw or move,” De La O said. “But we would ask them (students) to think more critically and deeply about their work, to try many different things so they can find their voice and what they want to say.”
Under the national standards, students would be encouraged to arrange, compose and improvise, not just follow step-by-step directions from their teacher, she said.
For example, in music, with guidance from the teacher, students would determine which pieces to play, who their audience would be and how much practicing they would need to do before a performance.
They would not only learn how to read music, but also how to read a score.
“The first time I ever read a music score was in college,” De La O said. Under the national standards, “students could look at excerpts of a score as early as 4th or 5th grade,” she said. “They would begin to think more like a director.”
Students would start early, with preK students experimenting, exploring, listening and playing with materials, she said. Young students would learn to understand movement in their body in dance and engage with paint and color in visual arts. The point, she said, is to expose them to what is possible so when they are older they can choose what they want to do in the arts.
Part of what makes the new approach possible is the huge change in technology, she said. Students no longer simply perform for parents at open houses. They can put their work on YouTube and use GarageBand or open-source technology to compose on their electronic tablets. Because of these opportunities, the national standards are more rigorous, she said.
If similar arts standards were adopted by California, students “would need to think through what it means to prepare a piece and take it all the way to performance,” De La O said.
This approach would also mean a change in how teachers work with students, she said.
“Teachers would have to think through their time and be more of a facilitator rather than a director all the time,” De La O said. “That is a shift in the field. There would be more opportunities for kids to be part of the process.”


One in six children starting school in NSW has the numeracy skills expected of a year 1 student, prompting the Education Department to develop a gifted and talented resource package for kindergarten teachers.
The 65,000 children who started kindergarten in the state's public schools this year are having their literacy and numeracy skills assessed under the government's Best Start Assessment program.
Parents will be advised of their child's performance this term, and teachers will use the results to tailor their program to the individual needs of the students.
According to statewide results obtained by Fairfax Media, 16 per cent of children who started school in 2011 demonstrated the numeracy skills of a student entering year 1, which includes being able to count to at least 30 and represent numbers up to 20 in pictures, words, objects and numerals.
''The expectation that by the end of the kindergarten year, students can make connections between the number names, numerals and quantities up to 10 would be a low expectation for at least half the students in NSW public schools,'' said Peter Gould, who developed the numeracy component of the Best Start Assessment.
At the other end of the spectrum, 6 per cent of kindergarten children failed to meet level one numeracy standards in 2011.
The department said statewide results for the literacy component of the Best Start assessment, introduced in 2010, had not been collated.
But in a submission to the Victorian parliamentary inquiry into the education of gifted and talented students, the NSW department said the Best Start program ''has revealed many students are starting school already achieving beyond kindergarten outcomes''.
As a result, the department said it has developed a ''Best Start Gifted and Talented Kindergarten Resource Package'' to identify and extend young gifted learners.
A Charles Sturt University education professor, Bob Perry, said the 2011 Best Start numeracy results tallied with his own research.
He has been testing the numeracy skills of children at the end of pre-school, and has found about one in six already know what is due to be taught to them in kindergarten.
''It suggests they don't have anything to learn in kindergarten,'' Professor Perry said.
It is unclear whether an improvement in early childhood education services, the fact 20 per cent of children are starting school a year later than eligible, or parents working with their children on numbers, are leading to students having advanced numeracy skills.
''A number of factors contribute to the levels of knowledge and thinking young children possess before starting school, including their social development and their prior-to-school experiences,'' a spokesman for the department said.
Professor Perry said it was impossible to tell whether today's children were arriving at school with more knowledge than those of previous generations.
What the data shows ''is there's a bunch of kids coming into school who need to have something special done for them'', he said.
The department intends to match the NAPLAN results of this year's year 3 cohort with their Best Start results from 2010 to gauge the ''predictive value'' of the Best Start tests.
Tommy Pepper completed his Best Start Assessment the week before he officially started at Randwick Public School. His mother, Eugenie, said Tommy was ‘‘hysterical’’ when they arrived for the test, but bounded out after the assessment saying he’d had ‘‘so much fun’’.
‘‘It was like what I do with Susan [his day-care teacher],’’ Tommy told his mother, as he showed her a fish on a stick he had made.
Although the Peppers won’t receive their son’s Best Start results until week 8 of term, Ms Pepper said the teacher told her Tommy did ‘‘really well’’.
Ms Pepper thinks the assessment is a good idea. ‘‘It checks where the kids are at, and possibly will pick up the kids who are going to need more attention, or who will need a little more support.’’


|Closing the learning gap||Obama: Lengthen the school day, expand aid to early childhood learning and intervene as early as sixth grade to provide struggling students with special course work and counseling. Would offer families tax credits to help pay for college.||McCain: Provide grants to help district and charter schools replicate successful programs, particularly those with waiting lists. Would also make it easier for private companies and agencies to open charter schools that increase competition for district schools.|
|Money||Obama: Add $18 billion4 a year to education, to come from what is now being spent on the Iraq war, delaying some NASA programs and other inefficiencies in government spending.||McCain: Keep existing federal education budget, but redistribute the money to more effective teachers, schools and programs.|
|Standardized testing||Obama: Develop models to help states create more sophisticated evaluations that test and track student problem-solving skills in more subject areas. Create different tests that more precisely measure the knowledge and progress of students still learning English and students in special education.||McCain: Find private agencies to develop models to help states create more sophisticated evaluations that test and track student problem-solving skills in more subjects. Require every child, including language learners and special-education students, to take the same test to make sure schools maintain the same high expectations for all students.|
|Teachers||Obama: Work with teachers' unions to make teaching a more competitive, lucrative and innovative career that pays based on performance.||McCain: Find a way around union contracts that stand in the way of making teaching a more competitive, lucrative and innovative career that pays based on performance.|
Sara D'Annunzio, 7, a second grader at Sahuaro Elementary school works on an exercise.
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30 minute Junior Masterchef cooking class with our Centre Chef and Teaching Staff
Children will learn basic cooking skills essential to later life skills and a healthy lifestyle.
What will your child be doing in Junior Masterchef class?
The children will:
• Learn to prepare and cook fresh food.
• Learn to follow recipes.
• Learn about kitchen safety and hygiene.
• Have lots of hands on experiences.
• Communicate with other children.
• Gain confidence and new skills
• Classes will provide a wonderful outlet for creativity and a chance for to have FUN!
The skills and learning abilities that kids develop in the classes include:
• Sensory learning: Tasting, hearing, smelling and seeing.
• Motor skill development: Hand, eye, mind coordination.
• Mathematical concepts: Counting, measuring & following directions.
• Safety: Using equipment safely and developing sound hygiene habits.
• Social skills: Working with others, sharing & learning to cooperate.
• Language skills: Lots of new word and communication experiences.
• Children also develop time management skills and a better understanding of nutrition


For some reason, Terry and I have come across quite a few articles lately for parents on encouraging young readers. Since I had several articles stacked up, I decided to share them with you this week. I'll be back next week with Tip #2 in my new Tips for Growing Bookworms series (Tip #1 is here). But for now, here are ideas from a variety of smart people across the blogs and the press.
The Book Chook, Susan Stephenson, shared a fun post about the "sheer pleasure" of playing with language. She said: "Children are hard wired to enjoy nonsense, (as are Book Chooks!) and playing with language is something they take to immediately. From early peek-a-boo and finger rhymes, through nursery rhymes, poems and songs, we are exposing our kids to new vocabulary, and the rhythms of language, as well as reinforcing the sheer pleasure of messing about with words." She then suggested several fun wordplay activities for parents and their children.
The Eden Prairie (MN) News recently shared tips from Heather Peterson for motivating "reluctant readers". For example, "Family reading time. Families read together - either aloud or silently, either the same book or separate books. It is a time when adults model good reading habits for their children."
The FirstBook blog published a guest post from Tina Chovanec, the director of Reading Rockets.org, chock full of suggestions for helping "parents jumpstart reading and learning together". I especially liked "Game night. Start a new weekend tradition centered around family games. Rediscover classics like Memory, Scattergories, or Scrabble, or explore something new."
At Moms Inspire Learning, Dawn Morris suggested that an important way for parents to raise literate children is by listening. She said: "Before children learn to read or write, they first need to listen to what people are saying and respond in an appropriate manner. The more they are spoken with and read to, the greater the chances that they will grow into active listeners, speakers, and storytellers. THEN they can become the strong independent readers and writers we so want them to be." She also included some concrete suggestions for more active listening and support of literacy development.
The Bolingbrook Sun published an article with simple steps for parents to help students read better. The author (no name was listed) focused on helping kids improve their reading comprehension by asking them frequent questions, and thus teaching them to think critically about what they're reading. I think this makes sense, to a point, as long as you don't stop and ask so many comprehension questions that you make the whole thing feel like work. The author added: "Experts suggest that what they read is not as important as the fact that they read. Encourage her to read often from a variety of resources; books, magazines and newspapers, just get them reading! Let them see you read as well. Children learn to value what the caring adults in their lives value. If they see you reading, they may be more willing to read regularly, too." (All of which you know I agree with.)
In a related vein, at Parents and Kids Reading Together, Cathy Puett Miller shared resources to help parents find the right books for their children. The column placed particular emphasis on resources for gifted readers, but the author said that "many of the resources here will also be terrific for all families, with children of all ages so read on and see what you can find that works for your child." Here's a snippet, "Remember that you are the commercial for reading and that motivation is an important indirect component." Cathy also included lists of book recommendations, including "books under the 9-12 year area that are "safe" content for younger children."
Finally, The Hindu Newspaper's Magazine section published yesterday a detailed, thoughtful article for parents about the benefits of raising readers, and ways to do so even in today's digitally-saturated environment. Aruna Sankaranarayanan wrote "Reading can give children analytical skills in this age of information overload. As another Children's Day comes around what can we do to foster this habit". She concluded: "For India to achieve 100 per cent literacy in the fullest sense, it is not enough to simply teach the mechanics of reading and writing. Ultimately, literacy informs a way of life. Instead of children reading under pressure, we should strive to be a nation full of children reading for pleasure." Of course, her ideas apply to children everywhere, not just in India.


Sleep Disorders & Research Center, Henry Ford Health System, Detroit, MI
Behavior plays a key role in the development and treatment of virtually all sleep disorders. While behavioral medicine in the field of sleep medicine is most often associated with CBTI as a treatment modality for chronic insomnia, this view does not capture the importance of understanding and modifying behavior in sleep disorders medicine. A simple example of this is the daily behavior of bedtime. Too much time in bed, relative to total sleep time, is a contributory factor in the development and perpetuation of insomnia. In contrast, too little time in bed leads to chronic insufficient sleep, exacerbates obstructive sleep apnea, and can elicit parasomnia events. Finally, the timing of bedtime can be a critical element in many circadian rhythm disorders. Other behavioral issues that are important in sleep medicine include factors related to presleep behaviors both in terms of improving sleep (e.g., exercise) or making it worse (e.g. obsessing, consuming alcohol, or caffeine). The influence of daytime behavior is most evident in the exposure to light and dark. In the management of sleep disorders associated with shift work, light/dark exposure is the critical therapeutic intervention. In sleep medicine, like virtually all areas of medicine, the behavior of compliance with treatment recommendations is a critical element in the effectiveness of therapy. A unique aspect of sleep disorders is the use of CPAP in OSA. In CPAP we have a therapy which essentially (assuming there is a patent nasal airway) has 100% efficacy in the treatment of airway obstruction, and yet because of compliance issues it has poor effectiveness.
The question then becomes why are all of these maladaptive sleep behaviors so prevalent? Certainly part of the answer must lie in the fact individuals are not educated about the importance of sleep and good sleep practices. This is true from elementary education in health courses through medical school curricula. When an average person eats the “wrong foods,” he is aware of it. However, when they have inappropriate sleep related behaviors, they typically are not. In the absence of knowledge, personal preference and superstition take over. Yet given the high prevalence of bad sleep practices such as insufficient time in bed and late bedtimes in adolescents there must be more at work than a simple lack of education. There must be some short term “value” to the individual for these maladaptive behaviors. Why do a substantial number of elderly individuals sit in relative darkness in the evening? Is this an economically motivated behavior? Why do insomniacs spend too much time in bed? Are they desperate to get more sleep because they believe that loss of sleep can have catastrophic consequences? Identification of these “perceived” benefits are needed if we are to motivate true behavior change.
The importance of behavioral issues in the field of sleep is also evidenced by looking at who entered the field early in its evolution. Behavioral scientists like Artie Lubin, Bernie Webb, Rosalind Cartwright, Harold Williams, Bob Wilkinson, and Laverne Johnson, to name a few, were pioneers in the field. That tradition of behavioral researchers making significant contributions to sleep research has had a continuous history of excellence, ranging from Dave Foulkes' seminal research using dream content as a means of studying cognitive development in children to Arthur Spielman's classic study on sleep restriction therapy as a treatment of insomnia. Given this broad and important knowledge base, the evolution of a Behavioral Sleep Medicine Society and Journal were a natural result. However, it is critical for behavioral sleep researchers to always remember that to maximize the impact of their work, it is important not simply to talk to each other but to present their work in the broader field of sleep medicine. This includes presenting at the annual sleep meeting and publishing major scientific works across the broad spectrum of sleep-related journals. As sleep medicine evolves from a procedure-based specialty to a knowledge-based specialty, behavioral sleep medicine must play a key role in its evolution.
Dr. Roth has served as a consultant for Abbott, Acadia, AstraZeneca, Aventis, AVER, Bayer, BMS, Cypress, Ferrer, Glaxo Smith Kline, Impax, Intec, Jazz, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Neurocrine, Novartis, Proctor & Gamble, Pfizer, Purdue, Shire, Somaxon, and Transcept. He has received research support from Cephalon, Merck and Transcept and serves on the Speaker's Bureau with Purdue. Dr. Drake served as a consultant for Teva and has received grant support from Teva and Merck. He also serves on the Speaker's Bureau with Teva, Jazz, and Purdue. Dr. Roehrs serves on the speaker bureau with Pfizer.
Roth T; Drake C; Roehrs T. Behavioral sleep medicine. J Clin Sleep Med 2013;9(9):981-982.


Linz is the third-largest city of Austria and capital of the state of Upper Austria. It is located in the north centre of Austria, approximately south of the Czech border, on both sides of the River Danube. The population of the city is , and that of the Greater Linz conurbation is about 271,000. In 2009 Linz, together with the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, was chosen as the European Capital of Culture. Since December 1, 2014 Linz is a member of the UNESCO Creative Cities (UCCN) network as a City of Media Arts. Cities receive this title for enriching the urban lifestyle through the sponsorship and successful integration of media art and involving society in these electronic art forms. Linz is well known for the Linzer torte, which is said to be the oldest cake in the world, with its first recipe dating from 1653.
The city was founded by the Romans, who called it Lentia. The name Linz was first recorded in AD 799.
It was a provincial and local government city of the Holy Roman Empire, and an important trading point connecting several routes, on either side of the River Danube from the east to the west and Bohemia and Poland from north to the Balkans and Italy to the south. Being the city where the Habsburg Emperor Friedrich III spent his last years, it was, for a short period of time, the most important city in the empire. It lost its status to Vienna and Prague after the death of the Emperor in 1493.
One important inhabitant of the city was Johannes Kepler, who spent several years of his life in the city teaching mathematics. He discovered, on 15 May 1618, the distance-cubed-over-time-squared — or 'third' — law of planetary motion. The local public university, Johannes Kepler University, is named after him.
Adolf Hitler was born in the border town of Braunau am Inn but moved to Linz in his childhood. Hitler spent most of his youth in the Linz area, from 1898 until 1907, when he left for Vienna. The family lived first in the village of Leonding on the outskirts of town, and then on the Humboldtstrasse in Linz. After elementary education in Leonding, Hitler was enrolled in the Realschule (school) in Linz, as was the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Notorious Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann also spent his youth in Linz. To the end of his life, Hitler considered Linz to be his "home town", and envisioned extensive architectural schemes for it, wanting it to become the main cultural centre of the Third Reich. In order to make the city economically vibrant, Hitler initiated a major industrialisation of Linz shortly before, and during, the Second World War.
In addition to an ordnance depot, Linz has a benzol (oil) plant which was bombed during the Oil Campaign on 16 October 1944. What was once the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp is , east of the city of Linz.