December
4

Free curriculm kits for students from the National Postal Museum include:

• Pen Friends Across the Nation: An Intergenerational Letter Writing Project (Teaching Guide, Grades 6-9)
• We Were There: Letters From the Battle Front (Curriculum Kits, Grade 7-12

Students write an original mystery story of up to 200 words and mail it in with a completed entry form. Visit the site to download and reproduce the materials for you and your students, and urge them to enter for a chance to win for themselves and your school. Teacher tips included!

Site designed to help middle school and high school history and social studies teachers better integrate technology into their classrooms. The journal attempts to fulfill this function by providing teachers with models that document how others have incorporated technology to enhance their students' learning experiences. In each of these articles, the reader will find a short account of the objectives of the activity, the technology used, and a fairly detailed explanation of the activity carried out in class. . .

Be sure to click on "Cary Academy" links for Junior High" lessons.

Intermediate Halloween internet links for art, educational technology, language arts, music, and social studies.

This free to use web site generates truly fascinating personalized time lines for you, based on your year of birth. They show how your life (or the life of anyone else you choose - for instance, your descendants and ancestors) fits into history as we know it. You can generate as many timelines as you like. If you're into creating web pages, you can even take the timelines we generate for you here and put them on your own pages - an unmatched personal touch everyone will enjoy.

In addition, you can insert up to ten, custom, color-coded personal time segments (events or ranges) in a time line. These might include schooling, marriages, births, job assignments, military service and so forth. Click on birthdays to see who was born on a certain day.

For families, or educators, this is a wonderful tool to use to enlighten children as to what went on in their lifetime, or another relative's lifetime. You'll understand this as soon as you try the site out!

Presidents of the United States

Complete resource for information about our presidents.

Links to Social Studies lesson plans.

Middleschool.com supports middle school teachers and administrators with articles on technology, school reform, and discipline-based links. To introduce teachers to a small number of education sites, try the Teacher area with just six links in each category..

Xcursion Central

At Xcursion Central, you’ll find everything you need for integrating the Web into your curriculum. You can take an Xcursion, a curriculum-rich, teacher-developed Internet field trip. Or you can make an Xcursion of your own using the site's Xcursion Editor. Don’t forget to browse the directories of educational Web site links for Research, Reference, or For Teachers. It is easy to fiind great educational sites organized by subject and grade level.

Links to several Thanksgiving sites - everything from clipart and recipes to the history behind the holiday.

A just-for-fun site - previously known as Short Attention Span

"For those searching for "family-friendly" Internet entertainment, games, trivia, puzzles, etc. with a decidedly wacky edge, it's hard to beat Amused.com or its creator and content provider Cathie Walker."
GameWEEK

Students learn the origins of the names of U.S. states, focusing on names that were derived from Native American words.

This site is for 4th grade students and above. Students choose a title for a story then submit words to include in the story. The site organizes the words and a wacky tale is created. Students will love creating their own wacky tales on the Web. Parts of Speech help is provided. Students can submit their stories to be posted on the web.

This site is an absolute must to visit. Many authors and illustrators have their own web sites on the Internet. They discuss their current works, talk about working through the writing process and list published works. Check out your favorite author!

A great resource for young writers and for teachers. Check out the "Critique" section to submit writing or respond to posted writing.

Students use online resources and their research skills to research a holiday and determine what social values are embodied in that holiday. You need to scroll down the page for the information.

Legislative information on the internet.

You can display a high-resolution version of the original declaration or a high-resolution version of the stone engraving. Links to more sites at the bottom of the page.

A link from the National Archives and Records Administration - click on the Home link at the bottom of the page for access to more documents and records.

Frequently asked questions (FAQ) about how to contact the Congress

.

Holidays Around the World: A Festival of Lessons! A multicultural extravaganza of fun holiday lessons! Education World offers ten lessons about December celebrations, observances, and activities from several cultures. Included: A Hanukkah game, a Kwanzaa recipe, and an activity that involves students in diagramming similarities and differences in holiday celebrations!

Everything about the holidays from Santa to Ramadan. Grade levels included.

How to say "Merry Christmas" in 60 different languages.

Countdown to Christmas, Advent calendar, music, games, etc. Click on Worldview for great information about Christmas traditions in other countries.

Ben & Jerry's Winter Holiday Pages
Games, crafts, recipes and links for the winter holidays including Christmas, Chanukah and the Winter Solstice.

Fun Christmas Sites

Santa's Home Page

Want to do a Christmas RAP project? This is the place to go to research Christmas traditions in other countries or to get statistical data on Santa (click on Physics).

The game is a real challenge - if you have kids who like a challenge this is for them.

I wouldn't advise sending students to recipes - check it out and you'll see why.

Games, stories, Christmas countdown, screensavers, etc. Lots to click on here!

Christmas Word Power
Four new words daily (24 in all). After making your selection you can check your answers to see how smart you are. Let the kids do this online or scroll to the bottom of the page for a printer friendly version.

Christmas Carols
This is the place to go if you're looking for words to Christmas Carols.You can download a 28 page book of sheet music for 15 carols.

Read Aloud Stories
Available is a free download of the book The Donkey's Gift by Thomas M. Coffey.

While here you might want to click on their other holiday links at the top: recipes, decorate, crafts, etc.

"So far, more than 103,000 students have participated in our latest poll: Should the President be chosen by popular vote or by the Electoral College? The first two days of the poll, most people responding voted for Electoral College. The tide then turned and popular vote became the popular choice." In addition to live weekly student polls, Scholastic has terrific kid-sized coverage of election news and issues.

All but one state is listed, along with the number of electoral votes it has in the Electoral College. Using the number of letters in each state, and their intersecting letters, fill-in the grid with the names of the states.

After viewing the movie that briefly explains the election process, you'll see a link to More About the Electoral College. The Electoral College slide show gives a bit more detail and ends with an interactive Electoral College map that shows how many electoral votes each state has. Use your mouse to zoom around the map, region by region.

"The Electoral College is a method of indirect popular election of the President of the United States. The authors of the Constitution put this system in place so that careful and calm deliberation would lead to the selection of the best-qualified candidate." This page, geared for high school students, is part of the wonderful Ben's Guide to U.S. Government, created by the U.S. Government Printing Office. To access explanations appropriate for younger students, return to the home page, and choose from grade levels K-2, 3-5, or 6-8.

"The current election is not the first disputed election in American history. The first election which ended in a dispute was the election of the 1800.... No one had the majority of votes, and the election was turned over to the House of Representatives. The House deliberated from February 11th to February 17th and voted 36 times. On the 36th ballot Thomas Jefferson was selected, but the country had come very close to having Aaron Burr as President." In addition to a great history of disputed presidential elections, Elections Central has an excellent feature explaining why the founding fathers instituted the Electoral College.

Direct from the National Archives and Records Administration, comes the official Electoral College Calculator. If you were to run for president, where would you focus your campaign? If you got California's fifty-four electoral votes and New York's thirty-three electoral votes, how many small states could you afford to lose? Try your hand at either running a pretend election, or predicting a real one with this fun interactive calculator.

"This site from the Houston Community College System offers "an interactive quiz to see how well you understand the assumptions, logic, and consequences of the electoral college." It also has links to Web sites about the electoral college to help you answer the questions."

"Teachers, save time and use DiscoverySchool.com's web tools, Instant Glossary Builder and Vocabulary Quiz Maker to create customized word glossaries and word definition quizzes in a click of a button. Each tool only takes a few easy steps to use and complete. Just enter the list of words into Glossary Builder and it finds the definitions and creates the glossary."

This is defintely a site worth bookmarking. I especially liked the Glossary Maker.

Kiko is an acronym for Knowledge In, Knowledge Out.

Create Your Own - Looking for a time saving tool to help eliminate the need to keep writing and re-writing lesson plans in your planbook? Use this tool to create dynamic lesson plans from objective to assessment. Print them out and hand them in or just save them so you can access them from any Internet connected computer without using a disk.

Use a Lesson Wizard to build an online lesson in the quickest and easiest way. Follow simple step-by-step instructions and create your personalized lesson in just minutes.

You need to sign up for this - it's free.

Find, print and copy royalty free worksheets that support your curriculum saving you time and effort when planning for the day.

Find worksheets for individual subject areas or cross-curricular.

Today in History draws upon the extensive online American Memory collection of the Library of Congress. Each day it covers a couple of events from American history, with lots of links back into the collection for more depth. Because of the unique nature of the primary sources contained in the American Memory, the daily anniversaries covered here are most likely different from those in today's other sites.

Make sure you click on the banner at the top of the page
(American Memory - Library of Congress). This links you back to their page that allows access to historical collections of the National Digital Library.

The History Channel brings us not just one generic This Day in History, but nine topical ones on subjects as diverse as Automotive History, Civil War History, Crime History, Literary History, Technology History and Wall Street History. From the entry page, you can browse the files by any date (such as your birthday) to learn of important headlines and birthdays throughout the centuries.

Want to find out what happened on your birthday? I learned that on my birthday Captain Kidd walked the plank and Bonnie & Clyde were gunned down. You can also find out who shares your birthday and what songs were chart toppers on that day in different years.

With the entire archive of the New York Times behind it, this site has lots to offer. Each day a single story is featured, along with a thumbnail of the front page from that day. Click on the newspaper to see the a larger (but not completely legible) image of the day's front page. Most stories include original photos, illustrations or political cartoons. To peruse the archive, follow the link to "Go to a Previous Date."

You'll also want to check out the Word of the Day and the Daily Lesson Plans.

Library of Congress - American Memory

Presidential Inaugurations - several good links.

Information about our new president, George W. Bush.

Links to election results, cabinet members, biographies, historical documents, etc.

Presidential Inaugural Committe site. Includes gift shop, links to more ignaural sites, photo gallery & graphics, tickets, the official ignaural guidebook, etc.

Each day during Black History Month, CNN Interactive will profile one man or woman who has made a lasting contribution, ranging from literature, music and the arts to science and technology.

Education First: Black History Activities

Six Web sites created as models to suggest ways to integrate the World Wide Web and videoconferencing into classroom learning. You can use these sites without videoconferencing. A great link to start with is the Black History Hotlist.

The
Young
Writers
Club

A club for young writers (most between 7 and 15) with activities submitted by club members, stories and poems, global issues, research, book and film reviews, and storybooks you can add to.

Web-delivered grade level units of instruction centered on core works of literature. Each CyberGuide contains a student and teacher edition, standards, a task and a process by which it may be completed, teacher-selected web sites and a rubric, based on California Language Arts Content Standards.

Internet Public Library (Author Page)

The Internet Public Library provides a collection of links to authors.

Caldecott Home Page
- 2001 winners
- Print a list of Caldecott winners from 1938-2001
- About the medal and how it is awarded

The Newberry Medal Home Page
- 2001 winners
- Print a list of Newberry winners from 1922-2001
- About the medal and how it is awarded

Coretta Scott King Award Home Page
- Link to 2001 Award winners and Honor Books
- About the award and how it is awarded
- Link to reading level information

Everything from acronyms and mnemonic devices to Yiddishkeit.

Describes grammar essentials and provides short interactive exercises designed to test your understanding of the studied grammar points. The kids can take a self-test - short interactive exercises designed to test understanding of the grammar points just studied. There are also a few links to other sites.

Grammar Gorillas from Funbrain - In this fun way to learn grammar, students are encouraged to identify parts of speech and satisfy the hungry gorillas.

Learn grammar rules by listening to grammar rock songs covering adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, interjections, pronouns, verbs, nouns, prepositions, subjects, and predicates.

The official website of the St. Patrick's festival in Dublin, Ireland.
It runs from March 16th to March 19th. The main goal of the Festival is to be a celebration for, by, and about the Irish.

A live webcam looking out over Dublin and the River Liffey.

The first thing you'll notice about this site is that it's not green.

Trace your roots from Ireland - see if you have any Irish ancestors.

Games and activities, downloads and "free stuff", links.

Women's History Web Trip
March is National Women’s History Month, and this Web trip is a perfect opportunity to join in the recognition. On the trip, you’ll be investigating the history, facts, and personal triumphs of some of the women that have shaped our nation.

Celebrate Women's History Month at Scholastic and discover important women in American history.

DiscoverySchool.com

Women’s History
Check out Discovery School's new learning adventure for students and explore the struggles, achievements, and changing roles of women in the 20th century.

Suffragette portrait gallery - includes photographs and biographical details.

Lesson Plan for Grades 6-8

Objectives:
-- Students will use facts to support and dispute hypotheses.
-- Students will learn about the role of women in modern early warefare.

Women's History Crossword puzzle to print.

A former classroom teacher put together this site that is easy to use and has great images. Be sure students read the terms of use and understand that these are to be used for educational uses only. A nifty feature, if you want to just browse the site, is the RAND button in the box with the category links. This brings up a page of random images, so you can get an idea of the scope of the collection.

Clip art, fonts, animation and forums. The tabs at the top also connect you to Clipart.Com and Barry's Clipart.

Links To School Related Graphics

This site is for Teacher's Only. Fortunecity.com is not a safe site for students. When backing out of the site a dialog box of featured sites may come up with inappropriate links.

This site was developed by a teacher and has links to graphics, alphabets, icons, animations, backgrounds, bumper stickers, certificates, clipart, page sets, and PSP Tubes (Paint Shop Pro). Be sure to read the directions.

Online Graphic Generator

"CoolText.com is a totally free online service which provides real-time generation of graphics customized exactly the way you want them. Please choose what kind of image you would like to create from one of the options listed on the left. Then simply fill out the form and click on the create logo button to have your custom graphic generated on the fly. Go ahead and press Control-D to bookmark this page. We will always be available for use free of charge."

What is it?
"This project is aimed at students K-6. It will provide them the opportunity to practice navigating the web for a purpose. It is a fun way for students to search for information while collecting the Easter Eggs. The Easter Eggs were designed by students at M.E.S. See the Virtual Egg Gallery. They have been hidden on school sites around the World Wide Web."

"Despite the potentially scary URL and site name, this excellent site showcases the art of David Ottogalli, who creates original works using a variety of marshmallow candies. Imagine, the "natural" colors weren't vibrant enough, so he often spray-paints Peeps to make them brighter."

Peep Research
"Inspired by a sugar rush after consuming several of the ubiquitous Easter confections known as Peeps, Emory University scientists James Zimring and Gary Falcon decided to try to find out just what it was they were eating. Using everything this side of a nuclear device, these intrepid scientists conducted experiments to discover just what would dissolve a Peep."

Make sure to click on the link to CNN - CNN actually did a segment on this.

There are links to similar pages: for example, The Bunny Survival Test.

Have you ever wondered where to find vocaublary building worksheets by grade level? Make your own at SuperKids for FREE!

FREE posters from celebrities against smoking.

FREE Chuck E. Cheese coupons.

FREE Kindness Coupons for kids. Your name prints on the coupons so you don't have to sign them!

"Subtitled the "official baseball history site," this treasure trove of baseball information is perfect for kids to use for problem solving, creative writing, social studies research, and science projects. Did you know that Baseball-Almanac.com has two-thousand seven-hundred thirty-seven pages of baseball history, facts, stats, feats, original research, and more?"

"This fast-loading page presents important baseball history events in chronological order. Although not every listing for a given day will be meaningful for your students, there are possibilities for making real connections between school curricula and specific events of the past. For example, if you're studying World War II, you can bring up significant events and establish the time relationships with events in baseball that occurred around the same time. Users can search by any date in a calendar year or the entire site by keyword. If you're studying World War II, you can bring up significant events that occurred within the context of baseball. This site promises high-interest integration for your students!"

On the Education Program Page make sure to click on Primary Sources. Primary sources are documents or artifacts from a person, place or event in history. They can include letters, diaries, journals, photographs, newspaper articles, and many other types of materials. The Primary Sources section and the presentation of these primary sources are designed to be used by elementary and middle school students and teachers.

ACIS Educational Travel Review

"It all starts in the classroom with you... Here's a handy collection of materials to help you plan the trip of a lifetime. ."

Scholastica specializes in tours for students and adults.

 

Educational journeys to Europe, Latin America and beyond for students and adults. Group leaders travel free. They specialize in customizing itineraries for groups both large and small..

 

Listings worldwide for educators who home host each other to reduce the cost of holiday accommodation.

ACIS Educational Travel Review



U.S. and World Geography
Maps That Teach

 

" Learn United States and World geography with Maps that Teach. Interactive maps to learn continents, countries, states, capitals, borders, physical features and cultural monuments. Learn the countries of different continents and their capitals with these fun and educational map puzzle games. Do you know where the evening news is coming from? Free Software! "

 

 

 

Mega Maps
Walk Through The Continents

"Print U.S. and World maps from a single page to 8 pages (nearly 7 feet across). Large maps to learn geography, to color for fun, or to put together as a puzzle. This is a fun way to learn the states, their capitals and foreign countries. Great for classrooms and homeschool. Free Software."

"Free educational software. Build your own medieval castle, complete with towers, gatehouse and keep. To understand how an army lay siege to a castle, how a castle was defended, or what it might be like to live in a castle (though this varied by who you were) -- build a model castle."

 

 

"Free software to print out shields and the elements of heraldry to create your own coat of arms. Learn the terminology and history of coats of arms."

Directions to uninstall Owl & Mouse software from your computer.

 

ACIS Educational Travel Review

" You want the best deals. You don't want to spend tons of time and energy searching for them. This is where LowerMyBills.com
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We've researched the best offers from trusted companies nationwide so you don't have to spend your free time trying to save money on your recurring monthly bills. Best of all - Using LowerMyBills.com is FREE!"

 

Perpetual Bubblewrap

FREE Virtual Bubble Wrap! Pop the bubbles all day long! Never ending supply.