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Family Fun: December Lights
In much of the world, December is a time of lights. December holidays are times for candles and sparkle—not surprising during a month that, for the northern hemisphere, is the darkest time of the year....
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Time for Exploring!
My original plan for today was to post the last link in the Creativity in the Classroom model, linking Creativity and Intrinsic Motivation. But I decided I’d had enough theoretical posting for right...
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Family (and School) Fun for February: Have a Little Heart
Last year I did a post listing Valentine activities for classrooms. Lots of them are good for families, too, so be sure to take a look. But here are 5 more heart-centered activities for the month that...
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Physics Central: Learn How Your World Works—Creatively
Who would ever guess that one of the videos that brought me the biggest smile this week was from a website called “Physics Central”? Its subtitle, “Learn How Your World Works” is an apt description of...
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SuperLame! It Isn’t Lame at All
There are a lot of ways to tell stories. These days, a lot of them seem to use speech bubbles. Photo memes are everywhere, from the ever-present talking cats to political commentary. Graphic novels use...
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Invention and Electricity: The Richard Turere Story
Do you teach about electricity? Do you teach innovation? Either way, Richard Turere can help you. Just a few months ago, Richard was a quiet Masaai boy, living on the edge of Nairobi National Park, in...
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Assessment for Creativity #3: Using Content in New Ways
Imagine trying to learn how to drive a car from a book or from lectures given by expert drivers. You study diagrams showing the position of the accelerator, brake, and clutch pedals. You read about the...
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OLogy: Choose Your Exploration
The American Museum of Natural History’s OLogy site, subtitled “The Museum’s Science Website for Kids” could also be labeled, “Catalog of Creative Scientific Investigations.” OLogy allows students to...
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Family Fun for June: Museums!
I love museums. I stand in awe of human creativity at the Detroit Institute of Arts, and of the innovations at the Henry Ford Museum. I delight in watching children’s explorations at our local Hands On...
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What if? Physics Style
The cartoon blog xkcd.com calls itself “webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.” The comics range from mathematical romance: to more explicitly math/physics related topics. The author...
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Ice Cream for Dinner and Other Delights
One of my favorite childhood memories is ice cream for dinner. Nothing else, just ice cream for dinner. One sweltering night during the un-air conditioned summer, my mother declared it was too hot to...
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Best Billboard Ever
Every once in a while I see an example of creativity that is so good I just have to share it, and hope you will share it with your students. This is one of them. It comes from Lima, Peru. Lima is a...
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Zombie Science, Zombie Math
Here’s an example of interdisciplinary teaching that will be very good for students’ BRAINS! (Yes, that really was a zombie reference.) STEM Behind Hollywood brings together science, math, and film...
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Family Fun: Colors Changing
One of the best things about fall in Michigan is watching the leaves change. Trees that are mostly green October 1st are brilliant with color in just a few weeks. I’ve done an earlier Family Fun post...
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Google Science Fair: Science for the Future
Google is an amazing company on many fronts, and the one of the most recent is the Google Science Fair. Google Science Fair is an online science competition for teenagers across the globe. The fair is...
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Ten-Minute Lesson: Why Curiosity Matters
School days are jam packed. I don’t know a teacher who doesn’t feel the need for a 25th hour in the school day—and perhaps a 26th after school to catch up on grading! In the midst of such days, it can...
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Have Instruments, Will Question
How many creative young people (and maybe not so young people) like to tinker with “stuff?” I have it on good authority that some of my scientifically oriented friends ended up in their fields because...
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More Dino Silliness: The Dinosaurs Night Before Christmas
Just as Dinovember ended, I discovered a new silly Dinosaur delight, Anne Muecke’s The Dinosaurs Night Before Christmas. I’ve already written about the many versions of Clement Clarke Moore’s classic...
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All Things STEAM: Science in the Library
I was tempted to title this post, “It’s Not Your Mother’s Library,” because the wonderful learning environment described in Amy Koester’s “All Things STEAM” is a long way from the rigidly silent...
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Teaching about Weather? Spark It!
The Spark website, sponsored by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) can be your center for learning materials on weather, climate and related atmospheric sciences. There’s lots of basic...
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