What you think does matter

Awesome - Glow in Dark Party for Accelerated Reader students (nice idea) These kids have been working hard in school and in their extracurricular “Accelerated Reader” efforts. They have maintained and above avg. of 80% and some have read more than 300 points in the reading program we call AR. For all their hard work and their dedicated effort to read, learn and past these AR test we throw a party for the children who strive to meet these goals. The last party of the year is (was) a cool awesome ‘Glow in the Dark’ AR party. I admit it – I danced, I laughed, I partied like it was 1999! Oops, showing my age. But in all seriousness it was fun, I had a good time, the children had a great time and we did it all to reward them for all their hard work. People ask me what we do, what do I do to motivate children to learn. My answer will always be the same – give them a reason to want to learn. Give them something that will motivate them to do more, to try harder, something that will dri...

How to make learning interesting, fun and even funny. Honest this is the truth: I shared it on face book but I thought I should give a bit more detail here on my blog. So here goes. Being one who works hard at motivating my children to learn and to desire to learn - especially when it comes to being inquisitive, I found myself in a funny but tough spot. I'm driving in the car with my son after spending less than an hour at the mall to buy he new pair of sneakers (* surprise - wife wasn't with us so the trip was short... :)  in and out, just how I like it. LOL) So my son decides to have a conversation about animals and to be honest, I wasn't putting to much attention to what he was saying, he can really go on and on sometmes. but out of the blue he ask me a simple question - let me give you a play by play reinacment. Son: "Dad do all animals eat?" Dad: "of course son, they all eat in one form or another." Son: "Do sharks eat?" Dad: ...

Fred wild elementary – Christmas / Santa breakfast (* Looking back on the past school year 2013-2014) The Fred Wild: this has been a very fun year. Now, I didn’t say we didn’t have work or that it hasn’t been hard work. All I am saying is that it has been a pleasure to work at Fred Wild Elementary. Though I miss my old school – I have made new friends, have interesting colleagues to work with and the kids, well the children are great. I am not a fan of the afternoon duty that I have, but it has allowed me to get some what familiar with many of the walk home kids. One of the things I like most about working in a school (elementary school) is that many if not mostly all of the children are still relatively innocent – they may not say they believe in Santa Clause but – Hmm 200 plus kids showing up and paying hard earned roar tickets to go have breakfast with Santa must mean something. This year there were too many kids to have a small intimate breakfast with Santa so they moved it ...

The importance of children, kids education - teaching your child to read, do math and more may need to be a top priority for parents because apparently the people who say they know, don't know squat. Apparently - You can give $100 million dollars for education, but that won't help. People still complain about my book title, how “Rich” is some form of four letter word that no one should use. But I believe that children need as much help as possible to succeed in life and whichever form of motivation that works – parents should employ. I think parents are the first and best line of defense when it comes to kids education, their desire to learn and motivation behind their desire to do well in school. Trust me, if you are waiting for the government and all these “we know better” individuals to properly teach your children – by all means wait, but don’t hold your breath as you wait. The article (see excerpt below) is proof that simply throwing money at a problem, especially a ...

Learning tool / Monopoly: do you suck at it or just miss the point? I wrote a post a while back on how I use monopoly to teach my children about money, finances, and the skill to negotiate – Yes I know their only children. But the point is that children are not taught in school how to manage money much less how to think when it comes to business, managing art the art of deal making. While the school system is teaching them how to play nice, be fair and no one losses, the real world is ready and waiting to knock them on their kister. It has been reported that teens as well as young adults who graduate high school do not even know how to balance a check book. Now you might suggest that with the age of technology that doesn’t matter – but you would be considerably wrong. As parents we all say we teach our children about money – but in truth, most of us do not. Balancing a check but is more than just balancing a bunch of numbers. Also Monopoly is also more than just a simple game to p...

BRING AWESOMENESS TO YOUR CLASSROOM! Create animated videos and presentations easy! Teachers: Flip your classroom, inspire, engage and delight your students. Students: Have fun presenting your assignments with a Wow! "Finally, a presentation tool that incorporates an intuitive user interface, super cool comic graphics, is 200% less frustrating than Prezi, and offers a zillion more options than the free version of GoAnimate. I know we just met, PowToon, but I think I am in love." - Amy Gibson HS Teacher - Personally - I think its cool. It is very easy to use, once you get a handle on things. I will be honest; it took a bit of playing in order to get a hand of this cool video tool. But after a while it turned out to be pretty easy to manage. I love the hand that moves the characters back and forth so yes, that is why it’s in my video. Of course there are a lot more features; I simply stayed with the basics for my video. I didn’t even use feature to add music, wh...

Funny and maybe Not so Funny school wide email  - SEE BELOW I love children, they are all unique in their own special way. But I am a realist and I know for a fact that the right child can drive any adult to the brink of insanity. I have seen a lot of things working in the school system and dealing with all sorts of children - but this, the email I received from a friend, this takes the cake. Before I let you read the email, I want you to consider this: children are children. You "DON'T" send children to school to learn manners, respect or any social skill that should be taught at home. With that said I am sure that if it was you that had to deal with these out of control children - you would not be so ready to judge. You tell me: what would you do if a child crapped his pants in the middle of your class and doesn't want to change his clothing?