Three ideas for teen and tween allowances - densitycolumn.com

3 ideas for tween and teen allowances

A few days ago, I had lunch with my sister whose kids are younger than mine. We started chatting about money and kids’ spending and allowances. And grades, and motivation. We’ve tried a lot of things with my kids (now 13 and 17). Here are my three favorites. iAllowance iAllowance is an app that’s been…

A story about not redshirting kindergarten

He started kindergarten at age 4, and it was okay.

Today I read yet another article in support of redshirting kids with summer birthdays. That is, instead of enrolling them in kindergarten when they’re old enough (according to your state or school), you wait a year. So instead of starting kindergarten at barely-five (or not-quite-five), they are sometimes six before they start. Instead of being…

How to Organize Lego in the Makerspace

How to Organize Lego in the Makerspace

If your Makerspace or Lego Robotics classroom has been active for any amount of time, you’ve probably accumulated gallons of unsorted Lego pieces. Close your eyes, and you can probably hear the sound of a kid digging through a box of bricks, looking for the right connector or beam for a new robot. And digging, and digging, and digging. And even though this hunting is part of the fun, it can get frustrating really fast. It can slow down creativity and innovation.…

Reasons to appreciate the weird band kids - playing by the rules

5 Reasons to Appreciate the Weird Marching Band Kids

Being in the high school marching band means being a geek. Unappreciated. Misunderstood. But whether your kid is in the band or not, there are a lot of things to appreciate and even admire about them. I worked all day recently at my kid’s school when they hosted a marching band competition. Twelve bands from…

Astronomy pretest for middle school at Cary Busby Science

The Moon has No Gravity and other Astronomy Misconceptions

Sixth graders think they know everything about space. They’ve learned the names of the planets; they’ve made the Oreo moon phases. They’re set. But they arrived in my classroom with a lot of misconceptions that, while based on reason or observation, are just plain wrong. I wanted a way to show them that they have something to learn about astronomy, and to gauge what they already know and don’t know. Astronomy concepts like these frequently aren’t taught again after middle school! As a result, we have a lot of confused adults walking around.

Introducing the Astronomy Pretest. I gave this quiz on the first day of the astronomy unit as a way to learn what they already knew – and I told them so. Sometimes I’d tell them ahead of time that the quiz was “diagnostic.” That they should do their best and tell me what they know, and to answer every question to their best ability, but it wouldn’t hurt their grade to be wrong.

Astronomy pretest for middle school at Cary Busby Science

STOP! Take the quiz!

Want to try it? Before you read any farther, click here to take the quiz. It’s 45 True/False questions and will only take a couple of minutes. Don’t look anything up! Guess if you need to.

When you’re done, read on…

cookie chemystery chemical analysis lab

Cookie CheMYSTERY chemical analysis lab

The local bakery needs your help! They lost the secret recipe for Grandma’s Amazing Sugar Cookies, and are down to their last bag of mix. For this lab, use careful observation to determine the ingredients included in the mix. New on my Teachers Pay Teachers store! This lab started as the lead-in to a holiday…