Category: Internet Resources

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Keep them Curious–Asking the Right Questions

Nurturing a Child’s Curiousity

New research shows that the more curious children are, the better they do academically in reading and math once they enter school.

https://www.zerotothree.org/resources/3505-nurturing-your-young-child-s-curiosity

Ask Open-Ended Questions

The why and how to use open-ended questions with children.

https://aussiechildcarenetwork.com.au/articles/teaching-children/using-open-ended-questions-with-children

https://www.under5s.co.nz/shop/Hot+Topics+Articles/Child+Development/Benefits+of+asking+young+kids+open-ended+questions.html

Gain Language Skills and Learn About STEM Through Storybook Conversations

Check out a great guide for using dialogic reading practices to do just that with Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar. https://stemie.fpg.unc.edu/sites/stemie.fpg.unc.edu/files/Storybook-Very%20Hungry%20Caterpillar-Carle.pdf

This is just one resource available at Stemie website: https://stemie.fpg.unc.edu/

Leading Children in Hands-On Exploration

http://resourcesforearlylearning.org/educators/module/20/15/75/#:~:text=Because%20they%20usually%20cannot%20be%20answered%20with%20just,observations%20and%20ideas%2C%20and%20to%20extend%20their%20investigations

BE ENGAGING – Help them to use their words!

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Navigating Youth Media

As the forward in this report states, “Young people are navigating their developing
identities in the midst of tremendous social and technological change. They are increasingly relying on digital media to connect, learn, and play.” This initiative is seeking to identify current media habits, gaps and ways media can better benefit youth.

This report is the first publication of an initiative called By/With/For Youth: Inspiring Next Gen Public Media Audiences. Media production by youth, with youth, and for youth describes approaches to engaging public media’s “missing audience” of tweens and teens
who fall between content offerings for young children and adults. This literature review is a precursor to the full report, which will represent the ideas of a diverse group of youth ages 10-17 being interviewed at the time of this publication.

Navigating-Youth-MediaDownload

Blog post: Let’s Talk About Public Media and the Next Generation

More about By/With/For Youth: Inspiring Next Gen Public Media Audience

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December Programming & STEM

From Becky Tapley, STEM Math Education Specialist (pronouns: she/her/hers) at the Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance:

As we step into the month of December tomorrow, I wanted to send some resources your way to help you reflect on the activities you may engage your youth with this season. 

The first article has excellent thoughts about ways to build awareness, representation, and sensitivity into your December planning: 

https://www.helpteaching.com/blog/4-ways-to-make-your-classroom-holiday-inclusive.html

Some highlights are these 4 tips:

-Don’t Assume, Stereotype, or Tokenize
-Build Diversity into Your Lesson Plans
-Think Outside the Usual Holiday Cliches
-Consider Forms of Inclusion Outside of Religion and Culture

One topic that is brought up in that article is to include some STEM projects. “Holiday STEM projects offer more great ideas since they often focus on things like winter weather that can be examined outside of a cultural or religious context.”

Check out Howtosmile.org and search for topics your youth are interested in.

One example: How Animals Stay Warm: https://www.howtosmile.org/resource/smile-000-000-002-092

From snowflakes, to penguins, to winter data collection: http://mathwire.com/seasonal/winter05.html

Winter Math and Science Snow connections: https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/blog-posts/lindsey-petlak/winter-math-and-science-can-be-snow-much-fun/

I hope these give you some ideas on how to make your December activities and celebrations inclusive and engaging!

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Our Country is at an Impasse

Our country is at an impasse. The divisions and polarization won’t go away simply because we had an election on November 3. We need to take intentional steps to overcome this impasse.

On this week’s Facebook live, Rich Harwood discussed:

  • Why we need to know where we are to find a new way forward
  • How communities reach the point of impasse, and how to avoid those pitfalls
  • The importance of local communities in effecting lasting change

Share this Facebook Live to help others think about where we are and how we can move forward. You can watch the recording, download the podcast episode and read the transcript here.

Tune in on Tuesday (Nov. 24) at 4 p.m. EST for the next episode in the Election 2020 Series: How We Move Forward from Here. Rich will be talking about where we’re going and how to shift your focus to create a more inclusive, equitable, just and hopeful society.

Follow The Harwood Institute’s Facebook page and you’ll automatically get a notification when we are broadcasting live. You can also add it to your calendar.

We hope you’ll join us for this important conversation!

Best,
The Harwood Team

New 11/30:

In order to get our communities and our country on a better path, we need to shift our focus. On this week’s Facebook Live, Rich Harwood discussed how one community in Winchester, KY is taking steps to build a new future – and how you can take these four steps, too:

  1. We – YOU – need to start locally. Start where we can turn outward towards one another, see and hear one another, and prove that we can get things done together.
  2. Talk is not enough. We need to take shared action. No single organization, leader, or community resident can go it alone on their own. We need each other.
  3. We must take action that invests in a new civic culture. New strategies and initiatives are not enough. We need to focus on building capacities for a stronger civic culture.
  4. You must use your civic energy judiciously. Your civic energy is finite. Start by taking action in your sphere of influence-and remember that no action is too small.

Share this Facebook Live to help others think about how we can shift our focus. You can also download the podcast episode and read the transcript here. Don’t forget to catch up on last week’s episode.

Tune in next Tuesday (Dec. 1) at 4 p.m. EST for the next episode in the Election 2020 Series: How We Move Forward from Here. Rich will be talking about four mantras you can use to take action.

Follow The Harwood Institute’s Facebook page and you’ll automatically get a notification when we are broadcasting live. You can also add it to your calendar. We hope you’ll join us for this important conversation!

New 12/4

On this week’s episode, Rich shared 4 key mantras that you can use to take action. He said, “they’re the personal trainer that’s building your civic muscles.” The 4 Key Mantras are

  • Turn Outward
  • Get in Motion
  • Start Small to Go Big
  • Create a New Trajectory for Hope

Click here to download the Key Mantras PDF and watch the Facebook Live to learn more about how you can use these mantras today. You can also download the podcast episode and read the transcript here. Tune in next Tuesday (Dec 8) at 4 pm EST for the final episode of the series, Why We’re Here: Civic Faith. Rich will talk about The Harwood Institute’s philosophy of civic faith and how it underpins our work in communities.

New 12/11

On this week’s episode, Rich discussed Civic Faith – a philosophy at the root of the Institute’s work and holds that placing people, community and shared responsibility at the center of our shared lives will create a more hopeful society. He covered topics including:

  • The five core elements of Civic Faith
  • Civic Faith as a touchstone for your work in your community

The fundamental task before us is to reimagine and recreate our communities and our lives.

Click here to watch the Facebook Live video, download the podcast episode, and read the transcript.

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FREE Digital classes for seniors–presented by seniors

PSS is pleased to announce its partnership with GetSetup, a nationwide peer-to peer, online learning platform providing digital classes on a wide range of topics – for seniors, presented by seniors.

PSS’s goal is to dramatically increase the digital capacity of older adults, by improving their skills with their core devices and apps, so we’re focusing on tech-skills classes first, with others to come.

All classes are FREE when you access: https://www.getsetup.io/partner/pss We encourage new users to take their New Member Orientation class (found on our landing page) to help you navigate the web site, select and participate in a class and get Customer Support. We look forward to assisting you in growing your digital skills!

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Virtual Field Trips

I need a vacation. I need to go SOMEWHERE. Yes–most of us are at this point. Classroom teachers are not the only ones using virtual field trips as fun teaching aids.

Melanee Stinnett-Voss a member of Bitmoji Craze for Educators recently shared her virtual field trips in Bitmoji style HERE.

During a recent workshop for educators to improve their virtual program offerings, we went on a field trip to Mount Vernon. Our instructor first gave us a brief overview of how to move around the virtual museum. We were instructed to take a piece of paper and divide it up in four parts and label them Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. See a like document HERE

We were then given time to explore the museum on our own, noting where we found examples of science, technology, engineering and math on our sheet. After the free time, we were brought back as a group and then split up into a team or small group to talk about what we learned and found most interesting. We entered our top finds on a group Google Jamboard. Then we grouped back together for a short recap.

Museums

Tour collections and learn about the history of art and artifacts with these online museum experiences.

  • American Museum of Natural History: Brian Selznick, author of Wonderstruck, leads a virtual tour of the museum, meeting field experts along the way.
  • British Museum: This cool, interactive site lets kids browse the museum collection by time period, not by room, so kids can focus in on the era they’re most interested in.
  • Colonial Williamsburg: Eight different webcams let viewers peek in on what’s happening at places like Merchants’ Square or Raleigh Tavern.
  • Historic Hudson Valley: This site offers many history-themed online experiences for kids, from “Traders and Raiders,” which looks at the history of pirates in the greater New York Area, to “People Not Property,” which teaches kids about slavery. There are also lots of ideas for at-home historical activities, like cooking with cornmeal or “tinsmithing” at home with aluminum foil.
  • Metropolitan Museum of Art: The #MetKids site is geared for little ones, and lets them explore a cute, illustrated map to find treasures in the museum’s collection.
  • Musée du Louvre: The world-famous museum offers virtual tours by subject, from the body in art to Egyptian antiquities.
  • Museum of Science: The #MOSatHome page offers virtual looks at the Boston museum’s exhibits and hosts daily livestreams and webinars.
  • National Baseball Hall of Fame: Browse through the collection of photographs, memorabilia and more to learn more about America’s national pastime. The museum also offers virtual programming on its YouTube page.
  • National Constitution Center: Explore exhibitions about constitutional conflicts through the years, including “Hamilton: The Constitutional Clashes That Shaped a Nation.” For a fee groups can also participate in live, virtual guided tours for up to 300 people.
  • National Gallery of Art: The National Gallery has 50 video tours specifically geared towards kids, focusing on a work and the people, places, and scenes surrounding its creation.
  • National Museum of Computing: Located in Bletchley Park in the U.K., home of the famous WWII codebreakers like Alan Turing, this museum offers a virtual tour that takes visitors through the history of computers.
  • Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History: You can bookmark this one to visit over and over, since it offers virtual version of every exhibition in the museum.
  • The Vatican Museum: You can get 360 looks at nine rooms in the Vatican — including the magnificent Sistine Chapel.

Farms

See how food grows, is harvested, and gets to your table with these farm tours.

  • American Egg Board: The Egg Board has virtual tours of different egg farms, and many of them let you choose different videos for kindergarten/elementary and middle school students.
  • Bonnie Plants: Home Depot takes kids on a multi-part virtual field trip to this grower, hoping to inspire kids to get into gardening themselves.
  • Bright Farms: A farm grower in Irvington, NY shows kids how food goes from the field (in this case, an indoor grower) to the grocery store. There’s even a quiz at the end!
  • Farm Food 360: Kids can see 11 different sorts of farm and food plants, including dairy cow farms, egg processing facilities and an apple orchard.

Landmarks

You might not be able to go on your sightseeing vacation at the moment, but these virtual landmark tours are the next best thing.

Zoos and Aquariums

These zoos and aquariums have live cams where kid can check in with the animals.

Even More Fun

From a candy factory to the surface of Mars, these tours take kids to places that aren’t available to them even in normal times.

  • Boston Children’s Museum: “Walk” through all three floors of the Boston Children’s Museum on this virtual tour. Direct your kids to fun exhibits like Explore-a-Saurus and the Japanese House.
  • Discovery Education: The site hosts virtual field trips for kids, from engineering plants that make the cars of the future to a lab that researches nuclear energy.
  • Great Lakes : This virtual field trip from Great Lakes Now has three components: coastal wetlands, algae, and lake sturgeon. Each video is a quick five minutes.
  • Johnson Space Center: Boeing leads the tour through the Houston, Texas facility, covering the history — and future — of aerospace innovation.
  • M&Ms Factory Tour: The Food Network hosts a virtual tour of the M&Ms factory and shows how the delicious candy gets made.
  • Nature Lab: The Nature Conservancy offers 11 virtual field trips that allow students to do everything from exploring a coastal rainforest while in a canoe to unlocking the secrets of coral reefs in the Dominican Republic. Each video is about 45 minutes long.
  • Outer Space Tours: Kids can see the real surface of Mars, courtesy of the Curiosity rover. NASA also does virtual tours of the Moon, along with the International Space Station.
  • Recycling Simplified: Take kids on a tour of a modern-day recycling center or landfill, and teach them about environmental sustainability.
  • Slime in Space: Nickelodeon teamed up with two astronauts on the International Space Station to demonstrate how slime reacts to microgravity and had kids reproduce those same demonstrations back here on Earth. It makes for an amazing 15-minute virtual field trip. Pre and Post activities available.
  • Sơn Đoòng: National Geographic offers a 360-degree tour of the world’s largest ave, situated in Quảng Bình Province, Vietnam. You can even hear the water as it runs over the rocks.
  • Stellarium Web: kids can explore over 60,000 stars, locate planets, and watch sunrises and solar eclipses. If you enter your location, you can see all the constellations that are visible in the night sky in your corner of the world.

Tour suggestions from Good Housekeeping, Weareteachers.com,