Need more homeschooling materials? Here are the latest online learning resources to help you and your children: Common Sense Media, a trusted guide for media and technology, has just released customizable learning packets for K- 2nd grade students. While these packets were principally designed for teachers, they are intended for use by parents and children as well. The materials [...]
It's Thoughtful Thursday, and boy could we use some poetry to distract us right about now. Poets.org, the website of the Academy of American Poets, asked its membership to suggest poetry to help us cope and give us courage. Four of the many poems suggested are featured below. "Alone", by our beloved Maya Angelou (1928-2014), reminds us that we [...]
Trying not to overwhelm you all, but we want to send along some more great homeschooling resources: Khan Academy: This free online learning site is taking it's responsibility to help parents and teachers with remote learning very seriously. Starting with the page that asks "How Can Khan Academy Be Used For Remote Learning During School Closures?", the site gives [...]
My mom taught 5th grade and was a reading specialist in NYC public schools for over 30 years. When I was young, we knew that whatever weekend family activity we planned would need to end by Sunday afternoon so Mommy could focus on her lesson plans for the week. When I started teaching my Parenting courses at Hunter last [...]
How is all this family togetherness working out for ya? It's Thoughtful Thursday, and we figured you and your children might need some comic relief. Here are a few wonderfully wicked poems by Shel Silverstein (who authored The Giving Tree). They were included in Beastly Boys and Ghastly Girls, a book of poems about ill-mannered boys and girls, compiled [...]
Remote Learning, Homeschooling, it's a new day, and we need to try to get up to speed on all of this pretty quickly. Here's a list of online learning resources for you and your children to help you navigate this brave new world: Getting Organized: sites to help you get started Seven Strategies to Plan, Prioritize and...Plan?!!: tips for [...]
Starting today GCP will be posting free online resources to help parents cope with becoming instant homeschoolers. Much more to come. Hang in there and stay safe! Here is a amazing new Selma civil rights history resource, which you can find here:
Today's Thoughtful Thursday brings poetry of hope, strength, and a mother's love. It's (still) National Women's Month, and these three powerful women poets give us some much needed optimism, inspiration, and mothering "realness" to help us cope in these bewildering times. Poet, teacher, saxophonist and vocalist Joy Harjo (b.1951), a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, offers a hopeful [...]
Welp, here we are. Facing the surreality of coping with the domestic outbreak of this coronavirus, with news of more positive cases and more closures and cancellations daily. The World Health Organization has just declared that the spread of COVID-19 across more than 100 countries now qualifies as a global pandemic. In a couple of days I will be heading to [...]
March is Woman's History Month, and in celebration today's Thoughtful Thursday features two powerful poems by two artistic powerhouses: Toni Morrison and June Jordan. Toni Morrison (1931–2019), while best known for her critically acclaimed and prize winning novels, wrote one volume of poetry, Five Poems (Rainmaker Editions, 2002), which features poems alongside illustrations by Kara Walker. The first of these poems, [...]