Classroom subject areas
“The Twelve Dancing Princesses” is a story collected by the Brothers Grimm. Andrew Lang also collected a French version of this story in his Red Fairy Book, and you can read it here. Marianna Mayer has done a beautiful picture book of The Twelve Dancing Princesses and Rachel Isadora has… Continue reading
Mother Goose rhymes are the ideal first experience of poetry for young children. One Mother Goose rhyme that many young kids will not have heard already — and which actually has sophisticated enough vocabulary for elementary kids as well — is The House that Jack Built: This is the house… Continue reading
“The Princess on the Glass Hill“ is one of the more obscure fairy tales, but the image of the suitors trying to get up the glass hill to the princess is familiar to most of us. Since our state frameworks mandate the use of of folk and fairy tales up… Continue reading
The Elves and the Shoemaker is a tale from the Brothers Grimm. In it, a poor shoemaker has only enough leather for one pair of shoes. He cuts the shoes out and leaves them ready to make in the morning. In the morning when he gets up, he finds (usually) two… Continue reading
“Stone Soup” is a fun story to read and to act out, and it presents a classic message. In the story, three soldiers traveling through a town ask for food, but in vain. The villagers feel too poor to share, and they decide together to hide their food and refuse… Continue reading
What would spring and summer be without bugs? This is a theme with lots of ready-made options for decorating the classroom. Buggy for Bugs Behavior bulletin board makes behavior management quick and easy, TCR’s We’ve Got the Writing Bug Mini Bulletin Board Set features the writing process, and Carson Dellosa’s Buggy… Continue reading
Theodor Seuss Geisel was a children’s author and illustrator whose special style makes a great classroom theme! His inspirational books can provide a good starting point for upper grades, and little kids love his goofy easy reading books. It’s easy to set up a Seuss classroom, because there are plenty… Continue reading
Cowboy science connections for your cowboy classroom include weather and technology. Online resources and lesson plans. Continue reading
When you’re using a cowboy classroom theme or studying the Wild West, don’t forget the women. The photo here is of “Spirit of the Prairie,” a statue in Colby, Kansas, sculpted in 1985 by Charlie Norton. Women of the Wild West didn’t go on cattle drives and they took… Continue reading
We visited the stockyards in Ft. Worth. Or rather, we visited the Stockyards National Historic District. The Stockyards still have rodeos and cattle drives, so this is one of the few places everyone can get a sense of what cowboy living was like. More than six million cattle were driven… Continue reading
