The Last King of Angkor Wat is a beautiful book by Graeme Base. Younger students will enjoy the story, a fable about a group of animal friends. Older students will get a good introduction to a study of Cambodia, where Angkor Wat — the largest religious structure in the world… Continue reading
From preschoolers who love to play with toy trucks to high school students discovering all the jobs involved in logistics and freight transport, everyone can learn something from a good lesson about trucks. Scroll down to find lessons at different grade levels. Preschool and Kindergarten Read books about trucks: My… Continue reading
In 1779, the country that would become the United States of America included British, French, and Spanish colonies. The British colonies had declared independence from England, and the other colonies sided with their fellow Americans. One of the people who helped was General Bernardo de Gálvez, Governor of Louisiana. Louisiana… Continue reading
“The Bremen Town Musicians” is one of my personal favorites among the tales of the Brothers Grimm. In this story, four old farm animals, in some versions having heard that their masters were going to have them — umm… put to sleep, decide to go to Bremen to apply for posts… 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
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
El Yunque, a tropical rainforest in Puerto Rico, is the only rainforest in the United States. With 28,000 acres, this National Forest sees about 600,000 visitors each year. Wait a minute — a U.S. rain forest? Your class may not realize that Puerto Rico belongs to the United States. Polls… Continue reading
The story of Paul Bunyan is an American folktale. It may be more proper to say that the stories of Paul Bunyan are American folktales, because there are quite a few of them, sometimes gathered together into a single long story, but sometimes not. Paul Bunyan is a folk hero among… Continue reading
