Hands-On History: Gravity-Powered Fountain

Hands-On History: Gravity-Powered Fountain

Learn how to use water pressure and air pressure to make water defy gravity and flow UP into a fountain — without the use of a pump!

Walking Robot Project & The Physics of Easter Island

Walking Robot Project & The Physics of Easter Island

For thousands of years, the ingenuity of human beings has allowed us to do the seemingly impossible. Check out these two examples of how physics and a little creative thinking can have almost magical results!

Hands-On History: Ancient Technology

Hands-On History: Ancient Technology

The topics we cover in ancient history may seem a bit irrelevant to some (foolish) kids, but when we use hands-on, project-based learning, we give our students a tangible, memorable connection to the material they are learning.  Conveniently, most ancient

Hands On History: Egyptian Senet

Hands On History: Egyptian Senet

Kids just love studying ancient Egypt.  I never have a hard time getting them fired up about studying pyramids and mummies, as you can see from the KWL chart my 8th graders started below: (As a side note, I always

Hands-On History: Timelines

Hands-On History: Timelines

Teaching world history in a single year provides me with some exceptional challenges.  We cover so much content in such a short time that I really have to remain on track and make tough decisions about what we can and can’t

Mother Education: Read All The Things

Mother Education: Read All The Things

A brief look into my own continuing education today. Our Archbishop recently sent a letter to all the schools that included some suggested reading from a chapter in Tom Wood’s How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization. As I teach

“The Promise” for Educators

The film The Promise, which premiered at the end of April, chronicles the events of the Armenian Genocide, an often ignored episode of World War I in which 1.5 million Armenians perished under the government of the Ottoman Empire.  If you

Teaching Econ

economics for kids

Here’s a great new resource for teaching your kids economics. The Tuttle Twins and the Miraculous Pencil follows Ethan and Emily Tuttle on a class field trip to a pencil factory. They learn about how products we consider simple, everyday objects are

Geometry Across the Curriculum

Geometry Across the Curriculum

I use geometric drawing across the curriculum in several projects.  Below is an in-progress shot of an 8th-grader’s design for a stained glass window, an assignment from my medieval history unit that incorporates symbolism along with geometric design. In world