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The Montgomery County (MD) Gem, Lapidary, and Mineral Society's annual gem, mineral, and fossil show is this weekend at the Montgomery County fairgrounds. For details about hours and to get a discount on admission, see www.glmsmc.com/show.shtml.
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Understanding a place requires so much more than being able to find it on a map. The makers of Worldle and Statele have a new daily game, WhereTaken, that promotes a different kind of geographic literacy by challenging users to identify images associated with various countries: wheretaken.teuteuf.fr/
MIT's Beaver Works Summer Institute program is now accepting applications from current high school juniors interested in engineering: beaverworks.ll.mit.edu/CMS/bw/bwsiapply
Practice your logical deduction skills with the old-fashioned code-breaking game Bulls and Cows. The game is like Mastermind except there can be no duplicates: www.mathsisfun.com/games/bulls-and-cows.html
Today is the beginning of the 2023 Great Backyard Bird Count, an annual citizen science project sponsored by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. (The first day of the bird count used to be one of two official home school holidays for us :-)) All the info, including birding resources, here: https://www.birdcount.org/
The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore has a series of free videos and downloadable activity packets to encourage children to make art, linked to the Walters' collection, at home: thewalters.org/experience/virtual/adventures/
Cursory. Misnomer. Squall. Abjure. Those are recent words featured as the New York Times Learning Network's word of the day. During the school year, the site offers a new word each day (M-F) along with examples of the word's usage from The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/spotlight/learning-quizzes-crosswords
January 25 is Robert Burns Night, a worldwide celebration of the Scottish poet. If you are looking to learn more about Robert Burns or Burns Night, check out https://www.scotland.org/events/burns-night. If you would like to find a local Burns Night celebration, Google "Burns Night event near me" -- you may be surprised how many options turn up.
The University of Maryland is now accepting registrations for its summer Terp Young Scholars program for smart, motivated high school students. This is a three-week program for college credit, with options to participate in person (as a commuter student) or online. (Unfortunately, there is no residential option this year.) oes.umd.edu/pre-college-programs/terp-young-scholars
The Folger Shakespeare Library is hosting a monthly online book club that is free and open to everyone. (The club's target audience is adults, but teens are absolutely welcome to participate.) The next pick, for Feb. 2, is Booth by Karen Joy Fowler, historical fiction woven around the family of John Wilkes Booth. The March pick is A Tip for the Hangman by Allison Epstein, "an Elizabethan espionage thriller." For more information or to register, see https://www.folger.edu/events/book-club-february-2023
Practice your knowledge of U.S. geography with the daily Statele quiz: statele.teuteuf.fr/
Have a fledgling engineer? Or curious yourself? The EngineerGuy website has loads of free videos explaining the engineering behind everyday items: engineerguy.com/videos.htm
Private i History Detectives, from the folks at iCivics (founded by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor), encourages elementary school students to develop critical thinking skills while solving history "mysteries": www.icivics.org/products/privatei
Try this devilishly difficult U.S. geography quiz! On a blank U.S. map, click on where you think the state named is. If you're right, the game continues. If you're wrong, the game ends and you need to start over. (Hint: if you're able to get past about 35%, the going gets easier.) www.sporcle.com/games/mhershfield/us-states-no-outlines-minefield
Explorer Classroom offers free webinars for K-8 students with National Geographic Explorers. Upcoming sessions focus on plants, on sustainability, and on ancient Egypt, including a live talk with an archaeologist based in Alexandria, Egypt. For more information or to register, see https://www.nationalgeographic.org/tickets/explorer-classroom/.
PhET is a cool site that offers dozens of free online simulations to help students better visualize STEM concepts, courtesy of the University of Colorado Boulder: phet.colorado.edu/
Interested in introducing your kids to live classical music for free? The Washington Bach Consort is continuing to perform J.S. Bach's cantatas, for free, on the first Tuesday of every month, at noon, at the Church of the Epiphany near Metro Center in downtown DC (as well as on Capital Hill, at St. Mark's, the prior day). For more information, see bachconsort.org/noontime-cantatas/.
You can help scientists track butterfly and moth populations worldwide by participating in the Global Butterflies Census. All you need is a camera and WhatsApp. Take a picture of a butterfly and WhatsApp it to Friend of the Earth along with your coordinates. It's an easy bit of citizen science for all ages and all locations. For more information, see friendoftheearth.org/friend-of-the-earth-launches-first-global-census/
For those with 4th graders this year, this is a reminder about the National Park Service's Every Kid Outdoors program that gives 4th graders and their immediate family free entrance throughout the national park system this year. For details, see www.everykidoutdoors.gov/index.htm.
Applications are now open for high school students interested in Stanford's high-octane study programs on Japan, Korea, and China. You can learn more at spice.fsi.stanford.edu/fellowship/reischauer-scholars-program (Japan), spice.fsi.stanford.edu/fellowship/sejong-korea-scholars-program (Korea), and spice.fsi.stanford.edu/fellowship/china-scholars-program (China). Applications close Oct. 31.
An MIT student group is launching this year's Galactic Puzzle Hunt today. Sort of like an escape room, the hunt is a series of puzzles designed to do in teams but can be done individually. The FAQ at the site has a link to examples of previous years' puzzles that might be worth checking out before diving in. The game ends at 6:02 AM ET on Sept. 6. 2022.galacticpuzzlehunt.com/
Test your geography: how many countries can you name in 15 minutes? [Note: you don't have to label them, just name them (spelling counts).] This Sporcle quiz courtesy of my older son (yes, we are that nerdy!): www.sporcle.com/games/g/world
This website assembled by a young programmer offers a curated list of resources (many free) to help young would-be programmers learn about computer languages, coding, and computer science: lihackhers.com/programing-resources/
For those interested in learning about what's going on in Ukraine that might not make the news in the U.S. or for those interested in supporting a free press in Ukraine, the English-language Kyiv Independent operates a website and a free daily e-newsletter: kyivindependent.com/ At the top of the website are GoFundMe options to allow visitors to support the Independent or a broader group of Ukrainian media organizations.
If you're looking for a bit of summer learning fun, Google Earth's Carmen Sandiego game takes students around the world, using clues to solve a crime while seeing some of the world's most iconic landforms and structures in 3D:
earth.google.com/web/data=CiQSIhIgYmU3N2ZmYzU0MTc1MTFlOGFlOGZkMzdkYTU5MmE0MmE |
Blog sharing news about geography, philosophy, world affairs, and outside-the-box learning
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