Aerial Pesticide spraying this Summer in Bay Area

If any of you live in the San Francisco Bay Area - you might want to check out these news stories concerning the Light Brown Apple Moth Pesticide spraying that will occur in the Bay Area this summer. Somehow it has gone unnoticed by the community until recently and it is causing an uproar by local residents concerned for their health. This includes a group of mothers who are lobbying to change the spraying, but it might be impossible to do at this late notice.

If you click on the binder link below - it has the latest articles, and websites that can help you find out more information on what to protect yourself if you are stuck in the area during the aerial spraying. Everything is organized by tabs and sub-tabs just click on them to view the websites.

Moth spraying in Bay Area

Fostering an orphaned elephant

Our kids received a great gift a couple of years ago - instead of the usual gift card or plastic toy - our daughters were given an orphaned elephant named Makena. Makena lives on the David Sheldrick Wild Life Reserve in Kenya, Africa. The foster donation lasts for a year and you receive monthly reports about the reserve, any new additions to the reservation and the monthly goings on concerning the elephant, or rhino you are fostering. They send you pictures from the website and a digital image of a water color of the animal you are fostering. I believe the water colors are painted by David Sheldrick’s daughter.

The stories are charming - some heart breaking - and your donations make you feel like you can make the world just a little bit better. It’s also great to engage your children - my kids would love to visit the reserve!

Take a look at the website in the binder below - I’ve included some of their photos, the monthly reports since 2007 and also some interesting stories regarding the rescue of a rhino and some recent baby elephants.

To open click on the link below!

Enjoy!

Adopting an Elephant

Concerns for Tweens online

I found an interesting article about some of the ’safety’ issues to watch out for with tweens.  It is not the same issues that adults face, but can be harmful nonetheless.   If you have kids creating accounts online, it would be good to read this article and check out the websites they posted.  I’ve put those links in this binder as well. 

To open the binder and read the articles and websites, click on the link or icon below.

Tweens safety on Internet

 

School Fundraising

California public schools are facing serious budget cuts next year, so school fundraising has become more important than ever. But just how much stuff can you make kids sell? At our school, we are trying to find more creative ways of raising funds - like using a school picture group that gives half of the profits back to the school. This binder has some of the programs that we are currently using for fundraising. I would love to see other PTA’s create their own binders with their programs so I can browse those as well. Click on the binder below to see the programs that we use at our elementary school:

School Fundraising

UC Berkeley Physics C10 Lectures

If you’re a science student wanting to get a little extra help with your physics - you might enjoy this binder on UC Berkeley’s ‘Physics for Future Presidents’ - aka - Physics c10 by Prof. Richard Muller lecture. It shows all of his video lectures.

To open - click on the link below - if you want to refer to it later you can drag the link to your desktop. Uses IE 6 and 7 and latest Firefox and Safari

Physics C10 - for future presidents

Help for new soccer coaches and team parents

It’s soccer season again and many of you might be first time coaches, assistant coaches or team parents.  Welcome to the club! I’ve included in this blog a couple of binders that you might find very helpful.  The first is a binder on coaching tips - including useful flash and youtube videos to have the kids review on soccer skills.The other is a binder that belongs to one of the soccer teams and you might find it useful as a template for creating your own team binder.   To view the binders just click on the link below - works with latest IE, Firefox and Safari.   

Soccer Coach Binder

 

 

Olympic Marseille girls soccer team

Multiplication worksheets for kids

If you are looking to drill your kids on their multiplication tables this binder has a few sites with printable worksheets. I use flash cards but I also want to have my kids work through the problems on paper. These sites even have division problems and templates for flash cards.

To open the binder click on the link or the icon below. Then you can look at the different websites by clicking on the tabs.

If you want to save this binder onto your desktop - drag the link below to your desktop. Your browser icon will appear on the desktop along with the name of the binder - ‘Multiplication worksheets to print.’

My kids actually look forward to beating their fastest time, so it’s nice to have the binder handy so I can print the worksheets out when they get home.

Multiplication worksheets to print

Safe websites for kids

There are some really fun and educational sites on the web for kids in elementary school. If you are trying to make a few choices among hundreds start here with this very well thought out and resourceful binder.

Websites for Kids

The Dreaded Mission Project

If you have a child in the California public school system, you will someday face the dreaded mission project. This is a project where the child needs to build a scale model of one of the California missions. My daughter recently embarked on this project so she, of course, started with a Google search.I need to learn to not let her search on Google! Spam sites popped up - trying to load spyware and there was even a porn site in the results! I told her I would do the broad searches for her and put them in a binder. Then she could delete things from the binder and organize it into tabs that will be useful for her. Too bad she can’t turn in her digital binder for her report!

Click on the binders below to see sites for the different missions.

Mission Dolores

Mission San Diego de Alcala

Mission Santa Barbara

Mission San Carlos Borromeo d…

Mission San Luis Obispo de To…