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Busy Teacher’s Cafe offers a free collection of themes, strategies and printables for reading, writing, language arts and math.

I was most impressed with the reading and writing resources.  For some reason these subjects don’t normally translate to worksheets very well, but Busy Teacher’s Cafe has done a fine job of creating and collecting really useful goods.

Since the site serves K-6, it’s also a good place to go if you have kids who are younger,  on IEPs or who have fallen behind for any reason.

It’s not quite as polished as Super Teacher Worksheets, but there is so much good stuff on the site that it’s definitely worth checking out.

“Let’s Learn the 50 States” is the most downloaded song from the Teacher and the Rockbots’ educational music catalogue. It is modern, energetic and not childish like so much of the genre.

In addition to the song itself, there are printable flashcards and worksheets, wiki references and the bonus video above. All are free and can be used with or without the song itself.

You can check it out more closely by visiting the 50 States web page and you can download or buy the CD by clicking here.

Digital History is an educational and non-commercial site designed specifically for history teachers and their students.

Original reference documents, images, study guides, multimedia exhibits, maps, music, event summaries and much more are copyright-free and span from pre-1763 to the present.

The resources are advanced enough to engage older kids and yet simply stated enough to make them accessible to younger students.

You owe it to yourself to check out this site before making any new American history lesson plans.

Take me to Digital History right now!

I found a really cool resource that is sure to be a hit with kids while also presenting a great opportunity to visually explore concepts like orbit, rotation and the solar system.

To operate the solar system, all you have to do activate the “sky” is place your mouse on the screen.  I got the most natural looking results by placing my mouse on the Sun  and then slowly moving my cursor along its outside edge.  Placing your cursor outside the Sun up to about an inch exaggerates the motion further (smaller monitors require less, larger monitors require more).

I’d tell you more about how it works, but half of the fun and most of the knowledge comes from figuring it out for yourself.

While not an “official” NASA-approved representation of our universe, it does convey a sense of the vastness and complexity of our solar system.

This cool tool is the result of a computer programmer named Will Jessup who created it simply to show off a bit of clever code he’d crafted.  The second I saw it I realized that it could be used for educational purposes.

One of my favorite things to do was to place my cursor at roughly 2:00 o’clock, right on the edge of the Sun.  Then I’d watch Pluto disappear into the vast beyond and  return from its incredible orbital path.  Somehow my humble little computer monitor seemed to stretch for miles!

Take a minute to play with this fascinating tool.  I’ll bet you’ll like it.

Take me to Will Jessup’s Planet Rotator script!

RethinkingSchools.org offers a free, interactive web application that does a great job of teaching the locations of countries in and around the Middle East.

Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan are mentioned often in the news but few Americans have any idea where any of these places are.

Thirty five countries from this important region of the world are presented in a word pool and the objective is to drag and drop them into the correct positions on a map.  Countries “stick” when they’re in the right spot and you can use trial and error to figure out countries that you’re unsure of.

This ability (trial and error) is where the power lies; I thought I was pretty well versed in geography but soon discovered that I had a lot to learn.

If you’re teaching anything related to this region or just want to become more educated yourself, then go check this out.

Take me to RethinkingSchools.org to learn about other countries