Easter Clip Art Gallery

Check out our free Easter clip art. These adorable pictures are great for adding to worksheets, powerpoints, websites, newsletters, and more. Each Easter-themed image is available in black, pink, or blue.

Curriculum Counts: Fulfilling the Promise of the Common Core State Standards

New York, NY (February 28, 2013) - A panel of educational leaders met at the Harvard Club today to discuss implementation of the Common Core in schools across the United States as part of Curriculum Counts: Fulfilling the Promise of the Common Core State Standards.

Sol Stern of City Journal introduced the group, which included Merryl Tisch, Tony Bennett, Linda Bevilacqua, and Kathleen Porter-Magee.

Beginning with Sol Stern, the discussion panel advocated for implementation of the Common Core; differences in members' opinions dealt with how the Common Core should be implemented, as well as creating accurate student assessments.  

Guests heard a succinct history of the movement, from its conception under E.D. Hirsch, founder and chairperson of the Core Knowledge Foundation.

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Free Martin Luther King Day Printables for Kids in K-12

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Day will be celebrated in the United States on Monday, January 21, 2013. To help kids of all ages learn about this amazing figure in U.S. history, we have several worksheets, puzzles, and much more. All of these educational items are free to print. Enjoy, and keep the dream alive!


Martin Luther King Day Free Printables


Free Printable Worksheets for Holidays throughout the Year

Overwhelmed with holiday gift cards? Sell them for cash!

This isn't so much an educational tip as an "FYI" tip for our readers. If you're like us, you ended up with a lot of gift cards this holiday season. Typically, gift cards can't be exchanged for cash at the store. If it's not a retailer you normally use, this can be a problem. Luckily, we've found four great sites that let you cash in on your unwanted holiday and birthday gift cards.

Plastic Jungle You click "Sell Now" and enter the information on your gift card. The site tells you what percentage will be paid in advance. For example, it says it will give me 84% of the value of my Bed, Bath, and Beyond gift card. It looks like they just take the card number, without needing the physical card.

Card Pool This site offers to send me a check for $82.00 for a $100.00 BB&B gift card, and will cover the shipping costs. It looks like they want the physical card, rather than just the number.

Gift Card Rescue This site offers $80.00 cash or an $84.00 Amazon gift card for my $100.00 BB&B gift card.

Card Woo This site offers up to 90% of the card's value, but it looks like I'll have to register before getting an offer on my card.

It's nice to know that unwanted gift cards won't be wasted! Then again, seeing that we can instantly save a nice percentage off a purchase by buying a discounted gift card first, this little exercise might end up costing more than it saves! Then again, if we use our purchased gift cards for things we would have bought anyway, there's no harm.

Can anyone remember the days before the internet, when getting a discount was a rare treat? Between sites like these, GroupOn, Amazon Local, restaurant.com, etc., we haven't paid retail since the last millennium!

If you have any other tips on how to stretch a teacher's salary, please let us know.

World History

Our World History pages have a new look. It's now easier to access the main list of World History-Global Studies units from each sub-page. We've also added lots of new teaching materials to the sub-pages, so check them out.

World Religions Image Gallery

We have a new map and picture gallery, this one focusing on the beliefs, development, and practices of the world's religions.

World Religions Map and Picture Gallery

All of the major religions are covered--Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism, etc. Please don't hesitate to contact us if you have any suggestions.

Is an IB Diploma worth it?

Should my teenager go for an IB Diploma? Is an IB Diploma worth it?

The IB Diploma (IBDP, International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme) has grown popular in recent years as a high-quality course of study for high school students hoping to gain admittance to a well-ranked university. Many parents have asked us, should my son or daughter work toward an IB Diploma?

The IB Diploma is not necessarily harder than a traditional college-prep program at the honors level. The main difference lies in tougher requirements for (a) community service, (b) essay writing, and (c) a focus on critical thinking.  If your teenager is bright and driven, and typically gets put into honors-level classes, the IB Diploma coursework should not be extraordinarily challenging for him or her.

The question is, then, is the diploma worth the effort?  

To answer this question, we have to look at the point of the IBDP.  This diploma program began in Europe, where both private and public universities receive large numbers of international students.  European universities had a problem: wanting to accept these foreign students, while wanting these foreign students to have a core knowledge and skills set.  The answer was to create a diploma program that would teach and assess this core knowledge and skills set (again, not entirely unlike the standard college-prep coursework that is commonplace in the United States).  An IB Diploma tells a university that the student meets the school's entry requirements, plain and simple.

In other words, the IB Diploma is terrific for any American (or other student) planning to attend college abroad.   For example, Marcus, earning an IB Diploma in Michigan, can feel confident that he has a good chance of getting accepted at Oxford, Cambridge, University College Dublin, etc.

The problem?

While American colleges acknowledge and respect an IB Diploma, they do not expect their students to hold such a diploma.  Not even ivy league schools like Harvard and Princeton expect their applicants to have an IBDP certificate. And, as stated earlier, the standard college-prep high school coursework is very similar to the coursework required for an IB Diploma.

Our advice...

If your teenager plans to attend college in another country, an IB Diploma is highly desirable.  But if he or she is planning to go to a university in the United States, the standard college-prep coursework (essentially, four years of everything, focusing on the "toughest" classes your teen can get into) will work just as well.

Show me the money!

Some U.S. schools offer IB Diploma coursework, but charge for the service.  You can save yourself the cost by simply working with your teenager (and school counselor, if you like) to craft a high school program that meets the IB Diploma standards.  Have your child take four years of advanced Math, preferably at the honors level.  Have your child do community service work.  This knowledge and experience are what American universities are looking for, rather than a single certificate.

Check out the IBDP official website: International Baccalaureate Organization