Who invented electric Christmas lights?

The Library of Congress sponsors the fascinating Everyday Mysteries collection: Did you ever wonder why a camel has a hump? If you can really tell the weather by listening to the chirp of a cricket? Or why our joints make popping sounds? These questions deal with everyday phenomena that we often take for granted, but each can be explained scientifically.

Everyday Mysteries will help you get the answers to these and many other of life’s most interesting questions through scientific inquiry, asked by researchers and answered by librarians from the Library’s Science Reference Services. In addition, it will introduce you to the Library of Congress’ rich collections in science and technology.

Everyday Mysteries

AwesomeStories.com: The Story Place of the Web uniquely uses the Internet to link its story content to hundreds of thousands of the world’s best on-line primary sources. Enjoy an interactive learning experience as you see relevant maps, pictures, videos, artifacts, manuscripts and documents, in context, within each story. Take advantage of human-based searches for a safe, fast and fun way to learn the real story behind historic events, famous people, heroic exploits, legends, disasters, movies, plus topics of current and general interest.

When you become a member of Awesome Stories … You can see everything on the site (including an extensive image data base), explore all its features (including narrated stories), dig deeper (with lesson plans and text documents) and hear from Awesome Stories once a month (with a newsletter profiling current events and hot topics).

Join the site today. It’s all free!

AwesomeStories.com

Do your homeschoolers have visions of becoming movie directors? Xtranormal’s Text-to-Movie site provides stock backgrounds, characters, soundtracks and movements that you string together to create your animated movie clip. Type what you want your character to say and you can even select what language he says it in – great for homeschoolers studying foreign languages!

Check out this free site which puts anyone in the director’s chair. The developers state:

xtranormal’s mission is to bring movie-making to the people. Everyone watches movies and we believe everyone can make movies. Movie-making, short and long, online and on-screen, private and public, will be the most important communications process of the 21st century.

Our revolutionary approach to movie-making builds on an almost universally held skill—typing. You type something; we turn it into a movie. On the web and on the desktop.

Xtranormal: Text-to-movies

Most adults have enjoyed the clever animation and rapid-fire lyrics of Schoolhouse Rock!, a series of musical educational short films that aired on television between 1973 and 1999 and covered subjects like grammar, science, economics, history, mathematics, and civics. A complete history is available at Wikipedia , and lyrics to most of the episodes are available, with links to YouTube clips of such favorites as Conjunction Junction and Elbow Room.

Schoolhouse Rock!

American Science & Surplus offers a unique mix of industrial, military and educational items, with an emphasis on science and education. They supply a wide range of unusual and hard to find items (some say bizarre stuff) to the hobbiest, tinkerer, artist, experimenter, home educator, do-it-yourselfer, and bargain hunter.

Customers have used American Science and Surplus items in home made cars, sculptures, precision instruments, home made telescopes,costumes, model railroads, window dressings, holiday decorations, and innumerable science projects. Their items are great gifts, inexpensive supplies, and an endless reason for a giggle or a “Gee whiz!” They try to be scrupulously honest in presenting what they have, and always take it back, no questions asked, if the customer isn’t satisfied with it.

They’ve been around for a long time (since 1937), and have multitudes of grateful homeschooling customers. Skip the dreaded retail stores and check out American Science & Surplus for Specials, New Stuff, On Sales and Must Goes. Endlessly fascinating. Incredible stuff. Unbelievable prices.

American Science & Surplus

The Library of Congress purchased the Waldseemüller World Map (1507) in July 2001 from a German Prince whose family has owned it for over 400 years. At $10 million it is the single largest acquisition of the library, and is on permanent display in the Thomas Jefferson wing. Referred to as ‘America’s Birth Certificate,’ this map was the first to show the continents of North and South America and the first to identify the Pacific Ocean as a separate body of water.

It also was the first map to use the name America. The word “America” was written across the southern continent.

Waldseemüller carved 12 wooden plates from which the panels were printed. It was printed on 12 separate sheets of paper each measuring approximately 24 inches by 18 inches. Designed to be assembled as a wall-map, the finished map measured approximately 8 feet wide by 4 ft. 6 ins. high. Over 1,000 copies of the map were published.

The Waldseemuller map currently in the Library of Congress is the only one known to exist. Remarkably, it is complete and in pristine condition. It was believed that all copies from the first printing had deteriorated and disappeared as early as the 1600s.

Johann Schöner (1477-1557), a Nuremberg astronomer-geographer acquired an edition of the first printing. He did not display it as intended, but instead he bound it into a book along with other maps. This volume was acquired by the ancestors of Prince Waldburg-Wolfegg sometime after Schoner died. For nearly 350 years it remained, unknown and unread, in the Prince’s library collection in the Wolfegg Castle, in Wurttenberg, Germany.

Martin Waldseemuller 1507 World Map

Martin Waldseemuller 1507 World Map

Google Sketchup lets you create 3-D models of anything. You can build models from scratch, or you can download what you need. People all over the world share what they’ve made on the Google 3D Warehouse. Dozens of video tutorials, an extensive Help Center and a worldwide user community mean that anyone who wants to make 3D models with SketchUp, can do so – free.

You can learn more at the Google Sketchup blog, and check out the second Google Model Your Town Competition. Model Your Town is about geo-modeling – making photo-textured models of real-life buildings that appear in Google Earth. The Model Your Town Competition is also a chance to celebrate your town by adding it to the 3D map.

Google Sketchup

Eclectic Homeschool Online is an outsdtanding web site which provides resources and assistance that allows homeschoolers to homeschool their children in a manner that suits each individual child’s needs and gifts. Their resource collection lists close to 3,000 reviews which you can search or browse by category.

Eclectic Homeschool Lite is a companion site which offers resources and assistance for those just starting homeschooling or thinking about it, and will help sift through the huge array of curriculum and resources available. Happy homeschooling!

Eclectic Homeschool Online

Can you find all 50 states on a map? Can your kids? This fun geography quiz asks you to identify each state, awarding three points for each right answer for a total possible score of 150; each question is given three tries. Give it a try and see how many states you can locate!

USA Geography Quiz

Odds Bodkin’s character-voice and music-filled storytelling style has been mesmerizing listeners, young and old, for twenty-four years. The New York Times dubbed him “a consummate storyteller” while TIMEOUT New York writes, “Master Storyteller Odds Bodkin is the talk of the town with his remarkable one-man Art of the Tale.” His most recent recording, The Harper and The King: The Story of Young David won the Parent’s Choice Gold Award, The Dove Family Foundation Award and the Storytelling World Award. Odds Bodkin has been a featured teller at The National Storytelling Festival, performed twice at The White House, and at schools, universities, museums and theaters across America. He has told stories and conducted workshops as far afield as Bangkok, Thailand and Great Britain.

His all-original music on 12 string guitars, Celtic harp, grand piano and other instruments makes his collection of stories resemble pieces of musical theater as much as storytelling. His seventeen award-winning audio recordings range from original dino-musicals for young children through an eclectic collection of international folktales, fairytales, and comic tall tales.

Storyteller Odds Bodkin