Teachers can prepare their students for the Chinese New Year (February 14) with one of these online resources:

Edsitement Lesson Plan: Animals of the Chinese New Year

PBS Kids: Countdown to the New Year

Scholastic Instructor: Chinese New Year

Reach Every Child: Celebrate Chinese New Year

The passing of the great J.D. Salinger has been met with an outpouring of online memorials.

Newsweek: The Gospel According to Holden

The Rumpus: Jason Roberts Remembers

Barnes and Noble: In the Margin

Yesterday we talked to seventh-grader Tony Incorvati of Canton Country Day School, who has competed in the Scripps National Spelling Bee for the last two years and is going for a three-peat. We asked Tony to share some of his favorite words. And try Tony's Community Spelling Bee for some more tough words!  Continue reading...

A few months ago we interviewed sixth-grader Nicholas Rushlow of Pickerington, Ohio, who participated in the Scripps National Spelling Bee the last two years, placing 17th last spring. We were pleased to hear that another Ohio student, seventh-grader Tony Incorvati of Canton Country Day School, has also made it to the Nationals twice and, like Nicholas, has been using the Visual Thesaurus Spelling Bee to study for this year's bee season. We talked to Tony and his mother Nancy Incorvati about how they've been preparing.  Continue reading...

Franklin P. Adams, a regular at the Algonquin Round Table in the 1920s and '30s, was a master of comic verse. His best-known work is no doubt "Baseball's Sad Lexicon," an ode to the Chicago Cubs double-play combination of "Tinker to Evers to Chance." The blog Futility Closet brings to our attention another playful ode by Adams that's right up our alley: "To a Thesaurus."  Continue reading...

Combine sweet tooth with tooth fairy and you get sweet tooth fairy. That's the premise for The Illustrated Sweet Tooth Fairy, a website that seeks to collect such whimsical fusions as magnetic personality disorder, periodic table manners, and emotional baggage carousel. Erin McKean describes the project in the Boston Globe here.