Ninjawords

Ninajawords

Sometimes you need to know the definition of a word... fast... like a ninja.  Nothing more and nothing less!

Roadside America

Roadside America

Where’s the birthplace of Kool-Aid? Where's the “Ax Murder House?” And what’s so mysterious about the Mystery Spot, anyway? Roadside America is your definitive resource for the kooky, nichey, and downright bizarre landmarks that help make this huge country so unique. Use this site to plan your next roadtrip and getting from here to there will be more interesting than your average game of “I Spy.”



You can also add some of your favorite places that YOU have visited!

I searched Mississippi to see the things the suggested...

Vacation Favorites

Notable places we've visited or heard about.

• Flora: Petrified Forest [tips]
• Gulfport: Hurricane Shipwreck [tips]
• Holly Springs: Graceland Too [tips]
• Leland: Jim Henson Museum [tips
• Lucedale: Palestine Gardens [tips]
• Meridian: King and Queen of the Gypsies [tips]
• Natchez: Mammy's Cupboard
• Oxford: World's Largest Red Cedar Bucket [tips]
• Port Gibson: Windsor Ruins [tips]
• Tupelo: Birthplace of Elvis Presley [tips]
• Vicksburg: Folk art church [tips]
• Vicksburg: Pregnancy Mini Ball [tips]
• Vicksburg: Where Coca-Cola Was First Bottled

Interactive Spelling Bee

Interactive Spelling Bee

This set of activities is like an old-fashioned Spelling Bee.

Contestants -- that's you! -- in grades 1-8 will listen to three stories, one at a time, and then spell words from each story. Students in high school will listen to separate sentences and then spell the words from each sentence.

If you get stumped, you can click to hear a word again, as many times as you need to. If you're in grade three or higher, you can ask for a definition too. Since words often make more sense when they are attached to an idea, all the words in the story or sentences are in context.

Review the words, hear the audio, and SPELL the missing words. Make sure to check your SPELLING carefully, since your results will be calculated at the end.

Depending on the speed of your computer and internet connection, you may experience brief delays.

Look and Learn with Hoot

Look and Learn with Hoot

Friday, September 21, 2012Mississippi Museum of Art
10:30 AM

The Mississippi Museum of Art hosts an event for 4-5 year olds and their parents. This educational opportunity features a hands-on art activity and story time. Please dress for mess. This month’s story is Art Dog by Thacher Hurd. 45-minute program.

Arthur Dog is employed as a guard at the Dogopolis Museum of Art.  The museum houses the works of such painters as, “Vincent Van Dog, Pablo Poodle, Henri Muttisse and Leonardo Dog Vinci.”    

Arthur is  mild-mannered and lives a quiet life, except when the moon is full.  During those nights, Arthur’s appearance and personality change.  Donning a mask and a beret and carrying a box containing paints and brushes, he creeps throughout the city as a graffiti artist.  With a splat of his tail, Arthur signs his murals, “Art Dog.” 

One day, a robbery occurs at the Dogopolis Museum.  The Mona Woofa, a priceless painting, is stolen. When the police arrive, they conduct a search of the outside perimeter.  It is a full moon, and Art Dog is found in the alley with his eyes glowing and fur glistening, paintbrush in paw. Unsurprisingly, he is suspected of committing the robbery and is arrested. 

Jail, however, cannot hold the innocent Art Dog; he uses his paint brush to paint an open window where there are bars. He leaps out.

Now free, Art Dog needs transportation. He paints a “Brushmobile” which runs on paint instead of gas. 


Using his keen canine sense of smell, he searches for and locates the real culprits at an abandoned warehouse.  A scuffle occurs, but instead of using a weapon, Art Dog brandishes his paintbrush. “Paint! En garde! Touche!”  When the fighting ceases, the criminals are shown embedded in a piece of art.  

The police arrive, accompanied by the museum director.  The museum director, impressed with Art Dog’s  “Messterpiece”,  offers him a show at the Dogopolis Museum.  On the day of his show, Art Dog paints a masterpiece in the sky titled “City Rhapsody.”  Everyone in attendance is awed, but then suddenly Art Dog is gone leaving everyone, except the reader, wondering, “who was Art Dog?”

Book Review: Outside Your Window: A First Book of Nature

Outside your Window: A First Book of Nature

Written by Nicola Davies and Illustrated by Mark Hearld

Published by Candlewick Press in 2012, ISBN 978-0-7636-5549-5

Grades PreK – 6

Book Review

Whether you live in a rural, suburban, or urban setting, there’s a wondrous world of nature right “outside your window.”  Biologist and author Nicola Davies invites you to explore this world year round with her seasonally organized collection of nature poems. Davies’s exceptional ability to use descriptive and figurative language, in particular similes and metaphors, makes the content come alive and the science facts and concepts more comprehensible to her child audience. Her writing is both beautiful and functional. The poems in various forms explore the cycles, patterns, and sensory experiences of flora and fauna in each season, such as this description of an apple:  “Fresh from the tree, / the apple sits in your hand, / cool and round, / and streaked with sunset colors.” The beauty in this collection is not limited to Davies's words. Mark Hearld’s illustrations rendered in mixed media more than live up to the publisher’s description as “breathtaking.” Reminiscent stylistically of late nineteenth and early twentieth century children’s book illustrations, the images blend collage, woodblock print, pen and ink, and painting, creating rich pastoral scenes that beg multiple viewings.  With its oversized trim, thick pages, fascinating images, and engaging text, this book makes the impossible possible – Davies and Hearld allow us to hold the miraculous natural world around us in the palm of our hands.

Curriculum Ideas

Shared Reading. Keep this wonderful volume close at hand to read these poems aloud throughout the school year. Select children’s favorites to rewrite on sentence strips to post in a pocket chart. Keep the lines of the poem whole on the sentence strips or cut them into individual word cards so that students can reassemble the poem from memory using letter/sound or sight word cues. Invite children to illustrate the poems.

Symphony at Sunset

Symphony at Sunset

DATE: 9/21/2012
TIME: 6:00 PM

CITY: Jackson, MS

LOCATION: The Cedars, 4145 Old Canton Road 

The Fondren Renaissance Foundation hosts an evening of music from the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra. Bring blankets, lawn chairs and picnic baskets. Free. For more information, call 601-981-9606.

Book Report Forms

Book Report Forms



This is an entire page of book report forms.   Biography, fairy tale, historical, fiction, mystery, non-fiction, surveys... there is something for your student.