Sunday, March 20

Today is Sunday of Week 8... the last day of Week 8 and the last day of Spring Break! if you didn't finish Week 8 before leaving for Break, you need to finish the end-of-week assignments today, along with any Week 8 extra credit you want to complete: Week 8 assignments (including extra credit).

Class Procedures and Reminders

Comments. The blog comments for Week 8 are something different: you'll be exploring the videos that people posted on their Comment Walls back before Spring Break. I hope you will have fun with that!

Project Stack. Thanks to everybody who turned in work over the Break! I'll be starting in on the stack first thing on Monday morning, working through the assignments in the order they were turned in. You can check the stack to make sure I received your assignment.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Spider-Dog. It's a story in GIF form: Spider-dog Spider-dog, does whatever a spider-dog can do. Can he swing from a web? No, he can't... He's a dog!

Words to Watch: Today's words to watch out for are SEW and SOW. For details, see this blog post.

Featured Storybook: Tale of the Traveling Cat. Join Duke, the time-traveling cat, as he visits ancient Egypt and Japan; he even visits Muhammad in Arabia, who mistakes Duke for his beloved cat Muezza.

Free Book Online: Moon Lore by Timothy Harley. This blog post provides additional information about the book, which contains moon legends and superstitions from around the world.

India Featured Book: Nala Damayanti. This blog post provides additional information about this reading option for Indian Epics. It is one of the great love stories of the Indian tradition, and you can find it on Reserve in Bizzell.

Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is Good books are true friends (a saying of Francis Bacon). Details at the Proverb Lab. Some of my best friends are books. :-)

Today's Video: What Makes a Hero? I thought midway through the semester might be a good time to ponder this TED video about hero stories.

Growth Mindset: Today's growth mindset cat is ready to reflect on the first half of the semester while getting ready for Week 9: To grow yourself, you must know yourself. Details at the blog.

March 20: Equinox. Today, March 20, is the vernal equinox, so it is the first day of Spring; you can learn more about the astronomical details at Wikipedia. In the Wiccan "Wheel of the Year" (see image below), the arrival of Spring is celebrated as the holiday of Ostara, while in the southern hemisphere, it is the corresponding spring holiday of Mabon. The name of the Christian holiday of Easter comes from Ostara; you can find out more at Wikipedia.

Note: You can page back through the older blog posts to see any announcements you might have missed, and you can check out the Twitter stream for information and fun stuff during the day.