Lunchbox Lessons

Lunchbox Lessons

One of the perks to attending several professional development conferences for teachers is the opportunity to see the latest “good stuff” from others in the field. While in Wyoming this past week, we ran into a company called Lunchbox Lessons. I’ve been checking out their free, on-line resources since, and am impressed! Here’s a little about their company as taken from their Facebook page.

“Lunchbox Lessons is an education company. We engage kids in 21st Century Skills with innovative children’s books, workbooks, lesson plans, DVDs and BrainSnacks for learning at home and in the classroom. Working with top shelf authors like Jean Craighead George, TA Barron and Ken Thomasma and organizations such as the Apple Learning Interchange, NHNZ and NOAA, Lunchbox Lessons brings the best resources available to parents and teachers alike.”

As teachers, you’ll love their “Brainsnack” videos which are 3-5 minutes in length. As opposed to those lovely 80’s videos that our students make fun of, these are up-to-date with great live footage. Additionally, they offer some well-written and age-appropriate lesson plans to accompany the video material. I love that the videos allow students access into the careers of real people.

Lunchbox Lessons is up-and-coming so they’re continually adding new material. Each topic listed below has several different BrainSnack clips to peak your students' interest. Here’s a short list of some of the topics you’ll currently find on their site:
What’s Up in the Universe?
Several Story Tellers
The Making of the Movie Australia

Coming Soon Items:
Broken Circle-Endangered Species
Powering the Web of Life-Energy


Need more reason to check them out? Look at their list of partners for each topic; it's an impressive list!

Teach Kids to Fail (or at least understand that failure is unavoidable when taking risks)

Teach Kids to Fail (or at least understand that failure is unavoidable when taking risks)

When we discuss leadership with young people we almost exclusively focus on success. We help them envision success, plan for success, and even celebrate success. But when do we talk to young people about what to do with failure?

Ironically, I think young people think (and worry) about failure far more than success, so the fact that few teachers, parents or other adult leaders address the topic leaves kids without useful strategies or attitudes for when – not if – failure occurs.

Check out this video from BluefishTV about failure and think about how you could use it to have a discussion with students about how to expect for and use failures as a springboard for greater things.



This page requires a recent version of Adobe Flash Player