Three Ways to Be a Better Father
MIDDLE SCHOOL PROMPTS Many people want to be the best they can be at something, and when it comes to fathers, fatherhood.gov has some ideas. Here are three ideas from that website on how to be a good father:
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Too Late! It’s Gone!
HIGH SCHOOL PROMPTS Ever wonder what your life would be like without some of your favorite people or things? In P. D. James’ futuristic novel Children of Men, she wants people to consider what the world would be like without any new babies. So her novel is all about how no babies have been born…
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Rice and Beans . . . or Steak
HIGH SCHOOL PROMPTS National Hunger and Homeless Awareness Week occurs every year in the United States the week before Thanksgiving. Some communities host fund-raisers or hold hunger walks to raise money for homeless shelters. Libraries forgive fines if patrons bring in cans of food. Youth groups collect canned and boxed food from neighborhoods. Families sleep
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The Best Time to Make Friends
MIDDLE SCHOOL PROMPTS So, when is the best time to make friends? The famous actress Ethel Barrymore (great-aunt to Drew Barrymore) has an idea about that:
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Strange Hotels
HIGH SCHOOL PROMPTS Would you like to rent a room undersea? Then head over to Jules’ Undersea Lodge off the coast of Key Largo, Florida. Named for the famous Jules Verne and his early sci-fi story 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, this hotel caters to divers who like to live underwater. You can view a YouTube…
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Who Is on Your Team?
Young Ender Wiggin, in Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, is smallish for his age, smart, and a bit of a misfit. In the movie of the same name by Summit Entertainment, Colonel Graff wants Ender to remain a misfit and even manipulates events so the other young students will hate Ender. Graff doesn’t want Ender to rely on anyone and even cuts off his emails to and from home so the young boy can focus on his studies.
Despite the people in his life that try to keep Ender from forming relationships, he creates his own network of friends and allies as he moves through the classes and battle games. He realizes, as does the psychiatrist Major Anderson,
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Getting Paid to Hug?
Teachers in the Jiangdu District of China know how important it is to hug their students. In fact, they hug their kindergarten students twice a day . . . as long as the parents have paid their “hugging fee,” according to Chuck Sheppard’s News of the Weird.
What do you think?
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Flee the Boring Description!
You know that boring description in that last book you read for school? No, wait. You didn’t read it. You skipped the description because it was so dull. It’s time to fix that. Here’s a paragraph from H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. Notice the specific and powerful verbs he uses to keep this description of refugees moving along:
There were sad, haggard women tramping by, well dressed, with children that cried and stumbled, their dainty clothes smothered in dust, their weary faces smeared with tears. . . . There were sturdy workmen thrusting their way along, wretched, unkempt men, clothed like clerks or shop-men, struggling spasmodically.
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Waxing Eloquent Over a Piece of Cheese?
When was the last time you wrote a whole paragraph about how a piece of cheese tasted? Here’s Michael Paterniti’s description after tasting an artisanal cheese in The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World’s Greatest Piece of Cheese:
Oh, it was a strong cheese, a Herculean cheese, you could tell that immediately, tangy and tart, melting and then flaring again.
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You Live in a Shipping Container?
Yes, folks, some people live in old, repurposed shipping containers, those huge, metal, rectangular boxes used for receiving goods from overseas. You can read more about repurposing shipping containers and see some cool pictures here.
Other people choose to live in micro-units (tiny, tiny apartments) as small as 250 square feet. That’s 25′ x 10′. Measure that out in your house and see how much space that takes up.
If you were to live in a recycled shipping container or in a space as small as these micro-units, how would you arrange your living space?
