If you find yourself needing to make resources for your kids, it helps when it works like the tools the professionals have available. Enter G.I.M.P. and Inkscape: the free and open source answers to Photoshop and Illustrator. I use both often. Both of my kids are artistically inclined, so not only do I make material for them, I show them how I did it. G.I.M.P.  is the Gnu Image Manipulation Program, and it has been around for much longer than most people know. It's been included in versions of Linux to function in the role Paint plays for Windows . It's way more powerful than Paint, though. It's grown up and taken on features that were desired by users who had experienced Photoshop and Corel Draw and wanted to bring them to the Open Source Software community.  Inkscape  is a vector art🎨 box. If you need to make a flyers, logos, graphics for cars, cutouts, custom coloring pages, what you need is to make vector art. Sharp edges and nothing out of place. Super u...

If you need to write a letter, you launch your favorite word processor and you make it happen. Essays, poems, stories, reports, cards... ...but what if you needed to do that with music? Until recently, your choice was definitely glitchy, probably expensive, and complicated. Now there's MuseScore3 , and since the update it's been absolutely a joy to use. My source material for learning its features has mostly been a pair of books that used to be in the piano bench in my parents' house when I was growing up. It's freely available and it's developed by the open source community. If you want music to be part of your students' education, it's a definite recommendation. There's nothing else close without spending money. 

Leonard Bernstein was indisputably one of the most important figures in America's part of musical history. He was absolutely a treasure as a performer, composer, conductor, and educator. Decades ago he conducted events called the Concerts for Young People Series. Classical music was presented by a full orchestra, stopped, started, and explained by one of the most capable possible narrators in realtime in front of a packed audience of youths from 4th grade to high school. Leonard Bernstein - Young People's Concerts (In Order)

Hello and welcome to my home-ed blog.👋 I'm Nick , and I'm a parent with littles in the CJUSD , and I want to reach out and help parents meet the new challenge of supplementing their own students' educational experience in this historic time. I see the huge😱 number of resources we've been flooded with, and it occurs to me that it can be overwhelming for people who had no intention of home-schooling or any materials at home aside from the internet and maybe a printer. First: yes, there's a big pile of resources available, but obviously there's not a discussion page attached to every item and it's hard to tell which ones are worth the effort of setting up. Second: the stuff on the list is specific to what's been discussed and approved for district use, but does not go into free and open source solutions. here's a place I'll probably spend several updates discussing. There are a lot of apps that are free, useful, fun, and there are no advertiseme...