Welcome to Choices for Learning!

My goal is to help you discover the many choices you (or your child) have for learning, as well as assist you in finding information and resources for learning the way you need or choose. I believe each person can benefit from an individualized approach to their learning and encourage you to explore this site in order to find a variety of resources and differentiated materials.  Content about learning is useful for any learner anywhere, while some resources are especially for the Monterey Bay Region, Greater San Francisco Bay Area, California, and the United States.

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Inspiration for Learning

You don't understand anything until you learn it more than one way. — Marvin Minsky

The essence of teaching is to make learning contagious, to have one idea spark another. — Marva Collins

Learning isn’t something that happens to individual children — separate selves at separate desks. Children learn with and from one another in a caring community, and that’s true of moral as well as academic learning. — Alfie Kohn

A high school guidance counselor confided that people like me {with learning disabilities and attention deficit disorder} ended up flipping burgers. That prediction did not come true; I eventually graduated from Brown University with an honors degree in literature and published a book, in part about my experiences. — Jonathan Mooney

The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn. — John Lubbock

We can learn much from wise words, little from wisecracks, and less from wise guys. — William Arthur Ward

Education is not filling a pail but the lighting of a fire. — William Butler Yeats

Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve. — Roger Lewin

Progressive educators are concerned with helping children become not only good learners but also good people. Schooling isn’t seen as being about just academics, nor is intellectual growth limited to verbal and mathematical proficiencies. — Alfie Kohn

Education reform movements are often based on the fast food model of quality assurance: on standardization and conformity. What’s needed is a much higher standard of provision based on the principles of personalized learning for every child and of schools customizing their cultures to meet local circumstances. Sir Ken Robinson — Sir Ken Robinson

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. — Alvin Toffler

Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions. — Oliver Wendell Holmes

Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time. — Rabindranath Tagore

The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue. — Antisthenes

Get over the idea that only children should spend their time in study. Be a student so long as you still have something to learn, and this will mean all your life. — Henry L. Doherty

It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital connection between them. — Leo Buscaglia

The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think - rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with thoughts of other men. — Bill Beattie

People, as opposed to products, have hopes and aspirations, feelings and purposes. Education is a personal process. What and how young people are taught has to engage their energies, imaginations and their different ways of learning. — Sir Ken Robinson

You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives. — Clay P. Bedford

The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education. — Albert Einstein


What’s New

Check out Updated Math Materials & Apps!

If you are looking for Math materials to: augment your child’s school experience, help your struggling or special needs student, help teach your child at home or if your child loves math and wants more activities to do, check out the updated math curriculum and materials list here. Especially look over the Early Learning Section there so you can help your child get a good start!  OR if you want to find great games to help with math concepts, search our extensive list of games which enhance logic, strategy, and math skills here (be sure to scroll down to Educational games and Nancy’s List of games.)  For suggestions of interactive online math learning, downloadable templates and math charts, as well as great tricks for memorization, search here OR go to the Math Online section here.
For Special Needs Students or atypical learners, you can find differentiated materials and curriculum here I especially encourage you to check out Math-U-See and Numicon Math Instructional Kits, for young and older students.  Math-U-See has specialized blocks for numbers 1-9, tens, and hundreds.  What is great about MUS is that the blocks can illustrate addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and even for negative and positive numbers, as they have an ‘empty’ back side to help kids visualize taking away an amount.  They also have fraction cards an overlays to illustrate making equivalent fractions or multiplying fractions, as well as other fraction concepts.  Numicon kits have been used for children over in Great Britain for years and has now become popular with parents of children with Down Syndrome and others with learning challenges, as they are highly visual, easy to manipulate and can illustrate number sense, addition, and subtraction easily.  Two other programs I like are Karis Math which was originally created to help deaf children learn math visually, but is great for any learner, as it works from the visual and concrete to the more abstract by ‘scaffolding’ support with downloadable animated lessons for all basic math topics.  And if your child has an iPod or iPad, check out some of the apps I have been using with typical learners, challenged learners and autistic children in the Software and Apps section here.