"A Mighty Fortress" (Luther's paraphrase of Psalm 46) has been translated into English at least seventy times and also into many other languages. It has also inspired many adaptations by such musicians as Bach, Telemann, Mendelssohn, Wagner, Debussey, and Ralph Vaughn Williams as noted in the Wikipedia article on "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God."

One of the most unusual, perhaps, is the case made by Robert W. Padgett that the tune of Luther's hymn lies behind one of the variations in Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations. You might observe and listen to it here.

Years ago, in a school attic, I came across the Concordia Edition of the Bobbs Merrill Eighth Reader originally published in 1923. Clara B. Baker (Professor, Curriculum and Method, National Elementary College, Chicago), and Edna D. Baker (President, National Elementary College, Chicago) compiled these readings – and A.C. Stellhorn (Executive Secretary, General School Board, Evangelical Lutheran Missouri Synod) revised and adapted the text for use in Lutheran schools.

In his poetic work Christus: A Mystery – Part II. The Golden Legend – Second Interlude (https://www.bartleby.com/356/436.html), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow thinks of Dr. Martin Luther as being at the Castle of Wartburg in 1521 during his temporary “imprisonment,” meditating over the contents of his battle hymn, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God; or, possibly, in the act of composing it. This may be historically correct, though the hymn was not published until 1527.

Note that each stanza of the hymn in Longfellow’s adaptation is followed by a meditation of Luther on what he has written, and how this leads him over to the next stanza. (Pages 18-24 in the Bobbs-Merrill reader) Included at the end are the Study Notes as they are found in the textbook.

A Chamber in the Wartburg. Morning. Martin Luther Writing

Our God, a Tower of Strength is He,
A goodly wall and weapon;
From all our need He helps us free,
That now to us doth happen.
The old evil foe
Doth in earnest grow,
In grim armor dight,
Much guile and great might;
On earth there is none like him.

OH yes; a tower of strength indeed,
A present help in all our need,
A sword and buckler is our God.
Innocent men have walked unshod
O’er burning ploughshares, and have trod
Unharmed on serpents in their path,
And laughed to scorn the Devil’s wrath!

Safe in this Wartburg tower I stand
Where God hath led me by the hand,
And look down, with a heart at ease,
Over the pleasant neighborhoods,
Over the vast Thuringian Woods,
With flash of river, and gloom of trees,
With castles crowning the dizzy heights,
And farms and pastoral delights,
And the morning pouring everywhere
Its golden glory on the air.
Safe, yes, safe am I here at last,
Safe from the overwhelming blast
Of the mouths of Hell, that followed me fast,
And the howling demons of despair
That hunted me like a beast to his lair.

Of our own might we nothing can;
We soon are unprotected;
There fighteth for us the right Man,
Whom God himself elected.
Who is He; ye exclaim?
Christus is his name,
Lord of Sabaoth,
Very God in troth;
The field He holds forever.

Nothing can vex the Devil more
Than the name of Him whom we adore.
Therefore doth it delight me best
To stand in the choir among the rest,
With the great organ trumpeting
Through its metallic tubes, and sing:
Et verbum caro factum est!
These words the Devil cannot endure,
For he knoweth their meaning well!
Him they trouble and repel,
Us they comfort and allure,
And happy it were, if our delight
Were as great as his affright!

Yea, music is the Prophets’ art;
Among the gifts that God hath sent,
One of the most magnificent!
It calms the agitated heart;
Temptations, evil thoughts, and all
The passions that disturb the soul,
Are quelled by its divine control,
As the Evil Spirit fled from Saul,
And his distemper was allayed,
When David took his harp and played.

This world may full of Devils be,
All ready to devour us;
Yet not so sore afraid are we,
They shall not overpower us.
This World’s Prince, howe’er
Fierce he may appear,
He can harm us not,
He is doomed, God wot!
One little word can slay him!

Incredible it seems to some
And to myself a mystery,
That such weak flesh and blood as we,
Armed with no other shield or sword,
Or other weapon than the Word,
Should combat and should overcome
A spirit powerful as he!
He summons forth the Pope of Rome
With all his diabolic crew,
His shorn and shaven retinue
Of priests and children of the dark;
Kill! kill! they cry, the Heresiarch,
Who rouseth up all Christendom
Against us; and at one fell blow
Seeks the whole Church to overthrow!
Not yet; my hour is not yet come.

Yesterday in an idle mood,
Hunting with others in the wood,
I did not pass the hours in vain,
For in the very heart of all
The joyous tumult raised around,
Shouting of men, and baying of hound,
And the bugle’s blithe and cheery call,
And echoes answering back again,
From crags of the distant mountain chain,—
In the very heart of this, I found
A mystery of grief and pain.
It was an image of the power
Of Satan, hunting the world about,
With his nets and traps and well-trained dogs,
His bishops and priests and theologues,
And all the rest of the rabble rout,
Seeking whom he may devour!
Enough I have had of hunting hares,
Enough of these hours of idle mirth,
Enough of nets and traps and gins!
The only hunting of any worth
Is where I can pierce with javelins
The cunning foxes and wolves and bears,
The whole iniquitous troop of beasts,
The Roman Pope and the Roman priests
That sorely infest and afflict the earth!

Ye nuns, ye singing birds of the air!
The fowler hath caught you in his snare,
And keeps you safe in his gilded cage,
Singing the song that never tires,
To lure down others from their nests;
How ye flutter and beat your breasts,
Warm and soft with young desires
Against the cruel, pitiless wires,
Reclaiming your lost heritage!
Behold! a hand unbars the door,
Ye shall be captives held no more.

The Word they shall perforce let stand,
And little thanks they merit!
For He is with us in the land,
With gifts of his own Spirit!
Though they take our life,
Goods, honors, child and wife,
Let these pass away,
Little gain have they;
The Kingdom still remaineth!

Yea, it remaineth forevermore,
However Satan may rage and roar,
Though often he whispers in my ears:
What if thy doctrines false should be?
And wrings from me a bitter sweat.
Then I put him to flight with jeers,
Saying: Saint Satan! pray for me;
If thou thinkest I am not saved yet!

And my mortal foes that lie in wait
In every avenue and gate!
As to that odious monk John Tetzel,
Hawking about his hollow wares
Like a huckster at village fairs,
And those mischievous fellows, Wetzel,
Campanus, Carlstadt, Martin Cellarius,
And all the busy, multifarious
Heretics, and disciples of Arius,
Half-learned, dunce-bold, dry and hard,
They are not worthy of my regard,
Poor and humble as I am.

But ah! Erasmus of Rotterdam,
He is the vilest miscreant
That ever walked this world below!
A Momus, making his mock and mow,
At Papist and at Protestant,
Sneering at St. John and St. Paul,
At God and Man, at one and all;
And yet as hollow and false and drear,
As a cracked pitcher to the ear,
And ever growing worse and worse!
Whenever I pray, I pray for a curse
On Erasmus, the Insincere!

Philip Melancthon! thou alone
Faithful among the faithless known,
Thee I hail, and only thee!
Behold the record of us three!
Res et verba Philippus,
Res sine verbis Lutherus;
Erasmus verba sine re!

My Philip, prayest thou for me?
Lifted above all earthly care,
From these high regions of the air,
Among the birds that day and night
Upon the branches of tall trees
Sing their lauds and litanies,
Praising God with all their might,
My Philip, unto thee I write.

My Philip! thou who knowest best
All that is passing in this breast;
The spiritual agonies,
The inward deaths, the inward hell,
And the divine new births as well,
That surely follow after these,
As after winter follows spring;
My Philip, in the night-time sing
This song of the Lord I send to thee;
And I will sing it for thy sake,
Until our answering voices make
A glorious antiphony,
And choral chant of victory!

STUDY NOTES

Luther’s hymn. Find out just when A Mighty Fortress was written. The New International Encyclopedea gives the date as 1521. When was the hymn first published? How do you like Longfellow’s translation of it? Compare it with the version in your Hymnal and, if you know German, with the original. Longfellow knew the German language, and translated a number of German literary classics.

A Mighty Fortress has become world-renowned. Try to find instances where it was given prominence by Lutherans, or non-Lutherans. Who wrote the melody for this hymn? Do you know that the musical world includes Luther among the prominent musicians of Germany? You may find some evidences of this.

The poem. In what situation is Luther here presented? Was this before or after his heroic stand at the Diet of Worms? By whom and why was Luther held at the Wartburg? Observe how the great dangers which beset Luther at the time, are reflected in the hymn. Does one find any trace of fear in the hymn? Does Longfellow say at any place that Luther feared his enemies? Why was Luther so confident?   Who is the speaker in the remarks which Longfellow added to each stanza? Did Luther actually say what the poet places on his lips? If not, whose thoughts and words are they? Was Longfellow a Lutheran? Observe carefully whether he has given the true spirit and faith of Luther. Where did Longfellow get these thoughts? Do you suppose it was necessary for him to have an intimate knowledge of the history of the Reformation? 

Things to do. List words and expressions unfamiliar to you, and by the aid of the dictionary find their exact meaning in the poem. List the names of people mentioned in the poem, and tell who they were, or what they had to do with Luther.

Peter Greene offers an interesting perspective in a July 12, 2018 article found in Forbes entitled Whatever Happened to Common Core? While not addressing philosophical issues underlying Common Core's creation, it does demonstrate how quickly something can become passe in the world of education.

Already in 2005, the CSRQ Center Report on Elementary School Comprehensive School Reform Models stated: "In 1998, education researcher Sam Stringfield observed, 'There is no shortage of programs that promise to turn around low-performing schools, but how can you tell which ones will live up to their claims?' Since those words were written, more than 500 distinct comprehensive school reform (CSR) approaches have been adopted in more than 5,000 schools across the country."

Classical Lutheran education is not a reform model. It is a renaissance. Dr. Veith's 1996 article Renaissance, Not Reform is as poignant today as it was 20 years ago . . .

Many people quickly associate the name "Marshall McLuhan" with his quip "The medium is the message."

Not as many are aware, however, that McLuhan held a doctorate from Cambridge University or that his dissertation, The Classical Trivium: The Place of Thomas Nashe in the Learning of His Time.

McLuhan mapped out the Trivium from its earliest days and through Augustine, Abelard, and Erasmus through to Thomas Nashe, following a structure of Grammar, Dialectics, and Rhetoric for each stage.

This work is not for the timid initiate, but it is replete with thought-provoking perspectives, references, and citations which ought not be overlooked. A sample:

"One can see here a typical instance of the problems which unavoidably arise when a Christian thinks that the disciplines which he has learned are fundamentally sound, but have to be transformed by grace. Thus St. Augustine felt that all of Cicero's doctrines had to be overhauled. He was in a position to do it; for with the great Christian orators of the four centuries before him, Roman eloquence was coming back to life in the purity of the Ciceronian ideal; not merely the written eloquence of Quintilian. The difference was that instead of addressing men to guide them toward the common good of the city as Brutus, Crassus, Cicero, and others had done, St. Augustine and the Christian orators resorted to eloquence to  guide Christians to God and the common good of the City of God."

The OpenCulture website includes an interesting story about a young writer's interaction with Ernest Hemingway which includes a reading list which Hemingway wrote down for the writer.

While classical Lutheran educators probably wouldn't use the reading list as it is, it is still quite informative in a number of different ways. If you'd like to read the article, click HERE.

I've often wanted to show my students the exemplary work of other students their age just to give them some idea of what is possible. Andrew Pudewa's Institute for the Excellence in Writing (IEW) offers samples of such compositions: http://magnumopusmagazine.com/home/

Perhaps classical Lutheran education schools would like to organize a writing contest or engage in online spelling bees, geography bees, and Bible bees?

Joy Pullman, executive editor of The Federalist, recently blogged about the nose dive in math scores on standardized tests in California. Pullman correlates the data this of this decline to the adoption of Common Core.

Will we see a comparable decline in all states which have adopted Common Core standards?

Amazon.com carries her book, The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids, and Issues, Etc. recently conducted an interview with her.

A Wikipedia entry: Mathematically Correctwas a U.S.-based website created by educators, parents, mathematicians, and scientists who were concerned about the direction of reform mathematics curricula based on NCTM Standards Created in 1997. It was a frequently cited website in the so-called Math wars, and was actively updated until 2003. The website went offline sometime in late 2012 or early 2013 but has been preserved on the Internet Archive.

I wish someone would resurrect this site. It shows that problems with math curricula are not unique to Common Core, especially in California. It has been going on for quite some time.

Lutheran schools get it wrong when they emulate public schools in methods and curricula, attempting to improve enrollment numbers by demonstrating that they are "just as good" as public schools while adding some Bible stories.

Classical Lutheran education represents an entirely different educational philosophy while  featuring a catechetical program which shows the distinctively evangelical character of Lutheran orthodoxy.

Those teaching Latin might benefit from some of the resources found in the archives of Gray Fox Tutors and the Carmenta Blog.

The title of this lecture might lead readers to think that Clive Staples intended to comment on grammar and literature, but what we find in these opening paragraphs is a distinction between education and vocational training. The full text of the essay may be found here.

Schoolmasters in our time are fighting hard in defence of education against vocational training; universities, on the other hand, are fighting against education on behalf of learning.
Let me explain.

The purpose of education has been described by Milton as that of fitting a man ‘to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices both private and public, of peace and war.’ Provided we do not overstress ‘skilfully,’ Aristotle would substantially agree with this, but would add the conception that it should also be a preparation for leisure, which according to him is the end of all human activity. ‘We wage war in order to have peace; we work in order to have leisure.’ Neither of them would dispute that the purpose of education is to produce the good man and the good citizen, though it must be remembered that we are not here using the word ‘good’ in any narrowly ethical sense.

The ‘good man’ here means the man of good taste and good feeling, the interesting and interested man, and almost the happy man. With such an end in view, education in most civilized communities has taken much the same path; it has taught civil behaviour by direct and indirect discipline, has awakened the logical faculty by mathematics or dialectic, and has endeavoured to produce right sentiments -- which are to the passions what right habits are to the body -- by steeping the pupil in the literature both sacred and profane on which the culture of the community is based.

Vocational training, on the other hand, hand,prepares the pupil not for leisure, but for work; it aims at making not a  good man, but a good banker, a good electrician, a good scavenger, or a good surgeon. You see at once that  education is essentially for free men and vocational training for slaves. That is  how they were distributed in the old unequal societies; the poor man’s son was apprenticed to  a trade, the rich man’s son went to Eton and Oxford and then made the grand tour.

When societies became, in effort if not in achievement, egalitarian, we are presented with a  difficulty. To give everyone education and to give no one vocational training is impossible, for electricians and surgeons we must have and they must be trained. Our ideal must be to find time for both education and training: our danger is that equality may mean training for all and education for none – that everyone will learn commercial French instead of Latin, book-keeping instead of geometry, and knowledge of the world we live in instead of great literature. It  is  against this danger that schoolmasters have to fight, for if education is beaten by training, civilization dies. That is a thing very likely to happen.

One of the most dangerous errors instilled into us by nineteenth-century progressive optimism is the idea that civilization is automatically bound to increase and spread. The lesson of history is the opposite; civilization is a rarity, attained with difficulty and easily lost. The normal state of humanity is barbarism, just as the normal surface of our planet is saltwater. Land looms large in our imagination of the planet and civilization in our history books, only because sea and savagery are, to us, less interesting. And if you press to know what I mean by civilization, I reply ‘Humanity’, by which I do not mean kindness so much as the realization of the human idea. Human life means to me the life of beings for whom the leisured activities of thought, art, literature, conversation are the end,’ and the preservation and propagation of life merely the means. That is why education seems to me so important: it actualizes that potentiality for leisure, if you like, for amateurishness, which is  man’s prerogative.

You have noticed, I  hope, that man is the only amateur animal; all the others are professionals. They have no leisure and do not desire it. When the cow has finished eating she chews the cud; when she has finished chewing,  she sleeps; when she has finished sleeping, she eats again. She is a machine for turning grass into calves and milk – in other words, for producing more cows. The lion cannot stop hunting, nor the beaver building dams, nor the bee making honey. When God made the beasts dumb He saved the world from infinite boredom, for if  they could speak they would all of them, all day, talk nothing but shop. That is my idea of education.

Thanks to Pr. Rene Castillero of Martin Luther Grammar School in Sheridan, Wyoming, I was reminded of an online publication produced by Memoria Press called Classical Teaching. Back issues may also be read there. You may sign up to be put on their mailing list here. Discussions on any of these articles or issues may be initiated using our website's EasyDiscuss features. (If there is any difficulty accessing that feature, please let me know so that I may get it working.)

One skill I try to engender in every subject is the students' ability to ask questions. It is so much easier to teach a class which is curious about a subject. It is so much more rewarding when a student who does not understand something is able to ask questions of the teacher.

This past week, I asked my students in math class why they didn't ask questions when they got problems wrong or when they didn't understand a concept. For some, homework is a drudgery. They just want to get it done in class so they don't have to do it at home -- and asking questions keeps them from doing their problems. For others, my explanations simply took too much time. For still others, they did not want to appear ignorant in the presence of their peers (in spite of my attempts to make all students feel comfortable about the learning environment). It was worth the time it took to address these issues in class.

In the historic lectionary for Jubilate, the Third Sunday after Easter (John 16:19 which we read today), we read, "Now Jesus knew that they desired to ask Him, and He said to them, "Are you inquiring among yourselves about what I said . . .  ?" There are other similar instances recorded in the Gospels. After three years with Jesus, why didn't the disciples just come right out and ask Jesus? Jesus apparently had to teach His disciples how to ask questions as well.

Playing? In school? First, a couple of words about playing in school.

Luder (Luther) “Now since the young must always be hopping and skipping, or at least doing something that they enjoy, and since one cannot very well forbid this — nor would it be wise to forbid them everything — why then should we not set up such schools for them and introduce them to such studies? By the grace of God it is now possible for children to study with pleasure and in play languages, or other arts, or history. Today, schools are not what they once were, a X and purgatory in which we were tormented with casualibus and temporalibus, and yet learned less than nothing despite all the flogging, trembling, anguish, and misery. If we take so much time and trouble to teach children card-playing, singing, and dancing, why do we not take as much time to teach them reading and other disciplines while they are young and have the time, and are apt and eager to learn?(The American Edition of Luther's Works, vol. 45, pp. 369-370)

Ludus in Latin was associated with a number of things, two of which included "play" and "school." One definition given on Wikipedia relates that a ludus was "an elementary or primary school or the school of the “litterator" attended by boys and girls up to the age of 11 was a ludus. Ludi were to be found throughout the city, and were run by a ludi magister (schoolmaster) who was often an educated slave or freedman. School started around six o'clock each morning and finished just after midday. Students were taught math, reading, writing, poetry, geometry and sometimes rhetoric."

Whenever I tell my students that one Latin word for school is a synonym for fun, they find it difficult to believe. (In the spirit of full disclosure: I am vigorously opposed to attempts to make school fun, but I am altogether in favor of making school fascinating. More on that in a later blog.)

That being said, there are a number of ways to play (or should I say, "to fascinate"?) with words  such as Jumble, Boggle (anagrams), Scrabble, WordMorph, Crosswords, Hangman, Palindromes, Rootonym, UnoLingo, and Lexigo.

You might begin pulling this thread at The Puzzle Society, USA Today Puzzles, and even AARP (besides the games you might find on SpellingCity wherein you could add your own spelling/vocabulary list).

J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, the architect of Middle-earth and the father of Narnia, once went and saw Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs together, according to Eric Grunhauser's April 25, 2017 article. "It's no secret that J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were legendary frenemies. But while they may have sparred over fantasy and religion, they shared one little-known viewpoint: a disdain for the works of Walt Disney."

But would it be breaking the 8th Commandment if one suggested something even more serious, e.g., that Disney, Inc. has a "curriculum" which promotes feminism and homosexuality in its later productions?

Disney, Culture, and Curriculum contains sixteen balanced essays on how "Disney, Inc." works to advance a utopian happiness in all its inclusiveness. This collection is by no means written from a Biblical worldview. It seems to be a frank and fair-minded exposition produced by various academics. Each essay has copious references.

The only problem: it's difficult (or expensive) to acquire a copy - though you may be able to access it through an interlibrary loan. If you do, I think it is a read worth your while.

If not, then just try to Google groups of search terms together like "Disney Frozen Moana Feminism" or "Disney coded villains" and see whether or not you think the evaluations are equitable. In the cases I've found, it isn't that Christians are making accusations, but rather, that those who embrace those lifestyles are the ones who identify such themes in the Disney productions . . . and praise them.

Do you ever show full-length videos at your church or school for a movie night? Do you show videos as a bonus for students or when a substitute teacher is filling in? If you are doing these things without a license agreement, then you are breaking the law.

While there were some at our location who suggested that we would "never get caught" or that it was "no big deal," for me, the word of our Lord recorded in (Luke 16:10) applied: "He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much; and he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much."

Doing things the right way is not really that difficult or expensive. I submitted an application for an annual church/school subscripton to CVLI, noting that we had 29 students enrolled. The cost was surpisingly VERY affordable. (It wouldn't cost you anything to get a quote, which in our case was even less than what was noted on the pricing guide).

If you want to be legit, check out the Church Video License International (CLVI) website.

Our family enjoys going to the movies. Before the film when the Coming Attractions are running, I've noted certain special showings promoted by FathomEvents. Besides showing opera and classic films, they occasionally screen movies of particular interest to Christians. That was the case when we went to see Is Genesis History?

Is Genesis History? gives a thoughtful response to evolutionary theory, interviewing scientists who believe the Biblical account of The Flood. I also recommend the follow up interviews, Beyond Is Genesis History? There are also other sites like BioLogos which note and supplement the film.

It is available on DVD, but also can be streamed via Amazon Prime.

News Flash: I didn't learn everything I needed to know in grade school, high school, or college. Neither have I achieved my early intentions of becoming a polymath by reading all the Great Books of the Western world and the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Thus it is no surprise that as I teach a broad category of subjects, I often find myself lacking the knowledge of details which I would like to share on various subjects with my students.

One pleasant way I have found to fill in the gaps is the wide variety of subjects offered by The Great Courses. At first, I bought their DVDs which are often on sale -- or found them at Half Price books or on eBay. But then I discovered that as an Amazon Prime member I could have access to a growing number of these videos online for a $10 per month subscription - and I don't have to add more shelves in the TV room. Amazon even offers a free 7-day trial of the collection.

I also have tried the writing course on MasterClass.Com in order to gain some perspective apart from just trying to gather lesson plans and methodologies. If the classical Lutheran education thing doesn't work out for me, I may consider taking the Steven Martin course on stand-up comedy.

Students may be in a hurry to complete an assignment in which they are not interested. They may be lazy or they may simply not know what plagiarism is -- but plagiarism is serious business. It can get a student expelled from a university or cause a person to be dismissed from a significant position, as might be demonstrated in these plagiarism facts and stats.

Perhaps the best time to teach about plagiarism is the first time students are taught to write a research essay or book report -- especially if they are also taught how to do research on the internet.

Surfing the internet, one can find some helpful graphics depicting the full spectrum of plagiarism offenses. One may request a free poster on plagiarism as illustrated in this infographic.

Another helpful site with numerous free resources is sponsored by Turn It In, a subscription-based service which many university professors use to check for plagiarism in the work of their students. And at Plagiarism.org, one may find podcasts such as Teaching About Plagiarism with Help from Dr. Seuss

There are lesson plans for Teaching Students to Avoid Plagiarism, and while not specifically touted as such, I think Andrew Pudewa's Institute for the Execellence of Writing (IEW) method of summarizing articles is rather helpful in this regard.

Our Wednesday morning chapel services follow the order of Matins throughout the year -- though we do have some seasonal changes such as using the beautiful Healey Willan setting of the Te Deum during the weeks after Easter until the end of the school year. We had purchased enough bulletin-sized folded single-page versions of this from CPH which we hand out and collect each year.

Your writing may be without any spelling or grammatical errors, but is it readable?

Simply by cutting and pasting text into the Readability website, you can get an idea on how readable your writing is based on the Flesch-Kincaid method -- and your students will be able to do the same.

http://www.thewriter.com/what-we-think/readability-checker/

Print, Cut, and Fold is a series of books created by Jim Holland which give teachers and students a variety of way to communicate what they have learned. They are not a substitute for writing essays and papers, but these projects can supplement student expressions of what they have learned and discovered. They also make for nice displays in the hallways or showcases of your school. Our students and parents seem to enjoy them.

Most of the projects like dioramas, cascading flip charts, and pyramids are the same from book to book. If you and your students are capable of providing your own data, you would probably only need one of the books -- but the others are helpful if you would like some curriculum-specific ideas.

These projects can be printed out for the students to modify, cut, and fold. Providing that one has the rights to do so, the projects may also be shared electronically so that students can modify them with Microsoft Office programs or with Google Docs -- after which each student may proceed to print, cut, and fold.

While the audio and video isn't ideal, here are two YouTube videos in which teachers are demonstrating the projects found in the books: PART 1   ---   PART 2