As we continue to learn at home, check out this week’s Learning at Home highlights below! Watch these great programs and explore the PBS LearningMedia and web resources with your family to learn more.
Tuesday, May 26, 2 PM
American Masters: Louisa May Alcott
American Masters — Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind ‘Little Women’ is the first film biography about the celebrated author and reveals a remarkable woman, ahead of her time, who was much more than a writer of children’s books. Raised among reformers, iconoclasts and Transcendentalists, the intellectual protégé of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, Alcott was actually a free thinker, with democratic ideals and progressive values about women.
PBS LearningMedia related resources
- Louisa May Alcott | Transcendentalism – Explore the impact of transcendentalism on the life of Louisa May Alcott and American society. Emphasizing self-reliance, civil disobedience, intuition, the importance of nature, and knowing oneself, transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau left a permanent mark on American identity and values.
- Louisa May Alcott | The Civil War – Learn about the impact of the abolitionist movement on Louisa May Alcott’s life and writing and her experience working as a nurse during the Civil War.
- Teaching Guide: Exploring Little Women – This guide is designed to help instructors use a primary source such as Little Women in the classroom. There are discussion questions, classroom activities, and primary source analysis tools
Wednesday, May 27, 11 AM
TV Classroom: Elementary Science 105 – Food Chains and Food Webs
In this episode of TV Classroom, Dr. Corcoran and Ms. Vilello use an owl pellet dissection to explain food chains and food webs.
PBS LearningMedia related resources
- Food Web | Science Trek – This video segment from IdahoPTV’s Science Trek illustrates how energy from the sun moves through the food chain. Learn about the food chain, and what are producers, consumers, and scavengers as well as where humans fit into the mix.
- Build Food Chains & Food Webs | Platte Basin Education – The interrelationship between species in the river, wetland, grassland, and woodland habitats of the Platte River prairie ecosystem is a complex, dynamic food system. By exploring food chains and food webs, you will discover how energy is transferred from one organism to another.
- Wildlife, Forest Layers, and Food Webs | Georgia Forests – In this video, host Chelsea Philips Tafoya talks with Dr. Mark McConnell, a wildlife biologist at the University of Georgia, about the various animals that live in the Mountain, Piedmont, and Coastal Plain regions of Georgia. Forest layers are also discussed as they relate to the natural habitats of these animals, as well as how these animals fit into the food web.
Thursday, May 28, 4 PM
Native America – Nature to Nations
Nature to Nations explores the rise of great American nations, from dynastic monarchies to participatory democracies. What lies behind these diverse and sophisticated governments? Answers emerge from an archaeologist excavating America’s oldest temple in the Peruvian Andes, a tribe initiating a new chief at a ceremony surrounded by cedar totem poles in the Pacific Northwest, an expert reading ancient hieroglyphs from a sarcophagus to tell a forgotten history of Maya kings, and the return of an ancient shell wampum belt to the birthplace of democracy near Syracuse, New York.
PBS LearningMedia related resources
- Agriculture as the Foundation of Early Native Governmental Structures | Native America: Nature to Nations – Learn how growing corn helped the Haudenosaunee and Maya develop their respective confederated governments. Students will examine how companion plant cultivation developed by the Haudenosaunee and Mayan tribes led to greater understandings of cooperative government.
- Early Formation of Political Classes in Native America | Native America: Nature to Nations – Explore the mysteries of the Chavin de Huántar temple in northern Peru. Archeologists examine how the high priests would call people to worship using native musical instruments. Students will explore the inner chambers of the Chavin temple and how sound was used to call people to worship from great distances.
Friday, May 29, 1 PM
When Whales Walked: Journeys in Deep Time
Discover the evolutionary secrets of some of the world’s most majestic creatures. From voracious crocodiles and acrobatic birds to stupendous whales and majestic elephants, When Whales Walked follows top scientists from around the world on a global adventure as they follow clues from the fossil record and change what we thought we knew about the evolution of iconic beasts.
PBS LearningMedia resources:
- When Whales Walked | Eons – We know whales as graceful giants bound to the sea. But what if we told you there was actually a time when whales could walk?
- Pakicetus: Walking Whale Ancestor – Blue whales are the biggest creatures to have ever lived on Earth. Measuring up to a hundred feet long and 200 tons in weight, they have a heart the size of a small car. But how did they get so big? Animals like Pakicetus gave rise to the modern-day giants of the deep. It is one of the most remarkable stories of physical transformation in the annals of evolution.
- Birds Are Living Dinosaurs – Birds have colonized every environment on Earth, and they come in an astonishing variety of shapes, colors, and sizes. There are more than 10,000 species of bird alive today, so how did they come to be everywhere and so diverse?