Do you know somebody you care for so much you’d like to give them the sun, moon, and stars? Now you can! Just give them the URL to download Stellarium! It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope. It is being used in planetarium projectors, but it’s totally awesome on your computer screen. There are versions for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux (the source code).

I made several off line activities to go with Showertime! They include simple picture and word lotto, picture-to-word match, trace the word, and riddle clues to use with lotto or other activities. They are made with Boardmaker® using your pictures. –Alison Wade PDF version here to download!

When I did the Halloween activities, I needed a sound clip for the finale with several people talking at once. Since there was only me to do it, this could have been a problem. But luckily I had Audacity, a powerful, and better yet, free sound editing program, to help me out. I was able to generate what sounds like four different people talking together, their voices overlapping but not precisely. Download PDF with detailed instructions!

The freeware sound editor Audacity (Mac/Win) is powerful and easy to use. After a short time with it, I could record, change the pitch so that my voice sounded like a baritone or a child’s voice, convert a sound effect to match the format of my recording, and paste in my sound effect after the recording to create one long track. Get Audacity, a tutorial, and a link to 5,000 free sounds!