Hot Stuff: Music, Clean Hands, and Meat-Eating Plants

Credit: William Duke

Travels with Music

passportM; $80 (online version), $99 (DVD-ROM) www.travelswithmusic.org [1]

Do you know what a Chinese guzheng sounds like? Or a Bulgarian doumbek? We can learn a tremendous amount about the world through its myriad musical instruments -- and the vast array of cultures that surround them. Travel the globe with this diverse collection of rare video footage, audio clips, and educational games, and discover along the way how a West African djembe is made, or what role a donkey jaw plays in a Peruvian ensemble. Meet the musicians, read (and hear) the history of specific instruments and musical forms, and gather a new, musical vocabulary (such as chordophone or parlando rubato). Students everywhere will appreciate this exciting aggregation of one of humanity's most treasured art forms.

Credit: William Duke

CleanWell

Hand sanitizer; $6.99-$36.99 www.cleanwelltoday.com [2]

At last -- an alcohol-free hand sanitizer with ingredients you can pronounce, and that doesn't cause kids to shriek when it hits the skin. CleanWell's travel wipes and spray bottles contain Ingenium, a patented formula of essential plant oils proven to kill 99.99 percent of germs. Ideal for wiping small, grubby fingers that have strayed far from soap and water, the sweet-smelling sanitizer promotes good hand hygiene (which can prevent what's going around at school from coming home) as well as environmental awareness and conservation -- both prime topics in a well-rounded curriculum.

Credit: William Duke

New York Times Learning Network

Free www.nytimes.com/learning/index.html [3]

Want to step up your (and your students') news knowhow? Explore one of the nation's greatest learning resources, and you'll find an interactive site designed especially for learning. Students in grades 3-12 can test their current-event awareness and vocabulary skills with daily online quizzes, discover what was on the front page of the New York Times on this day in previous years, ask Times reporters burning questions, solve themed crossword puzzles, and much more. Teachers can access daily lesson plans, cherry-pick classroom activities, and order a subscription for their classroom,while parents can use topical guidelines to start meaningful conversation with their kids.

Credit: William Duke

Growing Carnivorous Plants

By Barry Rice; $40; Timber Press; 224 pages

Consider the carnivorous plant -- oddly beautiful and unique, yet mysterious and deadly. Plants such as the incomparable venus flytrap are as wrapped in awe and misunderstanding as a Hollywood starlet. With spring planting just around the corner, it's time to take the mystique out of these botanical beauties with this wonderful introduction to the care and feeding of carnivorous plants. From the infamous flytrap to obscure African sundews, more than 200 species are described and pictured. Growing Carnivorous Plants makes an excellent start for classroom projects, as it includes information that will help young growers select the best plants for a windowsill or an indoor terrarium. The book even includes information on how to feed the plants, should the cute little death traps go wanting.