Homework

I've got those don't-wanna-look-at-my-schoolbooks blues Got studying to do and not much inclination to do it? Try these ideas to jump-start your motivation: Partner up. Studying can be more productive - and fun - when you do it with a friend. Check answers and help each other review class material. Tackle big projects in small bites. Break up your study time into blocks of 20 or 30 minutes with short breaks in between. Play Mozart - or Eminem. Listening to music makes study much more fun and isn't as distracting as TV. Remind yourself why you're studying.

chambersburg@herald-mail.com The new Boys & Girls Club Chambersburg Clubhouse is off to a slower start than organizers had expected. By the end of its first full week of operation, the club had only 30 youths enrolled, well below the 100 director Phil Bennett hoped to see on a daily basis. "We've had numerous registration days, but it's just been slow," he said. But Bennett is not discouraged. "This is the third time I've done this, and every time it's worked," he said, referring to the other Boys & Girls Club sites he's helped open.

chambersburg@herald-mail.com CHAMBERSBURG - Right now, the Boys & Girls Club of America's Chambersburg Clubhouse is a rather empty space with a covered air hockey table pushed against one wall and a few chairs clustered in the middle of the room. But by next week, Director Phil Bennett expects the space to be teeming with youngsters, and he said it's the kids who are the heart of the program. Jan. 2 is the opening of the local club in the Eugene C. Clarke Jr. Recreation Center at 235 S. Third St. in Chambersburg.

pepperb@herald-mail.com WASHINGTON COUNTY - A new Washington County Free Library-based computer tutoring program is helping area students with their homework. Tutor.com, funded for a year through the Maryland State Department of Education, is an Internet-based homework helper linked through the library's Web site, www.wc-link.org/wcfl. Although the program has been running for only a month through the library, Jeff Ridgeway, children's librarian and the library's Tutor.

Rule a response to drownings To the editor: This letter is in response to your "Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down" section published Oct. 26. Your article addressed U.S. Magistrate Judge Digirolamo's fining of swimmers in the Potomac River. The regulation contained in 36 CFR 7.96 only applies to the section of Potomac River near Great Falls in Potomac, Md., where these swimmers were located. It prohibits visitors from entering the river for purposes of wading and/or swimming.

Got homework? Get Live Homework Help - online. That's the message being sent by Maryland Public Libraries to students in fourth through 12th grade. The online service from Tutor.com connects students to tutors in math, science, social studies and English via the Internet. The tutors, who are available every day from 2 p.m. to midnight, are certified teachers, college professors, professional tutors and graduate school students from across the country. You can connect to the service at Washington County Free Library, at any branch library site in the county or at home by accessing the library's Web site at www.wc-link.

Have you ever been totally taken by a work of art? It speaks to you. It moves you. It's beautiful, or meaningful. You have to have it. Then you look at the price tag. A small voice in the back of your head wonders whether the work is really that valuable. The other voice whispers maybe, maybe, you'll make money on it. Yes, there is that once-in-a-lifetime painting found at a yard sale that turned out to be the long-lost canvas of a French master and worth a couple million dollars, or the starving-artist painting bought for the cost of a meal that turned out to be worth hundreds of times more 10 or 15 years down the road.

dank@herald-mail.com Four Emma K. Doub fourth-graders headed into summer vacation in style Wednesday. Kara Burgan, Heather Frost, Kaitlyn Bosco and Stephanie Schubel were driven away from the last day of school in a white limousine. The 9- and 10-year-old girls paid for the limo with more than $63,000 in fake money called scholar dollars, which they were awarded for doing well on tests and homework, good behavior and anything else teachers wanted to reward them for, Doub kindergarten teacher Robin Spickler said.

Homework club lauded By MARLO BARNHART marlob@herald-mail.com The AAUW has earned an A-plus for its support of the Homework Club where youngsters gather three days a week at Asbury United Methodist Church on Jonathan Street. The Washington County Chapter of the American Association of University Women last week donated $300 from its most recent book sale to help the Maryland HotSpot Community project prosper. "We also provided a set of encyclopedias and many of the children's books that were left over from the sale," said AAUW president Erin Brennan.

Creativity can help students keep track of assignments Teaching your child | By Lisa Tedrick Prejean A Warfordsburg, Pa., mother called recently, asking how to help her 7-year-old daughter remember to bring homework assignments home. The mother asked not to be named because she didn't want her daughter, who's in second grade, to be embarrassed. Her daughter's teacher requires a folder for each subject. Students are expected to bring completed assignments back to school in the appropriate folder.