TAR HEEL LESSONS
For students and teachers
Norm Harris
Getting To Know... Roberta Flack Born: Roberta Cleopatra Flack on Feb. 10, 1937, in Black Mountain. Known for: Her smooth and sensitive jazz ballads.
Accomplishments: The daughter of a church organist, Ms. Flack was born into a musical family. By the age of 9, Flack was playing the piano. At 15, she studied music at Howard University on scholarship and later graduated from there with a B.A. in music. After a period of student teaching, she was discovered singing in a Washington club by famed pianist Less McCann. Her first two albums originally produced no hit singles. However, a song from her first LP, “First Time Ever I Saw your Face,” zoomed to No. 1 in 1972 after it was included in a film soundtrack. The song became that year’s biggest hit, and other hits soon followed. Later that decade she took a break to do charitable work, then spent the 1980s touring, often with orchestras. She returned to the Top Ten once more in 1991 with “Set the Night to Music.” A retrospective of her work, “The Very Best of Robert Flack,” was re-released this year by Atlantic Records.
October Farm Activities Hay rides, corn mazes and picking out pumpkins—visiting North Carolina agritourism farms can be especially fun in October. Numerous farms in the state provide family entertainment and learning activities for visitors. They include Maple Springs Farm LLC, one mile east of Dallas in Gaston County, which offers an old-fashioned corn and hay play area, a nature trail based on N.C wildlife, and a food and farms learning center called “Pumpkin Land.” Owners Harold and Patsy Lineberger are members of Rutherford EMC. Their farm gives tours for school and preschool groups by appointment. Hours vary with the season. In October, the Linebergers are planning continual hayrides on weekends. Large groups can reserve a shelter and enjoy a bonfire. For more, visit http://maplespringsfarm. home.mindspring.com To schedule farm and group tours, call (704) 748-1488 or (704) 922-8688.
“America’s Best Classroom” visits
OUTER BANKS The Wright Brothers National Memorial at the Outer Banks was recently chosen one of 14 National Park Service sites to participate in the America’s Best Classroom program. The Lumbee Tribe Boys and Girls Club of Pembroke visited the site in August. Fifty children and 24 adults climbed up Big Kill Devil Hill and listened to a ranger’s program on the Wrights’ first flight. The group also visited Cape Hatteras National The Lumbee Tribe Boys and Girls Seashore. For many of the children, it Club check out a loggerhead turtle was their first visit to a beach. Because shell on a recent visit. a component of the America’s Best Classroom program is that the children must participate in a “service-to-land” project, the group cleaned beach litter north of Cape Point before heading home. America’s Best Classroom is a partnership between Unilever, The National Park Foundation and The Boys and Girls Clubs of America.
To find N.C. farms in the category of hayrides, mazes and pumpkin patches: http://www.ncagr.com/ ncproducts/directory.asp?CatNum= 1011&SubCatNum=6 To learn about the Wright Brothers National Memorial: http://www.nps.gov/wrbr/
The National Park Foundation Elizabeth Levitan at (202) 238-4187
National Boys and Girls Club Perry Cooper at (404) 487-5724
www.nationalparks.org
www.unilevernationalparks.com/npat.htm
Chuckle Why was the new teacher cross-eyed?
She couldn’t control her pupils!
classroom
TO LEARN MORE
30 OCTOBER 2006 Carolina Country
For more about Agritourism farms: http://www.ncagr.com/NCproducts/ CatSubDirectory.asp?CatNum=1011