Royal Fireworks Press Blog
An Important and Timely Series of Historical Novels Reissued
Royal Fireworks Press announces a major update and revision to an important series of historical novels: the Homesteaders series. This collection of six books follows two families as they leave their home in Norway in the 1860s and journey to America in the hopes of building a life for themselves and their children in the […]
This summer, we have something for everyone!
As we expand our offerings in the Royal Fireworks Online Learning Community, one of our goals is to provide children with intellectual challenges that will stretch their minds in frameworks that are beyond the usual school offerings. Summer is a wonderful time to try special courses and atypical approaches, and we have added many courses […]
Register Now for Summer and 2021-22 Courses in the Royal Fireworks Online Learning Community!
Registration is open in the Royal Fireworks Online Learning Community for the summer session and the 2021-22 school year! The news today is filled with stories of the many children who have languished in their academic learning during the pandemic. This is not the experience of the children in the Royal Fireworks Online Learning Community. […]
A New Book about an Unsung Hero
Royal Fireworks Press is pleased to offer the latest installment in the Mathematical Lives series of biographical novels by author Robert Black. Benoit Mandelbrot: Reshaping the World is a fascinating look at one of the most influential mathematicians of the twenty-first century—although most people have never heard of him. Benoit Mandelbrot was a Polish Jew […]
Another Award for a Michael Clay Thompson Book!
At Royal Fireworks Press, we didn’t need another award to tell us that Michael Clay Thompson’s books are extraordinary. And if you’ve read any of his works, you don’t need someone else to tell you that, either. Michael is one of the most gifted writers of curricula for children that the English language has ever […]
RFWP Book on Giftedness Wins Award
Royal Fireworks Press is proud to share the exciting news that The Essential Guidebook for Parents of Gifted Children has been awarded a Gold Mom’s Choice Award for excellence! The announcement was made on Monday, securing The Essential Guidebook’s place among the outstanding books that Mom’s Choice has named as “the best in family-friendly media, […]
New Books for Children Who Struggle to Read, and a New Novel for Those Who Don’t
There’s a great deal of controversy surrounding the colonization of America. It was either the settlement of a new land of promise for the masses of people who came from Europe and elsewhere to try to establish for themselves a better life, or it was the brutal enslavement and terrorization of tribes of indigenous peoples […]
A New Novel about Deafness
Imagine that you are deaf. You’ve done that. We’ve all done it. What would it be like not to be able to hear sounds anymore? It would be difficult, certainly. You’d have to learn sign language. You’d need to become good at lip-reading. You wouldn’t be able to talk on the phone. You’d need closed […]
Royal Fireworks Press Book Wins Award!
Royal Fireworks Press is thrilled to announce that our biographical novel David Blackwell and the Deadliest Duel has been selected as a 2021 Mathical Honor Book (Grades 9-12)! The Mathical Book Prize aims to inspire a love of mathematics in the everyday world in children of all ages. Each year’s winners join a selective and […]
New Books that Tell the Story of Early America
Ouch. That last nickname is barbed. It’s also unfair. The middle region of the United States is vitally important to the rest of the country, yet it often is seen as less interesting than the areas along either coast—and certainly less worthy of anything more than a passing glance. But the midwestern and central states […]
An Extraordinary New Philosophy Book for Teens!
Royal Fireworks Press is thrilled to announce the newest Western philosophy book from Dr. Sharon Kaye! The Squirrel Behind the Tree is just the latest in Dr. Kaye’s philosophy series, which makes complex philosophical concepts and ideas easily accessible to children. The Squirrel Behind the Tree is a novel that tells a fictionalized version of […]
A New Twist on Math
Royal Fireworks Press announces the re-release of one of our classic publications: Math Verses with Twists. This math book, which originally came in four slim volumes, has been redesigned, freshly edited, and combined into a single book of 100 math problems, logic puzzles, and conundrums that will get kids thinking about math in new and […]
Online Courses Start Today!
Spring semester begins today in the Royal Fireworks Online Learning Community, but it’s still not too late to register! There are courses in everything from English language arts to Western philosophy, math to drawing, science to fashion design, history to mindfulness training. The choices are varied and diverse, allowing children with a broad range of […]
There’s Still Time to Register for Spring Semester!
The Royal Fireworks Online Learning Community is set to launch the 2021 spring semester on Monday, January 11th, and there’s still time to register for courses! Our staff is working over the weekend to make sure that we meet the high demand from parents and other caregivers for online courses that will challenge children and […]
Spring Semester in the Online Learning Community Begins Monday!
It’s a new year and a new semester in the Royal Fireworks Online Learning Community! Spring semester begins Monday, and we’re offering a variety of courses, from academic subjects such as English language arts (with Michael Clay Thompson), math, history, science, and foreign language study (Spanish and Latin) to topics that are generally considered electives […]
Three-Day Online Workshops Begin Today!
What better way for children to begin the new year than to tackle an intellectual challenge that both stretches their minds and keeps them happily engaged in fun new learning? The Royal Fireworks Online Learning Community has been offering a series of workshops during the winter break, and the last set of workshops is this […]
A Virtual Open House for Our Online Instructors!
The Royal Fireworks Online Learning Community is holding an open house…virtually, because that is how we do things. So if you want to attend, you don’t have to leave home, but you do have to provide the cookies and juice. This open house will give you an idea of the approach of our learning community […]
Special Online Winter Workshops for Kids
Yesterday the Royal Fireworks staff awoke to a dusting of snow. The Christmas decorations are up in front of many houses, SUVs with Christmas trees tied to the top are a common sight, and Hanukkah is here. In other years, children would be looking forward to the excitement of getting together with extended family members […]
New Winter Workshops and Spring Courses in the Royal Fireworks Online Learning Community
Royal Fireworks is continuing to add new workshops to our special winter break session, as well as new courses to our spring offerings, in the Online Learning Community. And there are more new courses to come! Among the new workshops for the winter break are one on math puzzles (offered twice) by Allen Gross, one […]
Workshops to Prevent Holiday Couch Potatoes
This holiday season, we’ve heard from lots of parents who are concerned that, without all of the excitement and stimulation of traditional events and gatherings, many of which have been canceled this year, their kids will become couch potatoes. Royal Fireworks has a solution! We have put together several workshops to form a special winter […]
Royal Fireworks Press Selected for the 2020-21 Best Homeschool Curriculum & Resources List!
Royal Fireworks Press is proud to announce that we have been chosen as one of the winners of HowToHomeschool.net’s 2020-21 Best Homeschool Curriculum & Resources List! We are honored to have been selected to appear on this list, specifically in the category of reading. According to HowToHomeschool.net: “Every year we struggle to find a homeschool […]
Taking the Long View of the Royal Fireworks Online Learning Community
At Royal Fireworks, we are excited about how well our students are doing in our online courses. Year after year, we have seen enormous growth in the children in our classes. We hear constantly from parents who are grateful as they witness the great strides their children have made. And the children themselves are quick […]
Four Royal Fireworks Students Earn National Awards
Royal Fireworks is thrilled to announce that four students in our Online Learning Community have won awards for their creative writing. The students entered a national Halloween Ghost Story contest sponsored by Saugus.net, and the winners were announced on November 1st. All four of the students took online creative writing courses with Myrna Kemnitz, who also worked with each of […]
Online Learning for 2021
Registration for the Royal Fireworks Online Learning Community‘s Spring semester has officially opened! We offer a wide array of courses for students with diverse interests and needs, and we will add more in the weeks ahead. We also have expanded capacities to accommodate more students due to unprecedented demand in our online school and in […]
The Newest Books in the Adventures on the American Frontier Series Are Now Available!
Royal Fireworks Press continues the expansion of our American history series of books with The First American Colonists, the latest addition to the Adventures on the American Frontier collection. The book comes in two formats: a standard novel containing four stories, and a set of four books with special accommodations in place for children who are […]
The Newest Michael Clay Thompson Book Is Now Available!
The newest grammar book by Michael Clay Thompson is here! Poodle and the Blue Mountain Monster introduces children to the parts of the sentence. Once again we follow the adventures of Poodle the chicken; his faithful friend, a beagle named What?; and their companion Sidney, the world’s fastest snail. Now, as the three make their […]
Celebrating Another Award Winner
Royal Fireworks Press is proud to announce that The Day the Thought Bubbles Got in the Way has been honored with the Academics’ Choice Smart Book Award! This prestigious seal of educational quality is reserved only for the best mind-building media. This independent awards program and its seal of excellence are recognized worldwide by consumers and educational institutions as […]
School Starts Soon!
The Royal Fireworks Online Learning Community‘s fall semester begins next week, and we’re excited about the diverse lineup of courses that we’re offering! We provide both single-semester courses and full-year courses that span Fall 2020 and Spring 2021, and it’s not too late to sign up. Michael Clay Thompson is offering all seven levels of […]
A New Novel about the Pioneers of Early America
Fur trapping and trading was the first big business in America. Trappers tramped all across the American wilderness in search of beavers to trap for their thick, lush pelts, and traders followed them upstream, offering them and the Native Americans they encountered goods and supplies in exchange for furs. These men set up trading posts, […]
An Exciting New Online Course
As the pandemic increasingly challenges educational institutions, the Royal Fireworks Online Learning Community continues to try to find more and varied opportunities for our children. Today we are announcing a fall-semester course entitled “The History, Economics, and Design of High Fashion from 1901 to the Present.” This is a fascinating area of inquiry. It has […]
Announcing Advanced Individual Online Learning
We are pleased to announce the availability of opportunities for advanced individual study in the Royal Fireworks Online Learning Community. This is an opportunity for older children to work directly with experts in various fields on projects or areas of intense reading and study. The initial opportunities include history, creative writing, Western philosophy, Eastern philosophy, […]
A Diversity of Online Courses for Children
At the Royal Fireworks Online Learning Community, we continue to think about children and their diverse needs in the current situation, and we continue to expand the learning opportunities that we offer. New to our course offerings is Dr. Rachel McAnallen’s math for highly gifted young children. Dr. McAnallen is one of the country’s most […]
Teaching Young Children about Mindful Eating
It’s not news that too many people today struggle with weight gain and obesity, including our children, who are getting less and less physically healthy at an alarming rate. There are many reasons for this problem, including a lack of exercise, easy access to inexpensive high-fat foods, and a lack of access in some areas […]
Online Courses Allow Children to Meet the Great Minds of the Past
Today is the anniversary of the birth of Alexander the Great in 356 B.C.E., and it’s a good moment to reflect on the greatness of ancient Greece. One of Alexander’s prized possessions was a copy of the Iliad annotated for him by Aristotle, his tutor in his formative years. In the fifth and fourth centuries, […]
Expanded Online Course Offerings from Royal Fireworks
As you consider the educational options for your children this fall, we would like to remind you that the Royal Fireworks Online Learning Community offers an expanding array of high-level courses for children, teens, and young adults. Fields of study range from language arts to math and science. We offer history from ancient Greece and […]
New Online Courses in Biology and Chemistry
As the United States continues to experience ever-increasing levels of Covid-19 infections, and the prospects of returning to a life we knew in 2019 recedes further from us, many children have become curious about the inner workings of the human body—and about science in general. At Royal Fireworks, we are expanding our science offerings for […]
Online Buddhism Workshop to Help Children Learn Mindfulness
Much to our collective dismay, the pandemic in many parts of the country (and the world) is resurging, and local governments are backtracking on—or at least rethinking—their reopening strategies. We were all relieved to be able to go back to parts of our lives that felt normal, but that relief (even if it was tentative) […]
New Dyslexia-Friendly Series of American History Books
At Royal Fireworks Press, we are continually adding to our offerings of books for children who struggle with reading disorders such as dyslexia. Our goal is to welcome into the world of books children who resist reading because it has always been difficult for them. We have published several series of books about American history […]
Summer Writing Courses
It’s not too late to register your child for the special summer writing courses that begin this week in the Royal Fireworks Online Learning Community. There are courses in creative writing and essay writing, both of which are offered at two levels of instruction. All of the live classes will be recorded and viewable at […]
New Online Essay Writing and Creative Writing Courses
As Covid-19 continues to spread across the world and disrupt our assumptions, Royal Fireworks will continue to be flexible in how we help you meet the needs of your children. Today we are announcing new writing courses in the Online Learning Community for the summer in essay writing and creative writing. The courses will begin […]
Some of Our Favorite Novels Re-Released!
Royal Fireworks Press offers dozens upon dozens of novels for children. We choose them carefully and deliberately. We want stories that give children insight into the world, that teach them things they didn’t know, that expand their perspectives about what they think and understand, and that entertain them while doing so. One of our favorite […]
Helping Our Children to Find Resilience
Communities around the world are slowly beginning to reopen. People are starting to resume some of the normal activities that were curtailed by stay-at-home orders. Some people are going back to work. And yet life is anything but normal. Worse, many health experts predict that our desire to return to some semblance of the world […]
Online Learning: A Valuable Way to Spend Time This Summer
While much of America is trying to find ways to occupy time at home, we at Royal Fireworks think it’s the ideal time to introduce children to new topics, expand their minds, and engage their curiosity, as well as to strengthen some of the foundations of core areas of study. Our summer semester begins next […]
A Wide Array of Online Summer Courses
As we face a summer and fall of both social and academic uncertainty, many parents are worried about how to balance the educational needs of their children with their desire to stay safe. At Royal Fireworks, we are expanding our Online Learning Community to meet both goals. We are offering not only the basics in […]
Don’t Miss Stories that the History Books Leave Out
When children read about history, they often do so using history textbooks, which are frequently little more than listings of events and the dates on which they happened. Sometimes, if a child is truly interested in a topic, he or she might read a biography or a book about a specific person or event, but […]
The Philosophy of Entertainment
Royal Fireworks Press has just released our newest set of books in the Western philosophy series: The Transparent Eyeball. The student book, a novel, has an accompanying guidebook that allows children to delve deeply into the philosophical issues that the characters in the novel face. Together, the books provide both an entertaining read and a […]
A New Series That’s Pure Gold for Kids Who Struggle to Read
Royal Fireworks Press has just published the latest series of books in our Adventures on the American Frontier Dyslexia Series collection. Gold Rush Adventures chronicles the California Gold Rush, offering new and diverse perspectives on what the Gold Rush truly was like. The six-part series explains how gold was discovered and the methods used to […]
A New Book about the Woman Who Introduced the World to Computers
When most people think of computer innovation, they think of men like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg. But one of the first people to conceptualize what computers could do was a woman named Ada Lovelace. Lovelace was the daughter of the famous poet Lord Byron, but that was not what she would be […]
Online Courses to Expand Children’s Understanding of World Religions
Religion has been an undeniable force throughout human history, and it remains so today. Influencing everything from literature and philosophy to art and politics, religion is a dynamic dimension of world culture. Developing a basic understanding of the world’s religious traditions is part of an excellent education, allowing students to understand more fully the institutions, […]
New Videos to Learn about the MCT Language Arts Curriculum
The Michael Clay Thompson language arts curriculum is the gold standard. Schools and parents all over the country—and in some cases the world—use the MCT curriculum to give their students and their children a thorough, accessible, challenging education in the language arts. But the MCT curriculum is so comprehensive that it might be intimidating to […]
New Editions of Caesar’s English by MCT!
Royal Fireworks Press is excited to announce new editions of Caesar’s English I and Caesar’s English II. The new books feature QR codes of Michael Clay Thompson reading his poems and stories, as well as some of his expositions on the classic words. Hearing Michael read his work, especially his poems and the author quotes […]
Special May Session of Online Learning, Plus New Summer Courses
As it becomes increasingly clear that schools are not going to reopen this spring and that summer camps and programs are not going to be open or take place, the Royal Fireworks Online Learning Community is adding more and more online courses. To augment the special spring courses we added last month, we are offering […]
There’s Still Time to Sign up for the Spring Session of Our Online School
When schools across the country—and across the world—closed their doors to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus, we at Royal Fireworks put together a special spring session of the Royal Fireworks Online Learning Community to keep children learning, even if they can’t finish out the school year in their traditional classrooms. Our spring session […]
A New Series of Books for Children Who Struggle with Reading
Royal Fireworks Press has published a series of dyslexia-friendly books, adding to our collection of American history books called Adventures on the American Frontier. The release of this series was delayed by the coronavirus crisis, but now that we are settling in to a new work-from-home routine, we see no reason not to announce it […]
Let Our Experts Ease Some of the Burden
It isn’t easy doing something you’ve never done before. It’s even harder if you’ve never been trained how to do it. Lots of parents are in the sudden, unenviable position of having to perform the duties of teacher as schools struggle to implement distance learning options in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Teaching children […]
Special Spring Session of Our Online School Starts Today
We at Royal Fireworks Press have put together a special spring session of courses for the Royal Fireworks Online Learning Community to help parents enable their children to continue learning, despite nationwide school closures. This session is designed to bridge the gap between now and our summer session, which begins the first week of June. […]
A Special Spring Semester of Online Learning for Students Whose School Has Closed
Parenting children has always presented challenges, but with the coronavirus pandemic being responsible for so many school closures, there is now the additional challenge of keeping children academically engaged and progressing without the help of teachers or schools. Royal Fireworks Press has always given special consideration to the academic and intellectual needs of children, and […]
An Honest Look at Irish History
On St. Patrick’s Day, we celebrate by wearing green and painting shamrocks on store windows. But there are other ways to celebrate Irish culture and heritage. This year, grow your understanding of what it means to be Irish with our novel A Thousand Tears. The story takes place during the Great Famine that ravaged Ireland in the […]
It’s March 14th: Pi Day!
When mathematicians get playful, they do things like designating March 14th as Pi Day. After all, who among the mathematically inclined can look at a calendar, see 3.14, and not immediately think, “Hey, that’s pi. We should celebrate!”? At Royal Fireworks Press, this is just the kind of intellectual play that we enjoy—and that we […]
Should We Teach Children about the Black Death Now?
Fears about the coronavirus have swept the world, and children are not immune to feelings of stress and anxiety that they see in the adults around them and that they read in social media and the news. Of course we should teach our children ways to avoid infection, and we should do what we can […]
New Editions of Three MCT Books to Celebrate National Grammar Day
Today is National Grammar Day, making it the perfect day for Royal Fireworks Press to announce the publication of a new edition of Michael Clay Thompson‘s hugely popular grammar texts: The Magic Lens. These books, in three progressive volumes for children in grades 7 and up, are enhanced with a special bonus feature: audio of […]
A Novel to Celebrate World Hearing Day
It’s World Hearing Day, and to celebrate, Royal Fireworks Press is re-releasing a relevant and touching novel for children about hearing loss. What if you woke up one morning, and the entire world was silent? Although it’s rare, this scenario actually happens to some people, and it happened to twelve-year-old David, shattering his dreams of […]
A Book about Bridging Cultures
John Kallas was born in Newark, New Jersey, a first-generation American to Greek immigrant parents. He, his sister, and his two younger brothers were raised in the space between two languages, two cultures, two completely different ways of life. They were the bridge between their Greek parents and their American home. Many American customs were […]
A Timely New Problem-Based Learning Unit
Royal Fireworks Press is pleased to announce the publication of our latest Problem-Based Learning unit for middle schoolers, The Great Debates, which explores how the brand-new medium of television changed the political landscape of the 1960 presidential election. Problem-Based Learning (PBL) units are designed to immerse children in real-world problems by making them key stakeholders in […]
Michael Clay Thompson Receives ANOTHER Award!
Royal Fireworks Press is proud to announce that Michael Clay Thompson’s latest book, Poodle Knows What?, has received a Mom’s Choice Gold Award honoring excellence. The Mom’s Choice Awards program is globally recognized for establishing the benchmark of excellence in family-friendly media, products, and services. This comes on the heels of Practical Homeschooling‘s announcement that […]
New Editions of Some of Our Favorite Novels
At Royal Fireworks Press, we have a wide selection of historical novels that teach children and teens, not just about history, but about character and integrity and the challenges of real-life conflicts and struggles. Many of those novels are time-tested because they have been around for several years. Recently we have reissued new editions of […]
A Look Back at 2019
As we look back on the year as it comes to an end, we at Royal Fireworks Press are pleased by the many accomplishments we were able to achieve in 2019. We published a number of important books, both for children and adults, and we offered an array of online courses that were intellectually stimulating […]
Stress-Reduction Resources for Children and Adults
Stress is a problem for most of our population in today’s world. The pressures are often most acute in children because they generally find themselves in situations and environments that they have not chosen for themselves, and they don’t have effective techniques for dealing with their unpleasant feelings. At Royal Fireworks Press, we are dedicated […]
Royal Fireworks Press Receives Homeschool Award
As we celebrate the forty-second anniversary of the founding of Royal Fireworks Press, we have received word that we have been chosen as one of the howtohomeschool.net 2020 Best Homeschool Curriculum and Resources Award winners. Fittingly, it was for us as an entire company and not simply for our language arts, or philosophy, or math, […]
Four Royal Fireworks Students Earn National Award
Royal Fireworks Press is thrilled to announce that four of the students in our Online Learning Community have won awards for their creative writing. The students entered a national Halloween Ghost Story contest sponsored by Saugus.net, and the winners were announced on Thursday. Both of the students who won at the elementary level are international […]
Another Honor for the MCT Language Arts Curriculum
The readers of Practical Homeschooling magazine have voted Michael Clay Thompson’s language arts curriculum the best for online instruction. The MCT curriculum is available in three forms online. First and foremost, it is taught in many online classes from many different sources. The luckiest children are those who are instructed by Michael Clay Thompson himself […]
The Day the Thoughts Got Stuck Is an Academics’ Choice Award Winner!
We are proud to announce that The Day the Thoughts Got Stuck has received an Academics’ Choice Smart Book Award. The Day the Thoughts Got Stuck is the second book in Ingrid Klass’s series about thinking for young children. In it, readers meet Rosa, a young girl who is unhappy with her birthday gift. Three […]
The Circle of Happiness Receives Mom’s Choice Award
The Circle of Happiness by Ingrid Klass has been given a gold Mom’s Choice Award. The special emphasis on this award is for “items that help families grow emotionally, physically and spiritually; are morally sound and promote good will; and are inspirational and uplifting.” Beautifully illustrated, the book introduces preteens and teens to the fundamentals […]