Benjamin Banneker Posters, Books, Video, Links for Learning
for the science and social studies classrooms, home schoolers.

Books about Benjamin Banneker

Molly Bannaky by Alice McGill, Chris K. Soentpiet (Illustrator) - The story of Benjamin Banneker’s grandmother, the woman who escaped a death sentence in England because she could read and became an indentured servant in Colonial Maryland.

Benjamin Banneker: Astronomer and Mathematician by Laura Baskes Letwin - a superb job of recreating life in Benjamin Banneker’s time. Any young person, but especially an African-American, will be thrilled by this fine and historically accurate biography of a self-taught free black man who helped create our nation’s capital and who corresponded with Thomas Jefferson about slavery.

Benjamin Banneker: Surveyor, Astronomer, Publisher, Patriot by Charles A. Cerami - author mines the available data, eschews the apocryphal, capturing completely is the flowering genius of a largely home-schooled boy wonder, exhibiting mathematical wizardry while devouring the Bible, Plato, and Epictetus.

The Life of Benjamin Banneker: The First African American Man of Science by Silvio A. Bedini - authoritative biography of Banneker will be welcomed by those interested in the history of American science as well as students of black history.

World’s Great Men of Color by J. A. Rogers - a comprehensive account of the great Black personalities in world history.

And Math

The Grapes of Math by Greg Tang, Harry Brigg - How is it possible to count a complicated pattern of strawberry seeds or grapes on a vine or camel humps - in a blink of an eye? If children can open their minds to new ways of perceiving math, anything is possible! Greg Tang shows readers creative ways to use patterns and combinations of numbers to solve math puzzles quickly and effectively.

And look at Mortensen Math - This method where students learn mathematics by seeing, touching and moving colorful blocks and tiles, has been instrumental in producing America’s top mathematics students. Children using this method grow up loving math. There is never any fear or failure. (and see more education resources on our Maria Montessori pages)

And Time

Times Pendulum: From Sundials to Atomic Clocks, the Fascinating History of Timekeeping and How Our Discoveries Changed the World by Jo Ellen Barnett- Drawing from many disciplines, the author has conducted a sweeping survey of our relationship with time, from our earliest attempts to measure and understand it to our more recent breakthroughs with carbon dating and atomic clocks.

Want to know more about time?- visit the Long Now site.

LINKS FOR LEARNING : BENJAMIN BANNEKER

Benjamin Banneker, ThinkQuest Site
Who Was Benjamin Banneker?
Africans in America, PBS
The Official U. S. Time, Nat’l Institute of Standards and Technology