It’s typical for kids to sing songs in kindergarten classrooms to help the learning process along. You already know this well — can you recite the alphabet without getting the “ABC” song in your head? Kim Glover knows this particularly well.

Pop quiz: What town has Nevada’s oldest and smallest school still in continuous operation? If you answered Goodsprings — located just 34 miles southwest of Las Vegas — retired Goodsprings schoolteacher Julie Newberry might just give you a gold star. Talk about resilience.

At-risk kids with ballet dreams find support — and life-changing opportunities — at Nevada Ballet Theatre’s Future Dance program I’ve twice seen Ariel Triunfo dance. The first time was three years ago, when Nevada Ballet Theatre’s 2010 summer intensive classes were wrapping up and the parents of so many ballerinas gathered in Nevada Ballet Theatre’s large Studio B to watch the session’s concluding performance.

The Titanic at Carmine’s An appropriate name for a dish that will sink to the bottom of your belly. The signature dessert at this Italian-American institution is basically a banana split on steroids: Hot brownies are smothered with scoops of ice cream, whipped cream, hot fudge, chopped fruit and cookies.

Set aside the sushi menu. The valley’s new wave of Japanese cuisine boasts rich curries, exotic tapas and deep-fried everything Japanese food in Las Vegas has been about much more than sushi for some time now.

“It was the first and best performance I’ve ever seen.” That’s what a grade-schooler wrote after attending one of the Las Vegas Philharmonic’s Youth Concert Series shows, an annual, five-day tear of concerts at The Smith Center that treats valley fourth- and fifth-graders to what is often their first taste of orchestral music — for many, their first soul-stirring communion with performed music as vigorous, vitalizing art.

On January 1, I’ll have been out of a Nevada business euphemistically called “the gaming industry” for five years. I am not retired, mind you.

If paperback fiction authors are cooks, Las Vegas is the seasoning they want within easy reach. Setting too bland? Nothing a little Sin City can’t fix.

Smith Center The Smith Center’s fall season glitters with a surplus of Broadway divas. Full productions include the nun-tastic Sister Act and the showstopper-packed Evita.

With its bars, boutiques and galleries, Springdale is a cozy and cosmopolitan gateway to Zion Nestled below the towering cliffs at the entrance to Zion National Park, Springdale is probably the most cosmopolitan small town in America — but most tourists seem blissfully unaware of that fact. Most of Zion’s 3 million annual visitors see the town as just a place to park to catch the shuttle in to Zion, and Springdale is fine with that.