Early Learning/Early Childhood
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Our
Holiday Activities and Games page has plenty
of crafts, songs, play, links, and online games for all the holidays.
Counting for pre-K - 1st grade.
Count the puppies! How many puppies?
credit = Woof Woof page on Facebook
We've linked to EL for years, now we're putting a homemade logo in with our "little ones" sites on this page. We want to publicly acknowledge the power of their awesomeness! "Curriculum Material Online -- Over 35,000 Web Pages and over 1,000,000 subscriptions!"
If you haven't visited Educational Freeware lately, you should go see all their new freeware and download what you need/want. They have quality software for free! Of course, they also have online activities.
Two Awesome Visuals on ADHD for Teachers from Educational Technology and Mobile Learning. This page briefly goes over three types of ADHD, then goes straight to the "visuals", or infographics. "To help teachers learn more about ADHD, here are two awesome infographics I want you to have a look at." Rather than discuss them here, we'll let you take a minute to look them over. If you can use them, use them. source : http://info.nspt4kids.com/adhd-infographic/
Five-year-old
Mongol girl practicing the tradtional art of
horseback archery. It got them an empire once.
15
Terrific Turkey Crafts A list of 15 turkey activities for little hands,
collected from around the web by ABC
Creative Learning.
Ingredients are common craftsy and household items. Victoria says: "Thanksgiving
is just right around the corner and one of the best things are the fun Terrific
Turkey Crafts that the kiddos are able to share with family members. I love
hanging my girls fall art work on our walls to show our family friends their
creativity. Check out some of the fun turkey crafts below for some inspiration
this Thanksgiving!
Read more at http://abccreativelearning.com/terrific-turkey-crafts/#SRe6hDCcW5V3FLIC.99"
15+ Sure-Fire Tips for Calming an Angry Child from Lemon Lime Adventures. "Do you have a child who can get frustrated, angry or downright explosive? Do they need your help calming down? If you are a regular here, you know you are not alone. Due to our son’s sensory needs and anxiety we deal with frequent meltdowns and are constantly looking for ways to help him. I am excited today, because I have gathered over 15 resources and tips for calming an angry child that are sure to help you and your child." Obviously not all of these will help with every child, but some will help yours.
20 Mother’s Day Keepsake Gifts That Kids Can Make "Looking for some inspiration for a craft that the kids can make for Mother’s Day? I’ve rounded up some of my favorite keepsake crafts that will make the PERFECT gift for mom. This list includes crafts for children of just about any age, the younger ones will love the handprint & footprint art and the older ones will love creating some colorful masterpieces. These would make the perfect gifts for grandparents too!" These are sooo cute!!
The 25 Best Art Materials for Kids! "The 25 Best Art Materials for Kids! Including The Artful Parent's top 10 can't-live-without, all-time favorites." From Artful Parent. List includes things you know about and things you haven't thought of yet. This site has plenty of other good things as well.
26 More Easy Christmas Ornaments for Toddlers and Preschoolers from Happy Hooligans. "26 MORE easy Christmas ornaments that are quick to set up and simple to do! All of the homemade ornaments in this collection are perfect for last minute Christmas crafting sessions, and if your kids like to give hand-made goodies to friends and relatives, these make terrific, little gift and gift-toppers."
29
Dollar-Store Finds That Will Keep Your Kids Busy All Summer "Beat
boredom on a budget."
BuzzFeed has 29 photos of creative things you can make with things you might
find in a local low-budget store
Each photo has links if you want to find out more.
40 iPad Apps for Reading Disabilities Parents of children with reading disabilities, and educators who work with learning disabled students, are always looking for new tools to help the kids meet their potential and work through their disability. This is a list of 40 iPad apps designed to meet the needs of learning disabled kids and beginning readers alike. The apps are sorted into Helps, Fundamentals, Reading, Writing, and Spelling. This article is posted at Educator Technology and Mobile Learning, where there are a lot more articles like this one.
50 Halloween Craft Ideas For Preschool from No Time for Flashcards Crafty stuff for the younger set. Includes some math activities.
75 TV Free Activities For Toddlers from No Time for Flashcards. Are you running out of things for your bored toddler(s) to do? Want new things that will encourage safe exploration while developing motor skills and problem skills, too? Are you out of ideas today? Then try these 75 safe and (mostly) non-messy activities! (We'd do #3 out in the yard.) There should* be something on here the kids will like. "Kid tested, mother approved." (* Hey, dealing with toddlers here!)
A
SIMPLE Handwriting Trick {FREE Printable} by
thisreadingmama Use these free pinted sheets to practice this trick.
It goes from known to unknown, using c and l as the starts of other letters:
"For example, a, d, g, and q are all formed by starting with the letter
c. My kids knew how to form a c, but would start in all kinds of places to
write the other letters. I also noticed that b, h, k and t all start by forming
an l first." She designed progressively harder writing lines to scaffold
young writers. This is a fine example of adaptive and creative instruction!
Activity Village Here's a site from the UK that will help out parents and teachers. "Welcome to Activity Village, where you will find coloring pages, home school resources, educational resources, kids crafts, puzzles, printables, Sudoku for kids and much, much more ... Click on the menu bars above to explore over 3000 pages of activities to help you keep your kids busy!" Tons of coloring pages! The site has a popup to start, x it out or just subscribe.
Advanced Read-Alouds for Preschoolers A list of 12 well-known children's books to try with preschool kids, from Beyond the Cover. The goal is "to have their mind stretched and challenged, so they can retain and understand things that are more advanced than simple words written down on a book of pictures... This isn’t so easy, trying to find a bunch of books that are advanced for preschoolers, having a great and intriguing story line to keep the attention of your children, and isn’t twaddle. It took me a while to find these books…" If you have preschoolers, and you think they are ready for something a little more advanced, try these books!
Our Read Alouds section has great stories for your littles!
Alphabet Match from Learning 4 Kids "Alphabet match is a fun hands-on activity for kids to help recognise and learn their alphabet letters. It is also a great opportunity to introduce upper case and lower case letters and match them in a fun puzzle like activity... You will need 26 bottle tops, a large sheet of paper, coloured makers and foam letters. These foam letters I picked up at our local craft shop and they have a sticky back which is great for sticking onto the bottle tops..." OK, you get the idea. Easy instructions, using readily available common things. Learning 4 Kids has a lot more of this sort of activity, for different ages and abilities.
Alphabet Song video from Sesame Street India Arie and Elmo sing the ABC song. Cute and instructional.
American Sign Language Learning Aid Link goes to the program page. Download the program here. This is the Windows version, there are others. "A set of programs designed to help the beginner ASL student learn ASL. It is composed of two parts: ASLLA-Dictionary and ASLLA-Fingerspeller. ASLLA-Dict allows the student to look up English->ASL sign. ASLLA-Fspell allows the beginner to practice seeing fingerspelling." Thanks to Andy Uehara, who wrote these programs and is deaf, if that matters to you. Cool. A short manual and other info may be found inside the unzipped program folder. Found it on Sourceforge.
Aussie
Kids Songs Watch the best Aussie Kids Songs for Australia together with
Kangaroos, Koalas, the Australian Outback, Sydney Opera House, Ruby, and more!
:-) It's the Aussie Kids Songs YouTube Channel.
Here's a sample: Kookaburra
Sits In The Old Gum Tree.
BBC Education - Snapdragon - Tell the Time Cute little activity teaches the hours in English and Cymru(Welsh)! Kids can make the hands move.
Bembo's Zoo A nice little site to teach ABCs. Really good animation and sounds!
Billion-Story Building from What If?, a part of xkcd. "My daughter—age 4.5—maintains she wants a billion-story building. It turns out not only is that hard to help her appreciate this size, I am not at all able to explain all of the other difficulties you'd have to overcome." What If? makes a good effort to explain it to her like she's five (4 ½?). "If you make a building too big, the top part is heavy and it squishes the bottom part." Then drawings with circles and arrows, etc., are used to play with the idea, which really is interesting to see and read. Yes, there's physics, but mainly 5 year olds' physics.
Brain Teasers Here are 22 early learning games also suitable for Special Education use. Memory Attention games "are designed to exercise the processes involved in attending to and remembering information." Sound Discrimination games "work at training the basic fundamentals necessary for language, listening, and reading." Sounds like a novel and overdue approach. (and the games are kinda fun)
Brain Workshop "What if a simple mental exercise could improve your memory and intelligence? A recent study published in PNAS, an important scientific journal, shows that a particular memory task called Dual N-Back may actually improve working memory (short term memory) and fluid intelligence. This finding is important because fluid intelligence was previously thought to be unchangeable. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the dual n-back task also enhances focus and attention and may help improve the symptoms of ADHD/ADD. The game involves remembering a sequence of spoken letters and a sequence of positions of a square at the same time. Brain Workshop is a free open-source version of the Dual N-Back mental exercise. Easy download, easy install. Another SourceForge discovery.
Bratz to BFF's "Dolls' curvy, idealized bodies, overt makeup, and even skin tone can greatly affect the way young girls perceive themselves... How do you provide a little girl with this traditional and sentimental gift without the potential of harming her sense of self?" - Emerald Pellot #LittleThings.com. One Tasmanian mum's home project aims to "give old toys a new lease on life and a more down to earth, natural looking style." - Sonia Singh, artist and mum. How? As Emerald Pellot's headline says: She Takes Off A Doll’s Face With Nail Polish Remover. When You See The Result You’ll Want One! The video, which shows lots of little girls playing with dolls, is in the linked article. Sonia Singh's doll site, Tree Change Dolls, has even more dolls. Nobody thought this would go viral but did! It's tapped into a reservoir of concern.
Bug and Insect Crafts for Kids "How to Make Bug and Insect Crafts to use in Your Home School and Preschool. Insect Crafts, Science, and Creative Writing Learning Activities for Home School. Use 'nature bugs' in your science class to teach about insects and spiders, in your English class to promote creative writing or technical writing, and in your art class to promote creativity." Bunches of inexpensive kid-friendly craft projects. Make various insects, some spiders, and paper roly-polys (sowbugs, woodlouse). Everything's illustrated, with written instructions and parts lists, like a cookbook's recipes!
Child Magic A smaller but growing Pinterest page by Bee Lundgren. A mescellany of good ideas, creative activities, humor, even stress management for kids. IMO for toddlers through primary grades.
Childsplay "is a suite of educational games for young children." 14 games in all. We've used these with 5 - 8 year olds and the games are excellent! Free to you (GNU-GPL licensed) and ready to download and install. Another excellent effort from an independent programmer, courtesy of Sourceforge.
ChuChu TV Nursery Rhymes A YouTube channel with five million subscribers! "We're celebrating a month of reading fun on YouTube Kids. Playing in the Park Song for Kids by #ChuChuTV. Make your kids learn the playground items sight words by playing in the Merry-Go-Round, Slide, See Saw, Swing, and Rocker. Come #readalong with us!" Includes original rhymes and traditional ones. Many different rhymes, including some in Spanish. One of their rhymes has over nine million views!
Cookie from Gudlidotcom "Provides Free online learning games, Educational lessons plans, Kids learning games, Free games for kids, Worksheets Etc. Gudli is the best free online games website including many categories like learning games, kids games, math games, puzzle games, science games etc. which are free to use for 'Early childhood Education' and 'pre-school Education' for kids.... Gudli is a unique online experience for kids where they enjoy learning. With our interactive educational games children develop skills in maths, logic, memory, words, creativity and more. Gudli is free, full of fun, easy to use and the ideal learning space for preschoolers to second grade kids." Well, the proof of the pudding and all that: all the activities are colorful, musical, and informative. There are plenty of games and videos, this is a great learning site and will make a fine addition to Good Sites for Kids. Thank you, Neeta Saini, for the email!
The Craft Train "Crafty Ideas for Kids and Parents." Bunches of crafts (200?) organized by categories. It's all things kids can make. Toilet Roll Bunnies (cute!), egg carton jewelry boxes, tinfoil tiaras, and a couple of hundred more ideas, all with parts lists and photos of steps.
Crafts and Activities for Chinese New Year from Enchanted Learning is a page with both crafts and printables, plus information about the holiday. EL's usual excellent work here.
Crystallized Icicle Ornaments with Borax - Make shimmering crystallized icicle ornaments with pipe cleaners, Borax and water! It's a classic science experiment and a Christmas craft all in one! From Happy Hooligans, "Crafts and Activities for Toddlers and Preschoolers".
Cuddle
Berries - Nursery Rhymes & More All your favourite traditional nursery
rhymes animated and set to music.
"Cuddle Berries helps create a fun filled environment of rhymes and rhythms
for tiny minds.
An interactive platform for both parents and children to connect and reconnect
to a sense of wonder
and joy with colours, shapes, words and sounds.
With Cuddle Berries, we will cater to children of younger ages,
from a few months old to 6 years.
We have developed nursery rhymes, with world class animation. The appealing
and colourful visuals
help a child engage and sing a long with a familiar rhyme and exciting music.
Research has shown children love to sway, move and get involved
in variations in tones and vocal modulation,
sometimes even imitating sounds to communicate. Repetition of rhymes and singing
helps a child develop language skills
and creates a desire to read and write. Rhymes with visuals help a child form
word and sound associations.
Do enjoy the Cuddle Berries experience. Join us for a sing a long with your
child!
Cyberkidz "is an educational platform for boys and girls in the age of 4 till 12 years. By playing the educational games, children will practise subjects they learn in elementary school (PK-5)." The games are sorted by year from age 4 to 12, using a sliding bar. There are dozens of fun, playable games in every curriculum category, with new ones being added. This is an excellent site from the Netherlands.
Dolch Word Lists from Jan Brett. "11 full-sized, printable lists with Jan Brett artwork." Great Jan Brett art, 20 words per page.
Dolch words page from Education Oasis. "Dolch "Basic Sight Words" are the 220 most frequently occurring words in children's books, excluding nouns. Because many of the words do not follow decoding rules, they cannot be sounded out. Thus, they are learned by sight. Dolch sight words comprise 52-75 percent of all words found in children's books." These can be printed out for your use.
Drawing for Children is a great, very cool, free download (Windows only) from the Netherlands. It says "drawing" but it has been used in computer labs for language arts, too! You can enter text and load .bmp files from Windows Paint. "Drawing for Children is a free drawing program for children with many nice options. The best way to learn to use it is simply to use it. There is though a document describing the use of the program. For more information, see the readme file."
EFL/ESL Games for Kids Online Free Interactive from TurtleDairy. "Our interactive EFL/ESL games and online activities teach kids letter recognition and writing in an easy, comprehensive manner. Preschoolers are introduced to phonics and rhyming words which help in early reading and writing skills. For more mature learners, we offer a wide range of vocabulary and grammar exercises." 13 pre-K, 27 K, 20 1st grade, and 18 2nd grade games.
Eagles Internet Resources from the Grain Valley School District, Grain Valley, Missouri. This is vast! A great and awesome resource for any school or district. Their lists of sites are literally too long to list in this space! Here's a list of SOME of the main topics (academics only - there are more). Be aware that each is broken out into many subtopics. Each subtopic has a list of relevant sites.
Once again, we urge you to "look upon these wonders, O Unbeliever, and be amazed."
Early Learning "This page features early learning websites for young toddlers and pre-schoolers. Fun ways to introduce your toddler to their abc, 123, shapes and colours with great games, downloads and flash cards." Also sites for older children. There are some wonderful things on here, many of which were new to us! Part of allkids, a fine learning & shopping site from the UK.
Early Learning from Learning Planet. Eighteen games cover ABC and 123 order, upper and lowercase matching, early telling time, early money.
Educational games from Digipuzzle.net. "On this page you can find the overview of the educational games from Digipuzzle.net. All games can be played full screen on a PC, a tablet (Android Tablets, iPad, etc) or mobile phone (Android, iOS)." Here's a diverse group of kids' games, from numeracy to multiplication, with some early language arts, some geography, time, hieroglyphics, and some money math. Here they are by subject with the number of games in parentheses:
A big Thank You to Marcel van de Wouw. These are nice!
Encyclopedia Interactica is part of the incredible subscription-only Poisson Rouge (Red Fish) site. Here are 35 simple, well made activities for younger kids that track life cycles of frogs and butterflies, simple math, Pythagorean theorem, why aircraft wings lift weight, the orbits of planets, sizes of blue whales and 747s, solar panels, teeth, inner ears, warm and cold ocean currents; oh, there's so much - and all interactive!
Free Worksheets for Kids from K-5 Learning. This is a commercial site with a good reputation. They offer quite a bit of free material. "Our website has free resources for preschool through grade 5 kids... We have:
Mastering these worksheets would give students a solid foundation to build on. Thanks to Joy for her email.
funathomewithkids.com is a Pinterest page with sensory based activities for toddlers and preschool. Pins are focused on the senses. 155 pins gathered from around the web. Emphasis is on home made, inexpensive goodies for kids to feel, grab, squeeze, small, and sometimes eat! "Safe, edible glow water", "Recipe for an ultra fun and stretchy Polka Dot Slime!", "Rainbow Soap Foam Bubbles Sensory Play", kid-safe glittery slime, "No-Cook Edible Chia, Flax, and Seedless Slime Recipes", and much more! Who knew little folks could have so much fun discovering so much!
Fungooms This is just so great, wonderful things in the spirit of Poisson Rouge and BooBah but it's definitely in its very own realm of wonder. Can't wait to try this out on our favorite small people! Very ingenious and creative! Kudos to Ned Langman for his amazing site!"Welcome to Fungoom Land! Here you will find funny characters, simple games, music, stories and a gentle learning experience for young children. All for free! This site has been designed to be enjoyed on many levels:
Babies accompanied by grown-ups can enjoy the music, bright
colours and simple shapes.
Children of pre-school age can have fun learning mouse control and interacting
with the funny characters, learning while they laugh.
Older children will also enjoy the humour, and the challenging fun of discovering
and collecting all the stars.
Grown-ups have even said that they've enjoyed playing the games to relax!"
Looove it!
Games for the Brain. "Play neverending quiz, memory & brain games to train your thinking." Around 40 games, some old, some newer, and the site is available in many languages. Easy to play, good for your mind.
GCompris Our first app from France! Available in over 40 languages (see their main page for a list). "GCompris is an educational software suite comprising of numerous activities for children aged 2 to 10...Currently GCompris offers in excess of 80 activities and more are being developed. GCompris is free software, that means that you can adapt it to your own needs, improve it and, most importantly, share it with children everywhere." Computer discovery, color, sounds, memory, experiential, amusement, reading, mathematics, puzzles,telling time, money, and strategy games like macala. Some of these will really make a child think! Another SourceForge find.
Groundhog Day from Starfall. "Groundhog, groundhog, what will you see? Groundhog, groundhog, please tell me!" Clicking on the alarm clock makes the groundhog sit up and rub its eyes. The next frame lets kids click on the words to see pronunciation; then click on the groundhog and it runs up the tunnel!
Growing Beans on Cotton Balls from The Imagination Tree. "This is a really easy, visual way to teach children about root systems and is something I used to do with my school children each Spring time. Plus it’s very exciting to watch how FAST the plants grow! All you need for this easy activity is a glass jar or bottle, some cotton wool balls/ wads and a bean!" Anna Ranson is a veteran early education/art teacher and (now) stay-at-home mother of four littles. She has an amazing site full of low-budget activities and learning ideas for babies up into school age. There's a gallery of growing bean photos with descriptions of the learning going on. At the bottom are Extension Activities/Learning Links for older kids tie into science, mathematics, literacy, and PSHE (personal, social, health and economic education). If you like this, she has dozens? scores? hundreds? of other good things to try!
Halloween Math Activities for Kids from No Time for Flashcards A list of fun and crafty hands-on math activities for the littler kids, full of manipulatives. There are more at the bottom of the page under More Fun & Learning.
Halloween Music & Songs by Preschool Education Over 90 poems and songs for Halloween, with lyrics. This site also has fall themes, pages for other holidays, coloring pages, crafts, and plenty of other pre-K things.
Halloween Songs, Poems, and Fingerplays by Pre-K Fun. 16 songs and poems for little ones to sing along, act out, finger play, get craftsy with, and whatever else your creativity finds to do with them. Includes all the lyrics. Pre-K Fun looks like a site worth several visits.
Halloween Songs and Activities for Calendar Time We found this page at Fantastic Fun and Learning, where there are hundreds of activities, crafts, songs, movement, dances, arty things, ideas, and many links; all pre-K and K related. They, in turn, got these from similar sites. Very, very nice. Check out the Skeleton Dance!
Pins from Happy Hooligans This is the Pinterest page from Happy Hooligans, a well known Canadian craftsy preschool site. Plenty of crafts, gifts that kiddos can make, recipes, advice, and more.
Happy Thanksgiving Coloring Pages from coloringpages.pics. Here are six printable Thanksgiving coloring pages, from easy to hard. like a challenge? Do the paint by numbers turkey.
Happy Thanksgiving Drawings from Free Internet Pictures. Here are six printable Thanksgiving coloring pages. Six more like these are available here. There are a few Thanksgiving pumpkin sheets here
Hellokids.com
"is amongst the best websites for kids' activities. We offer you coloring
pages
that you can either print or do online, drawings and drawing lessons, various
craft activities for
children of all ages, videos, games, songs and even wonderful readings for
bedtime."
Horazio's Freeware A real potpourri of good free download ed games, by a guy from Venice, Italy, named Horazio. Among them is TurboFarm, for 5 - 7 year olds, which is an animal names matching game. There are also some excellent interactive map games to help kids learn the names of states or regions. Examples are Liberty Map to teach the names of US states, another for Greater London, one for Italy, etc. There are also games to learn Japanese characters, vector math plotters, calorie counters, and more. Your choice of English, Italian, and Spanish (one game also has Korean.) "Grazie Horazio!"
I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly from Tom's TEFL out of Hong Kong. This is a video of an activity to reinforce vocabulary. It should work with ESL students of all ages and with Early Learners/lower level grade school. It could teach vocabulary, rhythm, intro to poetry, etc. Under the video there are the lyrics used. The activity could be copied and used with your students. Judy Collins - "Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly" Muppet Show 1977 has the lyrics set to music and is hilarious for kids and adults!
Jumpstart is a familar name with subscription games and free goodies, too. A good sized free pdf worksheet section and more besides. Mostly for the younger set.
KA has 100 free games indexed alphabetically; and by grade (pre-K - 6), subject (the 3 Rs plus Animals and Science), age (toddler to 12), and arcade games. There are mobile games, too. Down at the bottom there's an idex of all three sites' game, activities, worksheets, curriculum, resources list, and lesson plans.
Kea Coloring Book "The NEW VERSION of Kea Coloring Book features higher resolution pictures, a resizable window, and improved graphics. All the fun. None of the mess!" This free program lets kids color, save and print. It's like a coloring book on your computer. At least 250 more pictures can be downloaded from the site and added to the coloring books. You can download the program at various download sites (the Kea site links to C/NET's Download, which works fine.)
Keyboarding Zoo "is a fun and educational activity to help early elementary age students learn the keyboard. Children are encouraged to use their index or pointer fingers to match letters on the screen to their keyboards." With music and talking monkeys! For grades K - 2.
Kids' Pages for Small Ages features "free printable ESL flashcards, worksheets, coloring pages, an alphabet for teachers, parents and children, educative stories like Aesop's Fables, or fairy-tales by Christian Anderson or Brothers Grimm, online games and puzzles." Very colorful and kid friendly, with a good selection of printables. Thanks, Thea, for the email about your site!
kidsGoflash "Hi, need 30 minutes down time with your tots after running around? Looking for new materials for your kid's early education or home schooling? Want to teach them new words, animals, numbers, shapes, and more? Want to show them what they can do with a computer and the Internet? Take a seat with them, come to kidsGoflash.com, and explore this website with different kinds of interactive early education materials such as audio flashcards, clickable pictures, and learning games."
Kinder (104 pins) Here's a nice, craftsy page for the Pre-K and primary grades. Lots of ideas for the teachers: bulletin boards, classroom design, room and window decorations, etc. Hands-on art and crafts for little people, motor skill practice, pretending. A charming page with plenty of little treasures.
Kindergarten
Math Games collection from Turtle
Diary has about 60 games for young ones.
Colorful, loud, will hold interest.
Kizclub "Learning Resources for Kids" This site has many, many printables in pdf format that cover the early learning/primary curriculum. These include ABCs, phonics, nursery rhymes, flashcards, animals, habitats, stories & props, extras, and more. No interactives, it's all tablework. You could make bulletin boards and all sorts of crafty things with these materials.
Leaves
Math Activity for Preschool "Children are naturally curious about
the world around them. When you use things found in the natural environment
to teach basic concepts, it is easier to capture and hold the attention of
young children. Using leaves in the fall or spring is a perfect example!"
"We inspected and talked about the actual leaves. We used different words
to describe the leaves–soft, rough, waxy, prickly to broaden our vocabulary
and develop oral language skills. Next, we sorted leaves by size and used
more words to describe the leaves–tiny leaves, medium leaves, and some
rather skinny looking leaves. We lined the leaves up and counted how many
of each kind we had picked on our walk- which is a great classification activity!
Create patterns with your leaves; group, sort, classify, and count –
your children can practice all these math concepts." This is exceptional
- use inexpensive, easily procured manipulatives to teach basic concepts to
little ones.
Learning Games For Kids "Educational games are a great tool for building foundation math and language skills that today's elementary school curriculum requires. These online learning games and songs for kids are fun, teach important skills for preschool and elementary school kids and they're free. Want educational games that help build skills in math, language, science, social studies, and more? You've come to the right place!" Also we love their layout.
Learning Planet This is a subscription site, but it has a number of excellent free online ed games. (They have many more activities available if you subscribe.) We especially liked Alphabet Action for pre-K and Kindergarten. The Students page menu is laid out for pre-K and K, 2nd - 4th, and 6th and up grades. Each grade level page has grade-appropriate math, literacy, telling time, counting, matching (1:1),and/or geography games. Make sure to try Rats (pre-K through 6th grade - use the arrow keys.)
Letter Recognition in a Play-Based Environment from A Blog From Across The Hall. A one-page sharing by a preschool teacher, about how she gently introduces letters and watches the children use them in creative play. We at GSFK believe this works if a teacher is willing to constantly monitor their learning and let them interact. Preschool teachers do this as a matter of course anyway. This teacher observes that no three year old child has ever asked her for a worksheet, and drilling will not work with such small people.
Lining Up Strategies to help you get younger kids to behave waiting in a line. If you don't think this is a challenge, you haven't taught Kindergarten! Trust PE teachers to come up with these good ideas. From PE Central.
Literacy Net This is a great interactive site for learning letters, numbers, shapes, and colors! Animated, with sound. Also in German, French, and Spanish!
The Little Animals Activity Centre BBC have archived this web page and it's no longer updated. Still good, though! Make things with Micky Maker (simple crafts). Play word games with Digby Mole. Foxy Dancer plays rhymes or music games (1:1 correspondence/memory drills). Storybear reads three interactive stories aloud (already in Readalouds). Puzzlesnuff has all sorts of puzzles and games. Count Hoot counts and plays numeracy games. Really a loveable sweet site.
Little Discoverers: Big fun with science, math, and more! Sesame Street's STEM for early learners. This is a combination of games and videos for all six of the covered concepts: Experiments, Sink or Float, Measurement, States of Matter, Force and Motion, and Engineering. The concept buttons are arranged 3X2 on the sides of the video player. Each concept has 6 - 8 games and videos along the bottom of the screen, for kids to check out. Nicely arranged and does a good job of covering the very basic introductions to these concepts and ideas.
Marshmallow Snowman from No Time for Flashcards. In this cute activity, small kids will practice fine motor skill, counting, following directions, hand-eye coordination. This is an easy and fun activity. It should easily lead to some teachable moments so parents could insert their own small lessons. Part of an impressive site.
Microwave Marshmallow Experimentfrom TinkerLab. Excellent discovery experiment for preschool and K-1s. "For this microwave marshmallow experiment, we’ll microwave three marshmallows for different periods of time, and then compare what happens to the marshmallows as they heat up, and then cool down again. This is an engaging way to involve children in scientific observation and discovery, it raises lots of questions, and doesn’t require a lot of prep or clean-up." Items list and instructions included.
Minimouse Think kids don't need help learning to use a mouse? Quite a few do, actually. Some children do not have a computer at home. Pre-K and K-1s need the fine motor practice. In any case, these are nice simple little-kid games - loud and in bright, primary colors. The games are patient, non-judgmental, and do not keep score. Thanks, Yossi B, for the email.
Minisebran - Freeware For Toddlers. This is from Marianne Wartoft, a very intelligent Swede who has also created the excellent Sebran and Seterra (best geography freeware EVER for kids AND adults!), among others. "Minisebran is a free suite of early learning games for kids 2-6 years old . It includes eight different exercises, including doodle drawing exercises and very simple games to get to know the numbers and letters, and learning to use the keyboard." We've played with it, it's fun! It would be useful for K - 1 as well as some special needs, and good for training fine motor skills.
Miss Mary Mack Good ol' kids' impromptu hand clapping! This particular song is American, but no one knows its provenance. Kids do this on playgrounds, at home, and anywhere they might get bored (such as in a line). The links all feature the lyrics and demonstrate the various invented clapping rhythms, such as in these three videos. Two sisters do their version on a sidewalk in this clip. Someday, someone will get an advanced degree in Linguistics analyzing these clapping songs.
Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack
All dressed in black, black, black
With silver buttons, buttons, buttons
All down her back, back, back
She asked her mother, mother, mother
For fifty cents, cents, cents
To see the elephants, elephants, elephants
Jump over the fence, fence, fence
They jumped so high, high, high
They touched the sky, sky, sky
And didn’t come back, back, back
Till the fourth of July, July, July
" is a fresh approach to content for kids with the perfect blend of fun and learning that helps the left & the right brained child learn through experiences. Mocomi.com endeavours to create the best and most comprehensive platform for kids in India." That would go for kids worldwide, too! Excellent site throughout. Take a deep breath..They have arts & crafts, coloring, drawing animals, printables (cards, puzzles, bookmarks, et c.), many online games, tons of Indian folk tales from all over the subcontinent (indexed by region/culture/tradition), lots of old-time English nursery rhymes and tales, educational pages (lots) with multimedia presentations (wow) and printables, covering maths, English, science, history, geography, general knowledge, and a lot more.
Montessori-Inspired Arctic and Antarctic Unit from Living Montessori Now. Lists many activities, downloadables, ideas, and resources for learning about the Arctic and Antarctic regions, and the continent of Antarctica. Aimed at younger kids and homeschoolers but could be adapted for use in classrooms or with older kids. We really liked the link to learning the continents that the Antarctica unit is a part of. Too many kids and adults do not know their continents, and schools seem helpless to change that. Some of the items are free to download or copy, for others there is a fee. Plenty of links to other Montessori-inspired and homeschool sites, too.
Music from Starfall is part of Starfall's literacy site. This section covers some of the main composers, with biographies, and plays some of their music as well.
National Children's Literacy Website "Because Children Need to Read - More than any other single skill, the ability to read - and read well - allows a child to succeed in school, learn about the world, function in society, and someday have decent job options. Enhancing children's literacy is at the heart of the Soho Center's NATIONAL CHILDREN'S LITERACY INFORMATION project - a national children's literacy initiative. The Soho Center is committed to promoting children's literacy in child care settings and home settings. Whether you are a family child care provider, a teacher in a child care center or Head Start program, or a parent of a pre-school or school-age child - there's a lot you can do." This site has quite a lot of good advice, tips, and resources for any child care teacher or home schooling parent. We are very grateful to Jeanna Beker, Director, The Soho Center for emailing us about The Soho Center and its excellent literacy site!
No Screen-time Until (free printable) from Your Modern Family "It can be easy for us to just let our kids lounge around and hop online or turn on the TV when they are bored, but my husband and I really try to keep a limit on those things. That is where our home rules come into play. The main idea behind this is to give our kids something “else” to get “lost in”… Sometimes kids just need a little motivation to get started (once our kids head outside to play, they forget about watching a movie or playing on the tablet). If I let them just sit & default to screen-time, it will consume as much time as I allow. Why not just encourage them to get out or do something ELSE first and see where THAT takes them?" They suggest this for summer or no-school days.
Nocturnal Animals Unit - a Pinterest board by Kristina Abernathy. Mainly aimed at younger kids pre-K - 2nd or 3rd. Over 50 activities in all; plenty of crafts, also children's literature, grammar, KWL, elementary science and vocabulary, counting mathematic, printable sheets, items for bulletin boards, and miscellany. Mostly covers bats and owls, but some sections discuss deer, badgers etc.
Owl & Mouse Educational Software Great phonics software that reminds us of the old MECC Apple games of the 1980s. Free software for you to download and install, or play online. Their plug: "Help your child learn with games, software and educational activities from Owl & Mouse Educational Software. Early reading software—phonics software, alphabet games, and Dolch sight words in a fairy tale story. All of it FREE! Free online USA maps, world maps, map of Europe, map puzzles of the US, Europe, Africa, Asia, and many more. You can build your own castle and coat of arms—free downloads."
Phonics from Sadlier-Oxford Educational Publishing. Huge! site. Great online practice games for preshool through grade 6. Covers phonics, sight words, rhyming, vowel and consonant blends, digraphs, beginning and ending consonants, dipthongs, suffixes, contractions, prefixes, synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, dictionary use, root words, complete sentences, syllables. All this from one start page that uses popups for each activity - so don't have popups blocked.
Planning Playtime From Utah, USA. "Awesome Educational Activities for kids, Crafts for kids, and other fun kid pins. Activities & worksheets for toddlers, preschool, kindergarten, & first grade." We saw their paper cup math video on FaceBook and we knew we had to post this site! Just like their Pinterest blurb says above, they are all that. This mom of five and sibling of 11 has excellent offerings for younger kids.
Poisson Rouge A delightful hands-on exploration site from France, just one site of many brought to you by Kids Activities from allkids, a fine learning site from the UK. Just all sorts of fun things to click on here. It's now a subscription site.
Prehistoric
Animal Brigade This rhythmic little kids' song is from Australia! It's
been popular down under for many years. Watch the videos, see the movement,
and you'll quickly understand why! It's repetitive, gets kids up and moving,
and it "Must be sung loud and raucously, with not too much attention
to correctness of lyrics."
This version, "Our
Keira singing the Prehistoric Brigade song", shows that even awesomely
cute toddlers claim the song as their own.
Alternate
version 1 A young lady sings while showing the hand and arm movements,
as she recalls them
Alternate
Version 2 Audio only, a female chorus sings, accompanied by a big band.
Alternate
Version 3 Audio only, part of the Josephine's Action Songs For Children
series, sound track written for dancing.
Watch them all, then make up your own! Going in Early
Learning, Homeschool, Literacy > ESL
and Speech and Speaking,
and Music.
The Prehistoric
Animal Brigade (M L Reeve)
Listen to the chorus,
Of the brontosaurus (some versions use "brachiosaurus")
And the stegosaurus
Down by the swamp.
Along comes a dinosaur,
Making such a loud roar,
Thumping with his feet and going
Stomp, stomp, stomp.
Pterodactlyl flapping,
Long beak clacking,
Big teeth snapping,
Down from a tree.
Here's a woolly mammoth,
Tusks all curly,
Joins the hurly burly.
Oh dear me!
What a noise! (What a noise!)
It's the boys (It’s the boys) (some versions: "It's the noise")
Of the Prehistoric Animal Brigade!
Preschool Halloween Songs and Music from Everything Preschool. "Our Preschool Halloween Songs and Music contains the most complete Early Childhood Education Halloween Songs and Music Ideas on the internet." Has lyrics for twelve Halloween songs. This site also has Halloween crafts, games, preschool science (counting and crafts), five printable coloring pages, lots of well organized recipes for gross Halloween stuff, and bulletin board activities. Everything Preschool also has lesson plans and themes for teacher's use. "Our site contains Over 30,000 Preschool Education Activities Seperated into over 100 Themes, 26 Alphabet Areas, & Lesson Plans."
Rainbow Jar A Kids' Science Experiment. Written by a National Board-certified Kindergarten teacher. For pre-K and K-1 learners. Teaches the concept of density. Use common household ingredients to make a rainbow jar. Article includes the materials list, recipe, photos, and lesson plan.
Rats from Learning Planet Different difficulty levels for pre-K to 6th grade. Covers shapes, letters, vowels & consonant, and parts of speech. Use the arrow keys to move the basket, try to keep under the bird.
Read Alouds section of Good Sites for Kids! has some wonderful read aloud sites for you and your kids! (shameless self-promotion) These are seriously good.
Reading Rockets "is a national multimedia literacy initiative offering information and resources on how young kids learn to read, why so many struggle, and how caring adults can help. We bring the best research-based strategies to anyone helping a young child become a strong, confident reader. The project includes PBS television programs (also available online and on DVD); online services (ReadingRockets.org and ColorinColorado.org); professional development opportunities; and a robust social community on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Tumblr." (edited by us) Big sections on: teaching reading (lots of tips & ideas), helping strugglers (ditto), A-Z list of topics ("a rich library of classroom strategies" 44 topics!), children's books and authors (including booklists and how to choose books), fun things to order, and more.
Screenshot of Roxie beating you at Go Fish.
Roxie's ABC Fish is a computer version of the venerable children's card game. Practice upper and lower case letters, numbers, and a surprise music composition program at the end! Thanks to its publisher, Latticework Software (thanks guys), Roxie is now freeware!
St. Patrick's Day Craft Party! Step by step with photos Making crafts for the holiday followed by a treasure hunt around the house and yard to find clue cards. Easy to adapt to a classroom.
scissor exercises for children from happy hooligans "Little people exploring their world through good, old-fashioned play". Here are five "fun scissor exercises for children to strengthen fine motor skills. Introducing interesting materials for your child to cut up is a fun way to help little hands develop their cutting skills." She covers practical tips and suggestions about littles using scissors, and then covers (1) Using scissors with play dough, (2) Cutting up drinking straws, (3) Cutting styrofoam meat trays, (4) Cutting paint chip samples, and (5) Using Scrapbook scissors or scissors with a fancy edge. Very well done, we thought.
Sebran's ABC - Free Software For Kids "It's never too early for your child to become familiar with letters and numbers. Sebran's ABC's colorful pictures, pleasant music, and gentle games teach letters, numbers, simple math, and rudiments of reading." Free to you under GNU license. Reviews are posted on the site. We've "field tested" Sebran with 5 - 10 year olds. The games are good, they work. Kids like them, too. Thank you to Marianne Wartoft of Uppsala, Sweden, who wrote this fine software! You can fine various good places to download Sebran, just Google Sebran.
Sesame Street Still helping little ones, since the 1960s. Their site has oodles of activities about letters, numbers, coloring, music, eating healthy, and much more. Let kids click and explore! Some activities require Java or Flash.
Click on the duck to see the famous Rubber Duckie video!
Sight Words from Quiz-Tree.Realizing that some of our younger kids were memorizing their little easy reader books, we went looking for something online to reinforce their sight word knowledge. Shortly after clicking on this site's pre-primer word list, a teacher commented: "We need this site!" It says the words aloud, too. So, here it is. Part of a larger academic site, and free membership brings lots more goodies.
Signing Savvy THE place to go for ASL! "Signing Savvy is a sign language dictionary containing several thousand high resolution videos of American Sign Language (ASL) signs, fingerspelled words, and other common signs used within the United States and Canada." Watching a video of the signing is way better than looking at a picture with confusing curving arrows. This site will help you learn ASL! Includes search for words and phrases; or browse by letter. Look up fingerspelling, numbers, colors, animals, geography, baby signs, more! Free but limited access for guests. Full membership gives unlimited access to all site resources for $50 a year. Normally Good Sites would not run pay sites, but if you need to learn to sign this is worth it. Thanks Corey W. and Teri T.
SillyBooks Here's a site with several animated talking stories, one that has to be read, and two pages of online jigsaw puzzles. Should be useful for anyone looking for more stories and the puzzles are simple.
Songs from British Council. Dozens of good kid songs, old and new. In Flash or as video. Great for singing along. "Do you like listening to songs in English? Singing songs is a great way to get better at speaking English and we have lots of great songs for you to enjoy! Have fun!"
Soup Toys You have got to try this it is amazing! "Just about every child likes to play with toys that make noise, balance, topple, float or otherwise interact with the world. Balls bounce, balloons float into the sky and magnets lift metal objects. All of these interactions teach children something the natural world around them. The beauty of Soup Toys is that it isn't confined to a single Window. When you run it, you have access to a virtual "toybox" where you can pull out the desktop toys that you want to play with. The sides of your computer screen act like walls and the floor. You can build block castles, play with toy cars, or have fun with virtual magnets. The possibilities are limitless." Kids can't believe they can bounce a basketball across a Word document! This was from the comprehensive writeup in Educational Freeware. We found a working download site here. BTW even 12 year olds like it.
spacedrum! is one of 400+ projects at chromeexperiments. spacedrum! lets you play steel drums wid de mouse, mon. Your choice of 6-note, 8-note, or 13-note drums. Play all kinds of melodies, tape your best ones, and replay them! Very simple and a lot of fun. (Actually not all that simple, but good coding makes it seem so.)
StarFall Fantastic phonics-intensive site for pre-k through second grade. Stories, movies, and games! Progressive levels let kids read or be read to. Every time we go to this site with K-2 kids, we find something new and great! This site WILL keep those busy little brains going for a whole computer lab session! Thanks, Tia S., amazing Kindergarten teacher.
Super Coloring "Search through 16912 colorings" Here's another coloring (or "colouring") site for pre-K through adult. Coloring online or download the pictures. There are seven pages of classical art (1st 2 1/2 pages are biblical art, the rest are not), 1 1/2 pages of Tinkerbell and friends, pages and pages of cartoon characters (yes, they have Pokemon!), even a dot-to-dot section. You can even submit your own. This is a neat find. Thanks to editor Kate for putting this together.
Thanksgiving Day printables word searches, vocabulary games, crafts activities, recipes, over 4,900 pages of goodies! Obviously more than you can possibly use at one time. Whatever you are looking for a kid Thanksgiving, it's likely to be here somewhere.
Tie your shoe is what we decided to call this video. It shows, in 25 seconds, a new way to help little children learn to tie their shoes! The bunny ears reference may help the method to stick in their memories. This video is from the Rosemeade Elementary PTA via the Ross Elementary PTA (we think they're in Utah). Its original name was "Aug 6, 2013 8:50pm", so we think ours is better :)
TimeWorks "Place the numbers on the clock face." Click and drag the numbers to their correct positions on an analog clock face. Good for teaching understanding that the analog clock's numbers stand for time. Also good for practicing motor skills and for teaching number order.
Turtle Diary is very similar to Cookie in site layout, content and mission - it has games, read-alouds, ESL activities, mathematics, science, art, puzzles, printables, arts and crafts. Designed for pre-K through 2nd grade, ages 5 - 7. Great site!
Tux Paint Kids really love playing with this program! "Tux Paint is a free, award-winning drawing program for children ages 3 to 12 (for example, preschool and K-6). It combines an easy-to-use interface, fun sound effects, and an encouraging cartoon mascot who guides children as they use the program. Kids are presented with a blank canvas and a variety of drawing tools to help them be creative."
UpToTen All the way from the proud island country of Mauritius out in the Indian Ocean comes this wonderful site for kids! Isn't the internet great? "UpToTen has been building prize-winning early-learning games and activities since 1999. Your child will love the reassuring, friendly world that our unique games inhabit. S/he will have enormous fun whilst building independence on the computer. UpToTen.com is completely independent. We do all the illustrations, animations, design, music and dialogues ourselves, and lovingly bring them together to make positively reinforcing games in a warm and welcoming play-area. UpToTen free, UpToTen Premium, UpToTen @ School, and more. With over A THOUSAND educational games and activities for children aged up to ten years old! A safe place to play and learn where your child will feel right at home, right away."
Walking Water Science Experiment for Kids from the blog Coffee Cups and Crayons "The Walking Water experiment is super easy to set up and has a big wow factor. Kids can watch the colored water walk along paper towels and fill an empty glass. It’s very cool!" Want to see how water walks? Click the link and find out!
The Year’s Best Art and Creativity Books for Kids from Tinkerlab. "Creative Experiments for Young Innovators... Tinkerlab supports parents and teachers who want to raise confident and creative thinkers, through child-directed and process-oriented projects. We’re so glad you’re here!" Click here to learn more. Oodles of projects in outdoors, art, science, sensory, upcycling, tinkertots, baby, toddler, and school-age. So when this site has a list of 12 top art and creativity books, it is worth reading. Teachers and parents, go read over this list, you'll be glad.
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