Homeschool Sites 

This page is one small part of Good Sites for Kids.

 

 

Room for everyone: Black Hills homeschool community increasingly … – Rapid City Journal
Great local article about the explosive growth of the new, secular homeschooling in the Black Hills.
The stories of five families are explored. More to come.

 

Our Holiday Activities and Games page has plenty of crafts, songs, play, links, and online games for holidays.

Check out our Early Learning/Early Childhood page!

These icons are shortcuts for your kiddos to click:
aaand they are good for Remote Learning, too!

 

 

Click here for a shortcut down the page to our new international section! There are links to homeschooling sites in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Scotland, and the UK, so far. Americans, you are definitely not alone.

 "The Prairie is My Garden" by Harvey Dunn.  From the South Dakota Art Museum, Brookings, SD.

There's quite a bit of home school (or "homeschool") material on the web. For more info, Google "home school". This page is here to support you Homeschooling folks. Also, please have a look at our Teachers and Parents section for even more goodies! If you guys aren't "teachers and parents," who is? Our main site contains our listing of good educational kid sites for you to check out. Just added! Homeschooling for English speaking countries outside the USA!

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/

Three "Ways to get yourself ungrounded" sample letters from the Parenting Pinterest board of Stephanie Lavin.
Kids redeem themselves by doing necessary chores for points. "My kids got themselves grounded for being late to school,
so I thought I would use it to my advantage. I came up with a clever way to get them ungrounded."

4Kids Games  Various good math and language arts games. "4Kids is teaming with Arcademic Skill Builders, who develop online games that offer a fun approach to learning math, language arts, vocabulary and thinking skills."  We found these to be loud, fast, and good.

10 Cleaning Skills Your Kids Should Learnfrom About.com - Housekeeping. We could only find six of them on the page. Six, 10, whatever. "Kids and a clean home don't always seem to go together. But in reality, your children can learn some basic skills that will help keep the house more tidy. Here are some recommended chores that kids should learn." They're talking laundry, dishes, making the bed, sweeping, mopping, and picking up. That's a good start. You can work up to folding clothes, mowing lawns, raking, changing light bulbs, basic & easy plumbing repair, resetting tripped circuit breakers properly, painting, changing tires, etc etc, before they grow up and (hopefully) move out.

10 LESSONS I WANT MY KIDS TO LEARN AND BOOKS THAT HELP TEACH THEM
from No Time for Flash Cards. 10 important lessons and dozens of good picture books to help
teach/reinforce those lessons. This review deserves more time and space.
"Picture books are valuable tools not only to teach lessons but to break the ice for parents and
teachers to dive in further and get to the heart of the lesson more easily...
I have been thinking about the core lessons I want my children to take out into the world..."

10 Tricks to Help Your Child Remember Tricky Spelling Words Basically a list of 10 memonics with explanations.
Not theory, just practical ideas for you.

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 of them may help yours.

19 Free Resources to Learn Computer Science, Programming and Coding from Happy Trails Wild Tales "Computer Science, Programming and Coding is fast becoming a fun and functional skill in today’s technological world. Lucky for us, there is no shortage of free resources for those who’d like to learn and brush up on these skills. I’ve compiled, here, a list of 19 resources for you life-long learners to embark on a journey of learning to code!" Names, links, and information about 19 online places learners can learn coding for free! Read over them and click what looks good to you. Candy Cook, author of this blog, "is Georgia’s Official Outdoors Explorer and a devoted homeschooling mom." Looks like a great resource.

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!)

200 Free Kids Educational Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Websites & More "This collection provides a list of free educational resources for K-12 students (kindergarten through high school students) and their parents and teachers. It features free video lessons/tutorials; free mobile apps; free audiobooks, ebooks and textbooks; quality YouTube channels; free foreign language lessons; test prep materials; and free web resources in academic subjects like literature, history, science and computing. This newly-released list is a work in progress. Please tell us if we’re missing something good." From Open Culture.

1,000+ Ideas About Education Glad to find this one! Lists of links, lists of free apps, special ed helps, elementary math and science ideas, TED talks for teachers, TAG ideas, team building guides... There's a lot of nuggets in the rich veins of this gold mine! You should go there and slowly scroll through this massive wall!

A2Z Homeschooling A large site worth investigating. Written with a focus on the parent just beginning to home school. Subjects and ideas listed A to Z. Looked good to us when we checked it out.

ABCya! "is a leader in free & exciting computer activities for elementary students to learn on the web. All educational computer games and activities were created or approved by certified teachers! Activities are modeled from primary grade lessons and enhanced to provide an interactive way to learn. The activities incorporate content areas such as math and reading while introducing basic computer skills. Many of the kindergarten and first grade games are equipped with sound to enhance understanding. You can also find great elementary holiday activities here!" This site has everything, and it talks! Time Travel (telling time) and Counting Money are among the best we have seen in their genres. Technology, too. Plenty of things for every grade level K-5. Each selection opens in a new window, so make sure your kids close it out at the end of each game.

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.

After School Mathematics "The After School Math website is a full-featured math website for grades 5-8 created by after school staff and credentialed teachers. The site consists of 10 thematic activity modules, each with at least four activities. These content standard aligned activities are fun, hands-on, and provide opportunities for small group interaction, cooperation, and student leadership." Go for it!

Afterschool Training Toolkit "Use these research-based practices, sample lessons, video examples, and resources to support academic enrichment in afterschool." Valuable helps for literacy, math, science, arts, technology, homework, AND professional development for anyone doing organized after school programs for kids. From the National Center for Quality Afterschool. WGBH Boston, the revered PBS station, is also involved in this. This is a pretty useful site for grownups.

Alfy is a commercial edutainment site with good ed games and activities, as well as fun timewaster games for when you need to do that. Well known and used by kids and teachers for years.

All Science Fair Projects Here's a site that has searched for and categorized all kinds of science fair project links, and offers it to you free! 10 different topic sections, subcategories, lots of projects under each heading. Look for ideas here!

Apples4theteacher.com - A Primary Website " We are adding more educational resources for teachers and kids (preK-grade 6) every day. Excuse our 'dust' as we move into high gear! Our site includes interactive learning games, quizzes, and worksheet generator tools by subject (creative arts, foreign languages, language arts, math, science, social studies), articles, literacy coloring pages and more."

Arcademic Skill Builders has math and word games ready to play online. You may recognize some games from the '80s and '90s here. Seem to remember playing them on TI99s and Apples, and they are still good for today! Worth your time to look these over.

Artists Helping Children "Children & Art Resources for the Budding Child Artist" Tons and tons of arts and crafts resources for kids! There should be something in here for whatever you have in mind.

Atlanta Homeschool on Pinterest K-12 ideas and links, by subject and by grade. Lots of other ed links and activities, too.

BBC Skillwise"Improve your English and maths with Skillswise. Factsheets, worksheets, quizzes and games to help improve your skills." From one central location, you can access all the BBC Schools quizzes! Also has a Tutor Center with lesson plans, tracking sheets, and more. NOTE: BBC sites are in constant flux. If you can't find something, know it's in there somewhere, probably improved - and they keep the old version for a while, too. Keep looking.

Back to School—Is Your Child Vaccinated? "As you help your kids get ready for school, make sure they're fully vaccinated. Making sure that children of all ages receive all their vaccinations on time is one of the most important things parents can do to ensure their children's long-term health as well as the health of friends, classmates, and others in the community." Diptheria, measles, and especially whooping cough are making a comeback. Any of them can kill a baby or small child. This site has vaccination schedules for different ages up through teenagers and lots of other vital information.

Baldwin Project  is a large collection of public domain literature for children.  This includes everything from about 1880 to 1922.  There is some pretty good stuff in here, all online. One example is the original Rikki-Tikki-Tavi by Kipling, with the original illustrations, part of the Jungle Book (which is also in here).  Thousands of stories and hundreds of books are included.  A real treasury! Warning: Please remember, the world 100 years ago was quite different. Better in some ways, worse in others. Some people would now label some of these works as racist, violent, too religious, etc. You are the adult. Read them first. It's still a wonderful collection of "kid lit" and we are happy to include it here.

Basic Venn Diagrams Here's a quick introduction and suggestions for lessons, for lower grades. Venn diagrams are a quick graphic way to teach basic elements of logic. A good grounding in principles of logic is essential to developing critical thinking skills.

Biology Corner "Biology lesson plans, worksheets, tutorials,
and resources for teachers and students." Understatement of the
year! Everything you need to teach biology and related subjects to
high school students, except the teacher. Very complex but easy to
navigate.


Biology Corner Archives
"Note: This is an archive page for biologycorner.com,
it is no longer maintained. Go to the main site at
biologycorner.com to find worksheets and resources
for teaching biology, anatomy, and physics."
That said, this is a big long page with well over 100
valuable links, organized into topic sections like "Phyla"
and "Genetics". There are even study guides and activity
sheets for a couple of biology textbooks

A Book in Time has lists of well-known fiction and non-fiction books to supplement history teaching, also how to make a timeline and other relevant crafts. The crafts have some videos as helps, and the literature is both good and traditional. "I would like to suggest www.ABookInTime.com as a cool site for homeschoolers. It features reading lists, maps, crafts, timelines, and more (all in chronological order) for supplementing hands-on history!" Thanks to Carol Henderson for the email about the site!

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 it 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!

Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation  This site is a curriculum guide for middle school.  It uses baseball and softball based activities/lesson plans to cover health, mathematics, and physics.  All activities are PDF file downloads.  There is quite a lot of good "stuff" in here!  Here is a chance to get your kids up and moving outdoors. Take along a clipboard, stop watch, calculator, etc. and have fun! Thanks to Shelly Flack for the site suggestion.

Older kids could try this using names
of states, provinces, counties,
rivers, lakes, oceans, you name it!

Charlotte Holter's portaportal is a very good portal with many links to various elementary/middle school subjects and activities! We could just sit and look at this site. Love that green background - which doesn't look so hot here but Really Works on her site! Excellent use of Javascript puts everything on one page. Just click on the arrows next to the subjects. Very eclectic, there are Vikings, nanotechnology, bridges, Romans, flight, rainforests, lighthouses, math, mammals, and marbles, to name some!

Chegg Homework Help- free material from this commercial site. "Chegg is one of the leading providers of homework help for college and high school students. Get homework help and answers to your toughest questions in math, calculus, algebra, physics, chemistry, science, accounting, English and more. Master your homework assignments with our step-by-step solutions to more than 3000 textbooks. If we don't support your textbook, don't worry! You can ask a homework question and get an answer in as little as two hours... our free members can still view 2 step-by-step solutions from any book and in any subject they’d like. Additionally, we have a number of free offerings such as access to our glossary of over 1,000 common tough definitions and a GPA Calculator. As it turns out, 80% of our users stick with the free products and find it suits them well." They offer a free trial period. Answers to questions and help with textbook answers are excellent. There you have it! Thanks to Heather at Chegg Homework Help for her emails.

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.

The Children's Literature Web Guide from the University of Calgary. "The Children's Literature Web Guide is an attempt to gather together and categorize the growing number of Internet resources related to books for Children and Young Adults." Lots of websites, discussion boards, book awards, best sellers, teaching ideas. Nice to look at and well organized.

Children's Books Forever! "Free children's books that have become ...favorites around the world. You can use them on Smartboard, PowerPoint, or overhead projectors." Prometheans, too, we might add. All are in pdf format so can download and save them.

Children's Books Online: The Rosetta Project   Said to be the largest collection of illustrated antique books online!  Oodles of stories indexed by reading level.

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. Newly renovated and still great. Scroll down to Downloads in the middle of the page. Choose your "platform of choice" - Windows users click win.png.

Choosy Kids "The mission of Choosy Kids, LLC is to promote the development of healthy preferences. We are committed to providing products and services that promote healthy decision making and healthy, active lifestyles. We recognize that the first five years of life lay the foundation for learning and behavior preferences that may last a life- time; therefore we focus primarily on young children and the adults who make decisions on their behalf." All kinds of good things and activities for children and parents. We love their music and videos!

Classroom Resources from the National Science Foundation. "...a diverse collection of lessons and web resources for classroom teachers, their students, and students’ families. Materials are arranged by subject area to help you quickly find resources in your interest area, and then use them to create lesson plans or at-home activities."

Coloring for kids Free, printable coloring book pages! You can choose from 1000's of printable coloring pages. Coloring pages for children of all ages with drawings to print and color. A large selection of colorings so your children can find their favorite cartoons . More than 10,000 printable coloring sheets.

Computer Lab Favorites from Scholastic.com! "Here are all the quick, compelling one-session activities you need to incorporate interactive learning and technology into your curriculum. Each activity requires no prep and can be completed in 15-30 minutes... Use these 50+ activities in the computer lab." The ones we played are good! Tabbed by subject.

Conversation Pieces: Building Bright Ideas "My site targets students in grades 2-8, and it includes almost 200 book recommendations, and some of those include online book quizzes (over 90), discussion questions, vocabulary lists, and writing activities. I offer writing contests for students, and am adding a new section with Daily Writing Prompts. The site also includes independent study project ideas, online vocabulary quizzes, and a math problem of the week. Students can earn virtual badges in the Hall of Fame for Book Quizzes, Math Problems, and Vocabulary Quizzes when they earn high scores in those areas. Teachers and homeschooling parents can incorporate many of these activities into existing literacy and math programs, or use them to facilitate book clubs or enrichment activities." Wow! Yes, all that and more is in here! What a treasure for teachers!

Cool Coloring Pages "Cool Coloring Pages - Free educational coloring pages for kids. High quality, professionally formatted in pdf file format. Perfect for home childcare providers, and parents teaching children basic concepts at home." This great site has everything - animals by type, plants by type, shapes, calligraphy, countries, flags, crosswords, word searches, telling time worksheets, dot to dot, holiday pages, lots more! Good site layout and graphic design, too. But wait, there's more! "All the coloring pages on our site are free and printable! Download and print as many copies as you like for your personal use or for the classroom. Color individual pages or download a bunch to make your own coloring book. Cool Coloring Pages... Coloring pages for Your children !!!" The sites from Poland but it's all in English. So thank you, Mr. Wiktor Chmur, for emailing us about your site.

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".

Curriki The Global Education & Learning Community. "At Curriki, the sole mission is to educate. By building a world class learning environment that is community developed and supported, and publishing it for free on the Web, Curriki works to ensure that anyone, from anywhere can participate. This is about No Child, Parent or Teacher Held Back. This is about delivering access to free, quality curricula so that kids can go as fast as they can." You truly owe it to yourself to investigate this site.

Cursive Monsters by funkylindsay on Flickr. Pinned by Alina Hensley via PediaStaff. Your kids write their name in cursive and color in the gaps. Presto - monsters!

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.

Diagramming Sentences Once upon a time, all grade school students were taught this. Like Latin, it's coming back into style in the educational community. Benefits include a better understanding of sentence structure, better parsing, better writing, and better public speaking. This page contains a decent Power Point about diagramming.

Discovery Education from the Discovery Channel. Featuring Kathy Shrock's Guide for Educators, Puzzlemaker for printable crossword puzzles, clip art, Lesson Plan Library, Brain Boosters, Learning Adventures, Science Fair Central, lots more! You need to visit this site if you haven't already.

Dolch Word Lists from Jan Brett. "11 full-sized, printable lists with Jan Brett artwork." Great Jan Brett art, 20 words per page.

  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 files from Windows Paint. "Drawing for Childen 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."

A whole bunch of dyslexia help!

Dyslexia information from the National Center for Learning Disabilities (A large site covering various LD issues.) It has in-depth definitions, explanations, warning signs, many articles for parents, and many resources.

Fonts for dyslexics - OpenDyslexic

Fonts for dyslexics - Dyslexie

OpenDyslexic "OpenDyslexic is a new open sourced font created to increase readability for readers with dyslexia. The typeface includes regular, bold, italic, and bold-italic styles, and 2 typefaces: OpenDyslexic, and OpenDyslexic-Alta. It was created to help with my reading, and is being updated continually and improved based on input from other dyslexic users. There are no restrictions on using OpenDyslexic outside of attribution. (It's free.) For attribution, a simple mention of the URL, and linkback where applicable is sufficient." (We did that.) OpenDyslexic is constantly evolving based on feedback from users and educators. Example: OpenDyslexic-Alta. The "a" in Alta looks something like the "a" in Comic Sans with a heavier bottom. This font is open-source with volunteer developers.

Dyslexie offers another group of fonts, also designed to help dyslexics. Dyslexie seems more profit-oriented and businesslike, which could be an advantage for users. Dyslexie offers the Dyslexie Regular font free for home use only (annual license). Their Bold, Italic, and Italic Bold fonts are sold for school and business use on an annual license. At the bottom of the Home page are two videos about dyslexia and Dyslexie, which are well worth your time. There is also a user manual for downloading.

Both OpenDyslexic and Dyslexie fonts work on all the popular OS's (iOS, Mac OSX, Windows, Android, Chrome, etc). With extensions/plugins, both work on most known browsers; Chrome, Opera, Safari, Firefox, etc). Both work on Office. E-readers: Dyslexie works on Kobo for sure, perhaps on others, these things constantly change. OpenDysleic works on Kobo, too. iPad, iPhone, Kindles: OpenDysleic, yes, yes, and yes, but. Both OpenDyslexic and Dyslexie have rave reviews, some people prefer one to the other, Dyslexie is older and proven, OpenDyslexic keeps improving and welcomes skilled volunteer help. It is a matter of preference which one you use.

Lastly - some dyslexics report that color changes help. Every dyslexic is different, some colors may well help some to read better. Example (only): (Done entirely with Word.) Play with these fonts and ideas. Good luck.

E-Classroom This fine South African site has bunches of free elementary school .pdf worksheets to download. These fun and entertaining sheets are well illustrated and are grouped by subject. Oh, they also have printable Literacy Lesson Plans! This site is updated at least monthly.

e-Learning for Kids This is wonderful! "e-Learning for Kids is a global nonprofit foundation dedicated to free and fun online learning for kids of all ages. (math, science, reading, health and life skills and computers, )... Children from 5-12 build and improve basic skills with the best quality e-learning courseware. Parents and educators have a pre-screened source of articles, research, and related links. People in the business of education contribute their expertise." Dozens of online learning games in math, language arts, science, computer, health & life skills (lots), and learning English.

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."

 Educational-freeware Check this site out!! "Welcome to www.educational-freeware.com! This site is dedicated to listings, descriptions and reviews of the best free educational software for kids and adults. Some of the software is web based (see the online section), and some is Windows software that you can download (see the downloadable section).  Many of the software titles are multilingual. In order to see what titles run in your language, you can list the software by language."

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!

Edu Gain "Learn Smart" Here's an international site (free registration) that emphasizes mathematics. Their essay on opening children's minds to mathematics is a good read on its own. The site has two sections; Math Olympiad (Higher Order Thinking Questions), and General Math (online and printables drills). Not a site for slackers, kids will have to work and think here. Thanks, Anamika Sinha, for the email about Edu Gain!

Enchanted Learning  (The ZOOM sites people.) Amazing site! So much to see and do, so much to print off! You could probably run an elementary classroom and fulfill all state standards using this site's online lessons and its printable activities, if not for NCLB demands. Subscribers get tons of even more goodies to use.

Famous Canadians "The infographic is a virtual Canadian Hall of Fame and showcases influential Canadians who have contributed to scientific and social development, economic security and prosperity, and the creative arts. The infographic was designed to show visitors that Canada is home to great people who were visionaries and history-makers." This very informative page is from CanadaFaq, a site devoted to "Everything You Need to Know About Canada"; geography, history, people, finance, education, economy, immigrating, jobs, etc. Kudos to Vera Johnes at CanadaFaq, for the email telling us about this fine web site.

Figure This! You should really try this site out! En ingles y tambien en el espanol. "Welcome to the Figure This! Web site! Helping families enjoy mathematics outside school through a series of fun and engaging, high-quality challenges. Figure This! demonstrates challenging middle school mathematics and emphasizes the importance of high-quality math education for all students. Figure This! Mathematical challenges for families provide interesting math challenges that middle-school students can do at home with their families." say to follow, engaging site with 80 printable math activities for you to try. Uses .pdf files. From NCTM and others.

Financial Literacy For Kids and Teens! Here are links to 28 financial education sites for kids, tweens, teens, and teachers! Some have lesson plans, too. Earning, saving, investing, bonds, the stock market, stock portfolios, borrowing and interest, what banks do, checking accounts, the Fed, currency exchange rates, recessions, inflation, the history of money, and more!

  Flash Cards free download game for Windows only. This really is a great game. "It's a simple flashcard program that covers addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. You can select any one of the operations to practice on, or have the program mix them up. Though the default is 10, facts up to 100 are selectable. Version 3.0 includes the ability to practice fractions. A timer or a clock runs in the background, and a count of correct/incorrect answers is displayed. This program is freeware. Enjoy."

Free Rice  "For each word you get right, we donate 10 grains of rice through the United Nations to help end world hunger." BILLIONS of grains donated so far.  Improves vocabulary! You could have one student with a dictionary while another plays.

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.

 
Frog Dissection: Complete Guide and its companion
site Student Guide to the Frog Dissection are a
dynamic duo of study guides to help students get
familiar with frog anatomy and physiology before
and during dissection. Fill-in-the-blanks worksheets
for review/revision are included. Supervised students
could not go wrong with these.

Virtual Frog Dissection {for Free} from DIY Homeschooler
has a list of ideas and links. for doing virtual frog dissection.
The best step-by-step virtual dissection on this page is the
very first link under the bullfrog photo; "If you prefer to avoid
the mess (and smell, among other things) perhaps this
virtual frog dissection will fill the need."

Virtual Frog Dissection from McGraw Hill doesn't work
anymore.

Frog Anatomy Review Labeling is a printable
worksheet, students label the different parts of frog anatomy.
Frog Anatomy from Berkely Lab. Click on each diagram and
print for notebook. "The following were pictures created by
summer teachers who used them as teaching tool to help
students study anatomy of a frog in Biology class room.
The pictures showed the skeleton, organs, digestive and
nervous system of the frog." Useful for labeling that worksheet.
All in all a pretty useful page.

Frogland (AllAboutFrogs.org) The name says it all! Fun site with real facts about, and pix of, all sorts of frogs & toads. This very busy site will keep your kids very busy! Games, coloring, pix, facts and more facts, printables, stories, myths, more fun than a barrel of bullfrogs! Teachers' Corner has suggestions, links, and lesson plan outlines for class projects!

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!

GCompris Our first app from France! Available in over 40 languages. "GCompris is an educational software suite comprising of numerous activities for children aged 2 to 10...Currently GCompris offers in excess of 100 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.

Gambassa "Tools for Modernized Education. Designed to Work Together™" FREE for educators and students! "With the Gambassa educational platform you can instantly manage everything you need for the modern classroom: You can create virtual classrooms, ebooks, e-workbooks, online courses, as well as, adapt and leverage content created by others." The rest of their pitch is on their first page. Here's an example of a student made presentation. This has possibilities for teachers.

Game On! The Ultimate Wellness Challenge How to build an around the year program to educate kids in nutrition, health and physical education before, during, and after school. Includes ideas, activities, and how to set up challenges for kids. This is from Action for Healthy Kids of Skokie, Illinois, USA. Their mission statement and program layout explains it all in detail. We need this sort of site. Thanks for another one, Shelly.

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.

George Washington Quotes from Notable Quotes. Nine pages of quotes, around 25 to a page. Also has a good biography and a trivia quiz. Great for American history among other things. The man wrote quite well and knew his grammar.

Gifted Education - A Resource Guide for Teachers From the BC Ministry of Education. Defining, detecting, strategies, process, lots more. A basic "how to" with resources in depth!

Goldfish Climbing Trees (I Sued the School System) or, The People vs. the School System.
Six-minute video by Prince Ea discusses the failure of our traditional classroom education system.
This video speaks for itself. It's a springboard for discussion. Watch it and think about it.

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 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!

Hands-On History: Make a Coat of Arms Activity (Middle Ages History)
In those years (and in the years since), royal and noble families have had a
coat of arms to show what they’ve accomplished in their history.
To learn more about how these designs were used and passed down through
families, we decided to make our own coat of arms!
See how you can do the same for a hands-on history lesson!"

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

Hillbilly Housewife has weekly menus, inexpensive recipes, planners, and advice for people on a budget. "The focus here is on low-cost, home-cooking from scratch. The recipes are all tested in a real kitchen. The ingredients are affordable and readily available in most areas. " This is timeless advice for young parents on a budget, and it's free.

Hoagies' Gifted Education Page The "all things gifted" page. This jewel of a site is trying to pull together all sorts of activities, ideas, and resources for gifted kids, parents, and teachers. As we all know, public schools always cut gifted funding first, so a site like this one can help a lot. They've tried to post something for every gifted kid, so there's a huge variety here.

Homeschool.com "Your virtual home school" has links to many home school resources.

Homeschool - Iditarod by Sara Hart 64 pins

Homeschool Pinterest by Jennifer Murphy Tieman Oodles of homeschool activities, ideas for teaching different parts of the elementary curriculum, and things just for homeschooling moms.

Homeschool Skedtrack Best Sites "Submit, comment, or vote on your favorite Educational Site!" Look at all submitted sites at once or use the menu bar along the top of the page to look by subject area. They even listed Good Sites for Kids at least once! This looks like an excellent clearinghouse for homeschoolers.

Homeschooling in Canada Ideas "Homeschooling Ideas & Resources from Canadian Homeschoolers! If you'd like to join, please send an email to [email protected] with your Pinterest URL. Please share any homeschooling inspiration, resources, curriculum ideas, support, printables, etc." A wide variety of entries for homeschoolers and schoolers, too.

Home School Legal Defense Association A good source of information concerning home school legality in different areas of the world.

Here's a veritable trove of Homeschool information and support for homeschoolers outside the USA! There are sites here from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the UK. Use as necessary. Happy homeschooling!

Home Education Australia - Facts, Support & Registration "Sharing ideas, teaching tips and resources for the homeschool journey. Homeschooling is legal throughout Australia, though regulations vary between states." This is a good how-to site on what you need to do, whom to contact, support groups, lessons, curricula, et c. It's a good sized site, too.

Australia Home School – Directory by States and Territories Homeschooling regulations, government contacts, and support groups for every state and nationwide.

Canadian Homeschooler is a mother of four who was frustrated using an American packaged homeschool curriculum that lacked any uniquely Canadian material. ".. in Canada our money is different and we do our temperatures in Celsius - not Fahrenheit, and we measure in metric. I hate teaching words without the special extra 'u'." She's made her own site featuring Canadian material. "I hope to help another homeschooling family as they look for Canadian tools." Organized by subject (with some extras), new discoveries and ideas are on the home page. She can be contacted via her site. This level of effort deserves recognition.

Homeschool Canada "Our goal is to always be there to help guide people who are currently homeschooling or ones who need to be directed to the support and information they need to help them make an informed decision about home education." This award-winning site is heavy on explaining and linking to homeschooling regulations by province. It's a very good go-to source for that. They also feature new ideas on their home page, have links to other homeschool sites and blogs, and they have THE Canadian homeschool store.

NCHENZ "The National Council of Home Educators New Zealand is an incorporated society set up to encourage, promote, inform and advance the cause of home education in New Zealand at a national level." Look through the Homeschooling in NZ menu selection, it is a very comprehensive guide.

NZ Home Education Resources for the Kiwi Home Educator "Are you interested in finding out about homeschooling in New Zealand? This homeschooling site for New Zealanders has answers to your questions. Look through the menu options and click to find answers to legal and practical issues, qualifications questions and for links to websites, lists of email groups to join and generally find out about homeschooling in New Zealand." This compact, very organized site has valuable links to other NZ homeschool groups and sites.

Canterbury Home Educators Is a good local homeschool site for Canterbury, NZ.

The Home Educators Network Supports homeschooling in the Waikato District, NZ. "If you are looking for contact details for local Homeschool groups in Te Awamutu, Morrinsville, Cambridge, Matamata, Huntly, Taupo, Rotorua or Whakatane we endeavour to keep a current list here."

Schoolhouse Supporting Home Education in Scotland "Welcome to the website of Schoolhouse Home Education Association, Scotland’s national home education support charity. Schoolhouse is a well established and respected source of independent information for parents, carers and young people who are starting out on the home education path, families who may be thinking about educating their children outside the classroom, and those who just want to know more about how home education works. We aim to provide reassurance that home-based education is not only a legal and successful alternative to schooling, but that is now widely practised in Scotland and that information and support are freely available from Schoolhouse." Their deceptively small home page is actually evidence of good site arrangement. Click on anything up top in the green menu bar, and you'll be rewarded with a firehose flow of useful information and advice on all related subjects.

Education Otherwise is the most well known UK Home Educator (HE) site. (Home Education means homeschooling/unschooling to non-Brits). We love their slogan - "Education is compulsory. School is optional." "This site provides information and resources for home educating families and those considering home education for the first time, including guidance on home education and the law, SEN and disabilities; downloadable fact sheets covering many aspects of HE; and links to local HE groups across the UK." This site has room to grow! Most localities in the UK are listed, with blocks to fill in when an HE group starts up there, or when a group notices they're not entered yet. A real fountain of information, too.

UK Homeschooling This site has links to six good British homeschooling organizations, FAQs, and a link to Scotland Homeschooling (with its own list of good links). Unfortunately all the FAQ government links are 404'd or this blurb would be larger.

Homeschooling – Science Kimberly Du Vall's Pinterest pages. Lots of science related links and fun kid science activities make for a dependable resource for home science teaching.

HOT X: Algebra Exposed! Danica McKellar is back! This time she explains algebra to girls. Is she qualified? Here's her chops: "Best known for her roles on The Wonder Years and The West Wing, Danica McKellar is also a three-time New York Times bestselling author, internationally-recognized mathematician and advocate for math education. A summa cum laude graduate of UCLA with a degree in Mathematics, Danica has been honored in Britain's esteemed Journal of Physics and the New York Times for her work in mathematics, most notably for her role as co-author of a ground-breaking mathematical physics theorem which bears her name (The Chayes-McKellar-Winn Theorem)." So yeah, she's qualified. What we like about this book, and all her math books for tween and teen girls is - she's been there & done that - she explains things in a special girl-to-girl BFF way, without dumbing down the math. Teen girls and co-eds use this book and it really helps!

Household Science Projects 17 easy & good projects for home education or in a classroom. Pj Finlay suggested this site in an email; and also wrote "P.S. your site is awesome" which of course did not influence us in any way.

How and Why to Teach Your Kids to Code This informative article from Lifehacker lists and discusses 10 free or inexpensive programs that will introduce kids to coding by letting them code. Scratch is on this list (hurray)! We've used Scratch with kids and they liked to play with it. Fun and colorful, Scratch is an MIT effort. Stykz "the first multi-platform stick figure animation program in the world" is another fun coding program, maybe for older kids. You'll want to read "What We've Learned About Teaching Kids to Code" near the bottom of the article, too.

How To Save Money With Coupons has links to 15 sites, .pdf files, and PowerPoints on the subject. Could be used in FACS ("Home Ec") classes or as a supplement. Also of use to teachers and parents. Thanks to Susan Bowen for the email suggesting this site.

How to Teach Your Child to Wash Dishes from WikiHow. "Teaching your child to wash dishes can have many benefits. It can be part of your child's chores when he or she gets older and your child can have these skills for when he or she lives on their own when they are adults. Here is how you can teach your child to wash dishes if you are clueless on how to do so." (emphasis ours) Step-by-step illustrations show you the way. We would add, don't get the water so hot a child can't put their hands in it. Also, the rinsing off is where you use the hottest water if you are not using a dishwasher.

I Will Not Let An Exam Result Decide My Fate A Spoken Word video from Suli Breaks, British recording artist. Over half a million people worldwide have viewed this video. Looks like maybe half of them left comments! A protest against standardized, one-size-fits-all education systems. It's a pretty gripping video. (Warning: This video will make you THINK!) Also an advocacy of finding a career that you enjoy, following your dream instead of being a wage slave. Don't want to put any more words in his mouth, out of respect. GSFK agrees with the plug: You Have To Watch This!! Choose your own POV and discuss this with other viewers.

If 3 Little Girls Did This To My House, I'd Do Everything I Could To Get Them Full Rides To Stanford. "Fewer than 3 in 10 graduates in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are women. And barely 1 in 10 actual engineers are women. Early in a girl's life, the toys marketed to her are usually things that don't encourage her to enter those fields. GoldieBlox intends to change that by teaching them while they are young that these fields can be fun — and apparently epic, by the looks of this super-genius 2-minute video. Watch and learn." OK, yes it's an ad for educational toys, and an internet hit. However, if these or similar toys, or becoming a Maker like young Sylvia, can up the percentage of little girls who grow up to be engineers, mathematicians, scientists, or technologists - then it's surely worth it.

Jon's Homeschool Resources From the site: "a source of neutral, non-commercial home schooling information". Says it is one of the largest and most visited home school sites. Click on Contents to begin.

Josie's Poems It's fair to call this site "the biggest poetry website on the internet". "...knowing how very important rhyming and rhythmic poetry is for helping children develop phonological awareness, a key literacy tool, I’ve just written almost 900 poems for children of all ages." These are GOOD poems to read or to read aloud. The sort of poems that develop language skills, because they emphasize rhyming, rhythm, the way words sound in the head, mouth, and ear, and demonstrate the use of parts of speech! The haiku, cinquains, adverb poems, similes page is a shining example of how to teach poetry structure and grammar all at once! Read Apostrophe - Mr Blob and see what we're so happy about. There are ebooks, audios, and videos, too, and the chance to buy books (the rest of the site is FREE). This site is also used by ESL students in Europe. The English speaking world badly needs this sort of place on the web - so much of what is in here is no longer covered well (or at all) in many educational environments. We should have posted this site a long time ago. A big THANK YOU to Josie Whitehead, the teacher who created the site and most of the poems!

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.

K12 Academics "Since its inception in 2004, K12 Academics has established itself in the education community by creating influential and valuable information for teachers, students, parents & districts officials involved in the K-12 education system...This is the most comprehensive directory on the internet for afterschool programs. We have over 100,000+ pages of educational content that covers all demographics in the education system- parents, Students, teachers, Schools, district officials, etc. We are not just another website, but the website for education."

K12Reader "Reading Instruction Resources for Teachers & Parents" Printable worksheets for Dolch words, handwriting practice. Lots of articles on everything from abstract nouns to finding a good reading program. Book reviews, games and activities to try, and reading topics. Teachers and parents will find it worthwhile to explore this site.

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.

Khan Academy "is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) with the mission of providing a world-class education to anyone, anywhere...We are complementing Salman (Khan's) ever-growing library with user-paced exercises--developed as an open source project--allowing the Khan Academy to become the free classroom for the World." 1800+ videos cover math from 1 + 1 up through differential equations; Science: Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Organic Chem, Cosmology, Astronomy; History; Finance (BIG section!); Test Prep: SAT, GMAT, CAHSEE, IIT JEE. The videos are wonderful! This is amazing and FREE!

KidPort "Kidport is an Internet-based educational service designed to help K-8 students excel in school. It provides a unique, multi-step program to create empowered learners, not simply good students." Kids click on a remote that sends them to Math, Science, Social Studies, Language Arts, Creative Arts, and Reference Library. From there they can go to grade appropriate online lessons. This is an excellent resource.

Kids-Google is a list of safe-search sites for kids. Good listing, they all seem to work fine. Never underestimate a child's ingenuity, though - watch your little ones on the internet. Thanks to Alice Cherry for the email.

KidsKnowIt Network From Utah comes this big array of sites covering elementary mathematics, astronomy, biology, dinosaurs, geology, geography, memory builders, spelling, and games. "These free resources were developed by teachers, parents, and experts from various fields to provide free learning opportunities for children all around the world."

KidsOLR Kids Online Resources has lots of online lessons covering various parts of the K-12 curriculum. Their Telling Time activity is already in our Math and Telling Time section.  Way too extensive to cover it all here - go check it out.

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!

KidsStoriesOnline "KidsStoriesOnline "Welcome To This Social Network Where You Can Post Short Stories/Poems Written By You or Your Child (for review & voting by other members). This is a great way to motivate your child to write and also read stories/poems on a regular basis. There will be prizes awarded each month for the story/poem with the most votes" Here's a new and growing site with a laudable goal. Read about it from the author: "My aim is to get teachers/parents and writers around the world talking to each other and sharing great ideas. Members can join different groups depending on what age their child or student is, and there is also a group for special needs teachers/parents.. You can even create your own group." This sounds wonderful.

Kids Activities from allkids This is allkids' big listing of kid sites by categories. This page features free colouring pages, Nursery Rhymes, Online Stories, Boredom Busters, Outdoor Activities & Games, Childrens Hobbies & Interests, Childrens Free Fun Sites, TV and Book Characters links, Kids TV show links, Kids Movies links with critiques and schedules (UK). Someone worked long and hard to bring this to fruition.

Kids Software "is a blog about free software, commercial software and websites for kids. The blog is maintained by Marianne Wartoft, who also runs the site Educational Freeware." This site is packed with links to wonderful places such as Starfall and other fabulous destinations.

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.

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.

Language Guide Want to learn alphabets and vocabulary words from other languages? "LanguageGuide.org offers free sound integrated resources for learning languages." The site features pictures of various things with written and spoken names in several languages. Words are pronounced by volunteer native speakers. Current languages are English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, Mandarin Chinese, and Japanese. Sponsored by Language Guide, a registered non-profit organization, the site is free to use but they do ask for donations. Uses QuickTime.

Launch Pad: "Where Young Authors and Illustrators Take Off! is a new literary & arts magazine devoted to publishing fiction, nonfiction, poetry, book reviews and artwork by children ages 6-12." This looks pretty good. A place where young artists and writers can show off their work!

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.)

Lessons In Electric Circuits "A free series of textbooks on the subjects of electricity and electronics." Excellent free learning, just bring a brain and the ability to think and read. Consists of six online books: DC, AC, Semiconductors, Digital, Reference, and Experiments. Volume I starts with static electricitry and ends with explanations of capacitors and inductors. It's free, it's good, and it's on the web.

LessonSnips "Welcome to LessonSnips! Free teaching lessons, lesson plans, worksheets, and more... " This site's offerings cover Social Studies, Language Arts, Mathematics, and Science. The lessons offered are pdf files for easy saving and use. The lessons we looked at are reasonably short but comprehensive. Good pre-made lesson plans like these are a real time saver as well as a help to new teachers who haven't yet built up those file cabinets full of plans. (be they real cabinets or saved on media)

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. This works if a teacher is willing to constantly monitor their learning and let them interact. 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.

The Link - The Nation's Homeschool Newspaper is a great resource for home schooling. Tons of links and curriculum ideas.

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.

Loving2Learn "Run off 100's of Books, Watch 100's of Educational Videos, and Play 100's of FUN Games!" Here's a big and well organized site with tons of things to do! Organized by subject and by age/grade, you can find all sorts of good things here. Check it out!

Made with Code Google is launching Made w/ Code, a program to encourage girls to learn to program and possibly pursue careers in computer science. Made w/ Code is "a social initiative to create a coding culture for girls based on creativity and making. Made with Code will strive to inspire millions of girls to experience the power of code. The goal is to demonstrate how coding can help them to pursue, and reach, their dreams." Less than 1% of high school girls express interest in majoring in computer science. "Coding gives you the power to create and invent things that could help millions of people with your ideas; sadly we’ve seen that bias and stereotypes are keeping most teenage girls from expressing interest in learning to code. We're launching Made with Code to inspire millions of girls to experience the power of coding and to see it as a way to have fun and achieve their dreams," said Megan Smith, vice president, Google. GSFK thinks this is a good idea.

Code.org (Remember the Hour of Code?) also offers a K-8 Intro to Computer Science Course (15 - 25 hours) online. It looks well worth trying in classrooms.

MIT App Inventor jumps right into tutorials on how to make Android Apps! Yes there is also a Teacher Section with lesson plan ideas. Learn to write good apps and maybe get rich!

What's the Best Language for a Beginning Programmer? an op-ed piece from Popular Mechanics Online, gives ideas on what language a secondary school beginner should start with. Java, Scratch (kids love Scratch), Alice, MVB, C++, Python, and App Inventor are covered and various opinions expressed about each.

Math Blaster the venerable game is now an online math learning station! The bulk of the online activities are subscription only, but there are oodles of downloadable pdf worksheets, sorted by grade level and by the basic operations.

Math Calculators! Here are 30 math calculators, each one calculates something different. Some are funny, others for serious work, all are accurate. Kitchen measurements, dog years, wind chill, map scales, planting, prime numbers, energy terms, weather, money, savings, time zones, binary, more, more, more!

Math Doesn't Suck and Kiss My Math. These are two books by Danica McKellar, of The Wonder Years, who grew up and earned a Bachelors in Mathematics. For Middle School girls (ages 11 to 14). "How to survive middle school math without losing your mind or breaking a nail." Her girl to girl style resonates with many girls. The math is sound and the problem solving techniques work. Using them this very evening with 11 and 12 year olds who are struggling with Least Common Multiples and Greatest Common Factors was rewarding. As any teacher knows, seeing students light up when they "get it" can make your day! This is a non-compensated endorsement.

Math Games and Activities at Home with the Crazy Math Mom Seriously. Help your kids learn basic math and reinforce what the are learning at school. "Book mark this page because you will use these strategies/math games again and again." Ideas for teaching the four basic operations listed by grades 1 - 5. "Here is what you will find at this site:

Math Worksheet Center "What is Math Worksheet Center? A huge K-12 math worksheets resource! 8,000+ math worksheets. Complete math explanations! Not a plain old worksheet site! We give instructions on all core K-12 math skill areas. Math Worksheets Center is home to over 8,000 K-12 math worksheets, lessons, homework, and quizzes. We also offer over 130 free math teaching and learning articles." These are on their Mathtips page. This looks like an excellent site. You will have to subscribe for a nominal fee to get the most of what they offer.

Math Worksheets Land "We now have over 4,000 PDF files that total over 12,000 printable pages. 100% free as always! Funny thing, I'm no where near done." At least a page on each of 40 math topics - everything from Kindergarten Math to Logarithms, Linear Equations, Polynomials, Scientific Notation... Also indexed by grade level. Aligned to the Common Core standards. FREE pdf files to download/print! Thanks for the emails from "Julia, Retired Middle School Math Teacher, Mom of 3, Grandma of 4, and Tired"

Meet Me at the Corner, "Virtual Field Trips for Kids, is a dynamic, interactive site, which encourages individual expression and participation through video submissions from children worldwide, featuring their special corner of the world. Through these video pod casts we hope to create a community of children, who learn the art of self-expression and storytelling through video." Great idea and wonderful site!

Mike & Monica's Music Room: Songs That Teach Music OK, so we here at GSFK do not usually plug somebody's iTunes music, but this is kinda different! This is from two talented elementary music teachers in New Canaan, CT. We'll let the artists explain: "The songs are from our children's show Mike and Monica's Music Room which will be released as a web series this fall. The songs, which are in a variety of styles, teach musical concepts such as harmony, rhythm, and expression in music." In other words, a good teaching resource! Thanks, Monica Fitzgerald, for the email!

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

Mixing in Math An after school math activity site for parents, teachers, and caregivers. "Mixing in Math activities are:

Mrs. Mitchell's Virtual School  is a list of links to good and varied educational and activity sites arranged by subject and grade.  We've mainly been using her Oceans links thus far.  A nice collection of links to "good sites."

Mrs. Wilkie's Websites "Click on one of the links to the left to access the web sites that you wish to use." Do it! This is a HUGE, HUMONGOUS collection of education sites, indexed by subject. A big vertical list sits on the left side of an otherwise nondescript page. Do not be fooled! This is one of the best! It's also a good introduction to wikis.

" 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.

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!

teaching children what to watch out for online with fun, interactive games and activities. Fun safe internet links for kids to Learn about Wizzywigs, Webville outlaws, and internet safety rules.

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.

On-Line Math Worksheet Generator "With The Math Worksheet Site you can create an endless supply of printable math worksheets. The intuitive interface gives you the ability to easily customize each worksheet to target your student's specific needs. Every worksheet is created when you request it, so they are different every time." Free worksheets or you can subscribe for an annual fee and get lots more worksheets. Offered as a service by us with no endorsement implied.

If you download the Open Dyslexic font, you'll be able to see the text below in all its dyslexia-friendly glory...

Open Dyslexic is a new open sourced font created to increase readability for readers with dyslexia. The typeface includes regular, bold, italic and bold-italic styles. It is being updated continually and improved based on input from dyslexic users. There are no restrictions on using OpenDyslexic outside of attribution. Your brain can sometimes do funny things to letters. OpenDyslexic tries to help prevent some of these things from happening.

openWeb: A free iPhone/iPad web browser that uses OpenDyslexic to override the default fonts on the webpages you read. " openWeb - Dyslexia friendly web browser." The site also has links to other apps and helps for installation. (For Windows: download it, open the folder, click on the Font. Windows should then install it for you.) Thank you, thank you Abelardo Gonzalez, for all the work you've done! Please share this, so that someone who needs it might find it!

  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."

Paragraph Writing in First Grade from The Brown Bag Teacher blog. This starts with tips for teaching paragraph structure that 2nd semester first graders can understand. This includes color coding the parts of a paragraph (what an idea!). Also includes strategies and examples of successful paragraphs. There are lots of links to other first grade curricula like First Grade Data and Graphing.

Parent's Guide to Children’s Mental Health Services in South Dakota Four videos, from two to five minutes long, cover this in depth. Most of this applies no matter where you live. Includes a video for Native American/First Nations parents. Useful resource.

Pete's PowerPoint Station ("FREE Presentations in PowerPoint format & Free Interactive Activities for Kids") looks like a little homemade site for kids but it's HUGE inside! This site is set up with a model railroad theme. Pete's Presentations (Themes and Topics is the page title) lists 838 (yes, eight hundred thirty-eight) education topics, from ABC's to Zoo! Each Topic has links to that subject area, sometimes dozens of links. Not only PowerPoints (lots of them) but games and links to "good sites." Greta's Games has mostly academic games organized by subject. Often a dozen or more links per subject. Hannah's Homework Help Station has PowerPoints about doing research, and links to various research sites. You could spend a week looking in here! Anything you need for K-8, and some for higher schooling as well.

Pirate Activities for elementary students. Here are dozens of pirate-based activities of every kind. At the top of the page is the The Pirate Unit Study They Will Beg to Do!

The Swashbuckling History of Women Pirates from Smithsonian magazine online. "When women roamed the high seas in search of fortune, freedom, and sometimes revenge." This page wants to make sure the newly discovered history of women pirates does not get re-buried. A woman historian named Laura Sook Duncombe wrote a book about them - Pirate Women: The Princesses, Prostitutes, and Privateers Who Ruled the Seven Seas Everyone knows about Mary Read and Anne Bonny. What about Ladgerda, Grace O’Malley, the great Chinese woman pirate Cheng I Sao, Queen Artemisia of ancient Greece, Lady Mary Killigrew, the Moroccan pirate queen Sayyida al-Hurra, and many more? “I wanted something to point at as incontrovertible truth that women are as much a part of pirate history as men,” Ms. Duncombe said. This is a good read, the interview was done by a female lawyer, which counts, as you will see.

Pitara Kids Network Zillions of things for kids to do! This wonderful monster of a site is very similar to the old Yahooligans! Play logic and word games, take quizzes, do crafts, use the reference section, read folktales, poems, and stories, investigate science, do fun mathematics! Some sections are in Hindi, for Hindi-speaking NRI kids who want to remain bilingual. There's something in here for everybody - students, parents, teachers, homeschoolers.

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.