Good Sites for Homeschool Kids and Teachers! Good sites for kids, a site for education, learning, school, homeschool, teachers, and parents. Math, maths, science, language arts, reading, writing, art, music, lesson plans, social science, health, nature, history, geography, family friendly.

Homeschool Sites

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"The Prairie is My Garden" by Harvey Dunn. You may order a copy from the South Dakota Art Museum by clicking on the picture.

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.

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.

A to Z Home's Cool 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.

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.

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. Links to a Games page with 50 MORE math(s) and literacy activities. Thank you, BBC.

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.

BooBah from the UK. This site is for preschool folks. Lots of color and sound. Good fine motor skills training, using a mouse. Windows users will need to teach the difference between left and right clicking, though. Educational Freeware has an excellent writeup on them here, with screenshots.

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.

CPM home page, in case you need it.

A word about the above:

College Preparatory Math: This outfit is taking over US public school math programs like wildfire. Teachers and parents can google "CPM" to get a fair and balanced idea of why so many educators and other parents are unimpressed. Our own opinion is that students need a firm grounding in the fundamentals (for example, knowing their math facts/times tables/terminology) before venturing into group learning and constructivism. Maybe CPM is right for your kids. If you think it's not, and your school district is already doing it, you'll have to transfer your kids or homeschool them. Our math section still has, and will always have, links to very many traditional math drill and practice sites. All this is just our own personal opinion, and (we suppose) a reasonable adult may well have another, differing opinion.

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!

Campaign for Real Beauty from the Dove soap people. "Talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does." Parents: You NEED to see this site! This site seeks to educate you and your daughters about mass media beauty industry brainwashing. Your daughter does not need all these cosmetics. Warning: Adults should watch the "Onslaught" video first, in case you decide it would be too intense for your girls. We think this is a "good site," and that it addresses a serious social problem. At the top of the window, above the models, choose Features > Videos. If you see a window with all their videos, go to Filter By and choose Self-Esteem. If you click Under Pressure, you view their short commercial and then all four CFRB videos will play in turn. (thanks go to Kayla Westby for this site suggestion)

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.

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.

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. Click on To the library under the yellow Rosetta wagon.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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 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."

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. Found this at The Bishops School hotlist site.

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.

Education Oasis An oasis for teachers thirsty for ideas! Lesson plans organized by subject, printables, subject resources such as links to sites, help for new teachers and for classroom management, ideas and tips, discussion groups, bulletin boards, book reviews, lists of sites, and more.

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."

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.

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.

Flash Cards free download game for Windows only. This 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 Mathematics Books 258 math books available online for reading or downloading. We're talking high school to university-level mathematics here. "Here is an alphabetical list of online mathematics books, textbooks, monographs, lecture notes, and other mathematics related documents freely available on the web. I tried to select only the works in book formats, "real" books that are mainly in PDF format...The list is updated almost on a daily basis.."

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! Have one student with a dictionary while another plays.

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.

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.

Google Earth Resources from the Springfield School District in Oregon. Tutorials and lesson ideas for teachers who want to use Google Earth in class. Google Earth is free and it's a very powerful tool for teaching geography, history, and current events. Nicely laid out site, too.

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 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 homechoolers.

Great Sites for Homeschooling comes from the Portage Public Library of Portage, Wisconsin. It's a great long list of resource links for homeschoolers that someone took a lot of time putting together. If you are interested in homeschooling then you should scroll through this list!

Horazio's freeware Here is a real potpourri of good 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 Am Moving, I Am Learning (IMIL) "is a proactive approach for addressing childhood obesity in Head Start children. IMIL seeks to increase moderate to vigorous physical activity every day, improve the quality of movement activities intentionally planned and facilitated by adults, and promote healthy food choices every day. Take a journey through IMIL by reviewing the research, video clip, testimonials, and Choosy Kids, LLC for further information."

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!

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.

Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators "Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators is a categorized list of sites useful for enhancing curriculum and professional growth. It is updated often to include the best sites for teaching and learning." Subject access, Teacher Helpers, lists of kids sites, more.

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.

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.

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 Early Learning, 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."

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!

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)

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!

Math Doesn't Suck and Kiss My Math. These are two books by Danica McKellar, of The Wonder Years, who grew up and has a Bachelor's in Mathematics now. Middle School girls (ages 11 to 14) like these books - some even love them. "How to survivve 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 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.

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!

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

* Quick ways to mix math in to what after-school programs already do: sports, snack time, arts and crafts, playground games;
* Easy to prep;
* Easy to lead. You don't need math background or special training;
* Designed to be used with any school math curriculum and can complement homework in a variety of ways.
* Free!

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.

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.

NewzMash "Providing young minds with today's headline news." Kid safe news in an attractive format. "Our site contains global news that is interesting, informative, and is "completely" free of any news that we, as parents or adults, would not be comfortable exposing to our kids...We created this site as a safe haven for our children, and children of other parents who have the same safety concerns as we do. This site allows pre-teens and young adults view current news and information, without parents worrying about their safety on the internet." There has long been a need for a site like this.

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.

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."

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.

Printable Fact Triangles from HelpingWithMath. "Fact Triangles are similar in some ways to flashcards although they are a better way of showing and practicing fact families. Fact Families are sets of three numbers that can be divided or multiplied together and they help develop the understanding of the relationship between multiplication and division." Kids often wrestle with the concept of fact families. This printable sheet can help.

Resources For Parents "is providing free online parenting tips on kids education and activity resources information for Kindergarten to high school parents who dedicated to improve the education of today's new generation. We feature all USA K-12 state's standard testing information, samples and worksheets for kids, free printable worksheets, education news, parenting tips, online kids coupons and thousands of other great resources for parents."

Root4Kids "Annie's Homegrown wants you to know about their Root4Kids movement that inspires kids, schools and families to eat more nutritious foods. This program created by Annie’s organic foods aims to encourage and inspire kids and families to get outside, dig into nature and eat healthier by offering recipes, gardening tips and activities." Contains recipes, how to garden advice, sign up for programs, a section for teachers, and a Play section with online and hands-on activities. Annies makes good products and this is a great idea!

Saxon Homeschool Saxon is on this list because we have used Saxon material and seen it used by others. Saxon has a deserved reputation for good, straightforward 3-R stuff that works. Definitely worth a look. Also see Saxon Math online drills in our Math section.

Scavenger Hunts for Kids "Free, printable treasure hunts, scavenger hunts, and fun games for children." These are in Word format (.doc), not pdf. The ones we looked at were nice printable sheets with instructions. These are all downloads, nothing interactive or online.

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.

Secular Homeschooling This is the online part of a new print magazine by the same name. Two good articles: A More Perfect Union about the trials of convincing a public college in California to enroll a homeschooled student, and The Bitter Homeschooler's Wish List, about a mom who is tired of people asking rude questions. "This magazine is for any homeschooler, religious or not, who is interested in good solid writing about homeschooling and homeschoolers."

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. Others may be slow on Firefox.

Social Skills for Elementary Students Laura Candler's advice on teaching social skills to elementary kids basically walks you through the steps of teaching these skills. Well worth trying.

Spelling it Right - Learn How to Spell Confidently. "Free printable worksheets, help and advice from an experienced English teacher and examiner. This site is for: parents who are concerned about their children's spelling and are keen to help them improve; adults who find spelling difficult and want to learn to spell correctly; teachers who need some online printable spelling worksheets to supplement their own materials; and includes: advice about how to deal with problems and become a better speller; a collection of free printable worksheets, each comprising a complete lesson designed to test and teach spelling skills; games, puzzles and quizzes to help encourage an interest in spelling." OK, so Americans will have to drop a "u" once in a while, this is an excellent site that does what it says. Great syllable and consonant blend practice (!) and some good advice on teaching spelling. We want to thank Roger Smith for his site!

Spiders! This is a nice spider unit for lower elementary kids, with lesson plans ready to go.

StarFall A neat, 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.

Stepducks "Sometimes you just need to talk to someone!" This is a site full of resources for step-families. It has practical advice, links to other support sites, activities and references for: Stepfamily Support, Family and Parenting, Marriage Support, Divorce Support, Single Parents, etc. Meet the Stepducks has some typical stepkid characters, what they are like, how they act. "You'll Swear You Know These Kids!!" Good luck, stepfamilies. You are not alone, we are not alone.

Stop Bullying Now!"Welcome to the Stop Bullying Now! Campaign. You can learn all about bullying and what you can do to stop it. Take a look around and you’ll find games and cartoon Webisodes that help you Take a Stand. Lend a Hand. Stop Bullying Now!" Great material with sections for kids and adults.

Students' Homepage and Student Resources Online from School District 91 - Nechako Lakes, British Columbia, Canada. This is without a doubt the largest and greatest collection of educational links on the web. It is amazing what's on here! Like a fractal it goes on and out and out, but you will never get lost. We LOVE this site layout! There are things here for every elementary school subject: ABCs, technology, lit circles, anything we looked for, it's here, both well-known good sites and new discoveries! Go there and see what we mean! We want to praise Mrs. Jill French, who created this wonder and keeps it organized (and thanks for your kind permission to list it here.).

Talented and Gifted - The Best Resources for Parents & Educators. Provided by the Madison, Wisconsin school district. List of links for parents and teachers of TAG students. Many school systems in America are neglecting their best and brightest students, so these links may be of some help.

Teach, Learn, Repeat "Create Free Quizzes & Exams Online. Nothing to download. Create a quiz right from your browser...Anything you create can be freely shared, or can be reserved for personal learning, or corporate asssessment and certification. TLR Members create their own content, but have the ability to leverage shared content by peers or groups." This concept has definite possibilities. It's another fine site brought to our attention via email. Thanks to Mr. Dan McAvinchey.

Teach the Children Well "is a collection of links to sites carefully selected by a teacher for students as well as their parents and teachers. The site was designed for elementary grades but many of the sites will also be of interest to older students. Elaine M. Doolittle, M.Ed." There are big lists of sites on all sorts of topics. A necessary site for your bookmarks. Interesting site layout, too.

Teaching Ideas for Primary Teachers Wow! "Teaching Ideas for Primary Teachers" is a big site from the UK that has lots of written out activities, lesson plans, worksheets, pdf files, etc, for the elementary curriculum. It's broken down by subject. There is great "stuff" in here. We were all impresssed by their easy prime numbers activity. Better yet, you can rate activities and leave comments - very nice for busy teachers!

teAchnology Ok, here's a site boasting 30,000+ free lesson plans (indexed various ways), 8,000 or so free printable worksheets, 275,000 reviewed sites indexed by professional interest, holidays by month, etc., etc. Wow. You need to take the time to look this place over. If you can use a hundredth of this free stuff, you'll be ahead. Thanks, "Opsmart Matti".

Tellin' Time free download game for Windows only. "I put this together for my kids to practice reading the time off of an analog clock. It's based on a flashcard type game where an analog (12 hour) clock face displays a random time. The child is then expected to enter the "digital equivalent". A four minute timer runs in the background, and a count of correct/incorrect answers is displayed. This program is freeware. Enjoy."

That Quiz Click this link now!! Scalable, customizable quizzes in all levels of K-12 mathematics. Geography, languages, cell structure, elements, periodic tables, anatomy, conversions. Their righteous pitch: "What is ThatQuiz?

A free service for teachers who want to replace paper tests with online testing.
An online grade book providing fast analysis of class and individual student progress.
An exchange for teachers to share the resources they create.
A skills site for students, especially useful for math practice and testing.

Registration is free and teachers who register receive complete record-keeping of student grades. They have access to more precise test-generation tools, can create single tests with questions from different categories, can create matching and multiple choice questions, and can access a public test library. There is no reason for students to register, since the additional features are only useful for teachers.

Timez Attack Now with Division drills in the new Version 4.5! "The Ultimate Multiplication Tables Video Game" This game is wonderful, and the base (2s-12s) version is a free download. Everything Big Brainz says is true, kids love this game. Now with a new upgraded free version!

Twisty Noodle "Twisty Noodle has thousands of coloring pages and worksheets for kids. You can customize your coloring page or worksheet by changing the font and text. Change the font to block, D'Nealian, or cursive for great writing practice. " VERY useful site for teachers and homeschoolers.

Visual Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online Why go to Google or Wikipedia for all your info? "The Visual Dictionary Online is an interactive dictionary with an innovative approach. From the image to the word and its definition, the Visual Dictionary Online is an all-in-one reference. Search the themes to quickly locate words, or find the meaning of a word by viewing the image it represents. Explore the Visual Dictionary Online and enrich your mind. Perfect for home, school or work. Discover a visual world of information!"

Vocabulary worksheet puzzle makers Free from LessonCorner. This site allows you to make your own crossword puzzles, word scramblers, and word search, or have the site make them for you in any of 20 subject areas! The site-made puzzles do not rerpeat, either. Nice! The menu is easy to use and you can move back and forth in the process. LessonCorner asked us to look at their free material, and we found it to be useful for teachers and homeschoolers.

Waterford Games & Activities "Download hundreds of free games, activities, and quizzes from our website! Subject areas include animals, plants, weather, astronomy, geology, and miscellany... Simply copy materials to your desktop and print out as needed. It's that easy!"

Webster's Online Dictionary with Multilingual Thesaurus Translation "Earth's largest dictionary with 90 modern and 10 ancestral languages."

Whatcom Community College Online Math Center Twenty-one links to free math courses, more links to resources, too. Algebra, calculus, fractals, more. Mostly this is for parents, teachers, and secondary students.

Why Homeschool A blog we found. "Mission statement: On this blog we explore why homeschooling can be a better option for children and families than a traditional classroom setting. We'll also explore homeschooling issues in general, educational thoughts, family issues, and some other random stuff." There's some good reading and discussion points here, also we liked the style.