Faith Journey

Sunday, December 25, 2022

Serendipitous Thoughts by Sugar Bear. My first try at a podcast.

The sound is off . Goes to fast. Lucky its a work in progress. only on Spotify 

but here is the link
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3ustoI88UdiYiARPE9fTlR...

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Educational Websites

Top Educational Websites for Kids

Technology is pretty amazing! There are lots of wonderful ways to help our child practice the skills they are learning in school. Often times with some of these great educational sites our children don't even know that they are learning at the same time!

It's also a great way to motivate kids to do their homework,

have them do their reading and math first and for a reward they can play an educational game...tricky!

A friend of mine asked me for some recommendations on some other educational websites,

so you know me, I went crazy and found a bunch.

I spent many hours digging through cyberspace to find and test out the following educational game sites. I spent about an hour a site digging and finding the best parts. Also I have spent time teaching grades K-6 so I have used my knowledge to determine the validity the games on these great sites.

Just bookmark this page, and every time you want to use a new site you can come here to find it quickly.

1. Starfall.com

This site has lots of great language arts games. It takes a fun game like this snowman game and has words that it helps your child sound out. There are lots of seasonal games as well as early reading, phonics, as well as reading practice for 1st and 2nd graders.

2. PBSkids.org

Hello! Don't you just love this site! There is SO much on here. Your child can pick his/her favorite show and play a bunch of learning games for that show. Right now M. loves playing the Curious George games, although the T.V. show is a little young for her, the games are right on her level. (I wish I would have known more about this site when I was a teacher, there are very specific games you could play and coordinate with the theme you are learning.) The game shown is called Present Time, you choose a gift, go to the store, decorate the wrapping paper, and give it away, it's great! We also love the SuperWhy Spelling games, they are too difficult for her to do on her own, but they are well done and give lots of helps and rewards.

3. ABCya.com

Here's a wonderful site c/o one of my readers! This site is great because it's split up into grades K-5 so there's no guess work there! I spent a lot of time on this site trying to find the best games to tell you about. I think my favorite K game would be the Pirate Marble game which is great for learning addition, and connect the dots. For 1st grade it would be the foul shot where you can practice math facts to earn basketballs to shoot a foul shot, the math can go up to a 4th or 5th grade level. There are also telling time games and learning coin games as well. For 2nd grade my favorite would be the fun typing game here too! 3rd grade fave would be Pop the Words which letters fall and you can make words out of them to pop the letters. My 4th grade fave is division drag race which you race others in dividing numbers and go faster when you answer them correctly. My 5th grade fave is the U.S. Map and World Map puzzles. There are also fun seasonal and holiday games for each grade level when you scroll to the bottom of each grade levels page. Too much info?? Sorry, this site was just really fun to explore!

4. Cookie.com

Well after I posted this list on Monday I found an phenomenal site on Wednesday! I can't believe I've never been to this site. It has hundreds of educational games, for literacy, math and science. It also has learning videos on subjects like the plant life cycle, frog life cycle, the 5 senses, and more with review games you can play afterward. It has lesson plans, tons of free printable worksheets, arts and crafts coloring pages, and a cute blog. What a great resource! My only complaint would be that the games are all narrated with a robotic voice, but other than that it's golden!

5. Scholastic.com

Wo this is another great site. It has games from books like The Magic School Bus (which is oozing with science fun!), Clifford, WordGirl and more. This site is has games for kids ages 3-7 and another section for kids ages 8-12.
Fun fun fun!

6. Funschool.com

There is also a lot to this site as well. Pictured here are the ABC games which are for practicing letter recognition. There are also lots of other harder games that are also educational. Check it out it's a pretty good site.

7. Sheppardsoftware.com

Thanks to Jane and the Jitterbugs for telling me about this site! I am so excited about it! This site has lots of learning games for kids of ALL ages. It's very tutorial centered which is good for learning a new concept. I also love the Kids Corner which you can explore lots of science centered ideas, such as the Four Seasons (as shown in the picture). You can paint using movable parts like rain clouds which are actually raining! Fun fun fun site!

8. NationalGeographic.com

I know I'm crazy but I keep finding more and more sites! This site has a bunch of games that are all science related. They are all pretty fun. Some of them like Animal Jam require an e-mail address and some personal info about your child, just FYI. They also have a bunch of geography games, adventure games, action games, puzzles and quizzes, games for young children, and all of the games really are science related. They also have science experiments, videos, and interactive information about animals and countries. The more I kept digging, the more I found that was well done and educational. I thought this was a pretty cool site, and had tons of educational value!

9. Highlightskids.com

Here's another new great site that I found. I feel like I'm on a treasure hunt! Highlights is a classic magazine that has been around for years. They are very well known for their hidden puzzles in their magazines. On their site for kids they have stories that you can have read to you and tons of games, their specialty is hidden picture games which you can click and the hidden image appears. This is another great site if you are learning a theme for the week and you would like to practice newly learned skills.

10. Funbrain.com

There are reading games on here as well as fun simple counting games. There also some difficult reading and math games on the main game page. There is a lot to choose from on this site.

11. Qubo.com

This site has a bunch of educational games that are also quite fun for kids. It has games for Babar, Jane and the Dragon, Zoola Patrol (great science games), and Vitamix.

12. Shnoozles.com

Shnoozles has lots of fun and simple preschool games, this main page would be fun for kids to navigate on.

13. Jayzeebear.com

This site is a little old school but it is still really fun for preschoolers.

14.Weatherchannel.com

This has some puzzles, word searches, and mazes for older children. It seems like they stop putting money into this site, because it has an add for Clouding with a Chance of Meatballs in 2009. But it is an alright resource.

15. KidsKnowIt.com
This site has some good science and nature games.

16. Switchzoo.com
This site has some fun animal games that you can switch animals around to look silly.

17. Exploratorium.com
This site has some fun games that explore expressions, proportions, and emotions.

18. Juliasrainbowcorner.com This site is is also a little old school but it has some fun games for young children.
19. http://tinyurl.com/opznemz

20. http://s.typingclub.com/schools.html?cmp=ftt&ad1

21. http://www.flubaroo.com
Grade online assignments in a single step!
Get reporting and analysis on student performance!
Email students their scores.
Designed by a teacher, for other teachers!
Read the Overview to see how easy it is!

22. http://www.novelgames.com

23. https://www.gcflearnfree.org

24. Web tools for Teachers

http://www.livebinders.com

25.http://sumopaint.com/app/

26. http://storybird.com/

Web Application Links:

Unroll.me.com
Hojoki.com
Tagboard.com
Twitter Chats
Open Drive.com
EdCanvas.com
Pearltrees.com
Pinterest and Learnist
Mentor Mob.com
Storify.com
Snapguide.com
http:www.Bufferapp.com

Ten Options for Creating Websites.
Yola (formerly Synthasite) is the tool that I am currently using to build websites for my department and other departments in my high school. As I wrote in my original review of Yola an outstanding aspect of Yola is that not only is your website free, it is advertising free (unless you want advertising), and remains free regardless of how much content you add to it. This is a good thing if you plan to post a lot of audio or video content as some website builders and hosts begin to charge once you reach a certain volume content. Yola provides good tutorials and forums for first time users. I also learned first-hand that their responses to help requests are very quick.

Webs (formerly Free Webs) is another service that I have first-hand experience with in a school setting because my girlfriend (a teacher in another school district) uses it for her classes. Webs has all of the characteristics that you would expect to find in a free website platform. Websites built using Webs can include videos, calendars, polls, and a wide variety of third party widgets. Webs offers a wide variety templates and layouts to select from. For people with a higher level of comfort with technology, Webs might be a little too basic for your needs. In that case you may want to consider Snap Pages.

Snap Pages provides a free service as well as a premium service for creating your custom website. The free service has more than enough features for a teacher to set up and maintain a class website. The editing and customizing options of Snap Pages allow users to create pages that are little more clean and professional looking than some of the other companies in this market. The image resizing tool reminds me of the one found in Apple's Keynote presentation software. In fact,TechCrunch said that it's “a basic webpage designer that Apple should envy...”

Web Node is a simple way to build a website. The easy to use, drag and drop, interface makes it easy to change the look and feel of your website. For two reasonsWeb Node is a good tool for students to use to present and share their work with a wider audience. First, Web Node does not put any advertsing on your website. And second, the user interface is intuitive enough for most students to use on their own.

Sauropol, like other free website building and hosting platforms, is a free method for teachers to share information about their courses with parents and students.One feature that Sauropol offers that some similar services do not offer is the ability to use more than one template within your website. In other words, you're not locked into using one format for all of your content.

Weebly was the first website building tool that I ever tried. Until today, I hadn't been back toWeebly in months, but it's still just as intuitive as ever. Customizing the look, feel, and components of your Weebly website is easily done through a drag and drop editor. All of the pages on your site are automatically indexed for ease of visitor navigation. I know from first hand experience that Weebly responds quickly to emails from users

School Rack offers a free service for teachers to build and host their own classroom websites. Unlike other free website solutions that are targeted toward a general audience, School Rack has features designed specifically for teachers. On your School Rack website you can post assignments with full descriptions, expectations, and deadlines. This is an integrated feature, not an add-on page that you have to create yourself.

Like most other free website building platforms, Jimdo allows you to pick your own subdomain. For example, my Jimdo site is richardbyrne.jimdo.com. What makes Jimdo such a good option is the wide array of templates, layouts, background options, and editing options. On many free website builders once you pick a template or design you're locked into all of the pre-defined parameters of that template unless you know HTML and CSS. Jimdo is different because it allows you to tweak the predefined templates and designs.
http://lakeronmcfarland.wordpress.com/

Well I hope that gives you some new ideas!
Do you know about a cool and educational website for kids?
Let me know and I'll add it to this growing list!
P.S. I'm not endorsed in any way by any of these websites.

Faith Journey

Sunday, December 25, 2022

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