Parents’ favourite links

LIVE SCIENCE is a good source for science news if you want your science-mad family to keep up!

Fatal Addiction. Final Interview with Ted Bundy by Dr Dobson. If you want need a way to get the message across to your teenager at home about the dangers of pornography, there’s no better way than to get it from the horse’s mouth…Ted Bundy had killed at least 28 young girls and women and was executed on an electric chair.

AMONCO.ORG Montessori link. This year marks the 20th year that I have been involved in Montessori education. It really has changed my life, and I have witnessed, firsthand, what a difference the methodology makes. This year the world celebrates 100 years of Montessori education. I have compiled a special newsletter in which educators and others have shared their thoughts about how Montessori education has impacted their lives. You can read this newsletter by visiting www.amonco.org – scroll down until you see the New and Notable section for May 2007. The website can be translated into Japanese and other languages by visiting this page and clicking on the Babel Fish appropriate language. I know that the Spanish and French translations aren’t perfect, but I don’t know about the Japanese translation. You will also find free spring hands-on lesson plans by clicking on the eLibrary icon.

Teaching videos for teachers at Teacher Tube Dot Com

Curriculum links for multi-level learning. When my kids were younger we used the topic approach. I used a lot of worksheets from the Learning Page.com because they cover the same topic preschool through 3rd grade. A month ago we discovered http://www.time4learning.com and it has been a life saver. While keeping everyone on the same topic is helpful, they still all need different kinds of help at the same time. Time for Learning.com is an internet based curriculum grades K-8 for $19.95 a month. I can have one or two children working online while I help the other one. T4L has been great for their vocabulary. Our youngest loves the science and the math has been great for learning all the English words for the concepts they already know. – Juli

Moving Beyond the Page is a comprehensive curriculum for gifted and creative homeschoolers. Age 7-9 Level, a Preschool Curriculum Package based on Peak With Books was released earlier and now RightStart Math and ABeCeDarian Reading Program are offered as optional supplemental programs. The following strategies are examples of those utilized by the curriculum: Creative and Critical Thinking – encourage problem solving and creativity Multiple Intelligences – work through a learners strengths Project Based Learning – encourage real world problem solving Concept Based Instruction – students learn through big ideas.

Go to school by the sea! Join the Ocean Classroom!

Top Educators Websites http://www.glavac.com/topeducatorsites.htm gives you carefully selected resource pages for busy educators. The sites are carefully reviewed and with detail.

Sites For Teachers is a website that lists hundreds of websites for teachers.

 

The U.S. Department of Education is pleased to announce the newly remodeled
and updated Federal Resources for Education Excellence (FREE) website. It
now provides richer, more expansive resources to teachers and students
alike. There are over 1500 resources to take advantage of at FREE, ranging
from primary historical documents, lesson plans, science visualizations,
math simulations and online challenges, paintings, photos, mapping tools,
and more. This easily accessible information is provided by federal
organizations and agencies such as the Library of Congress, National
Archives, NEH, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian,
NSF, and NASA. Check it out today at http://www.free.ed.gov!

 

Eliteskills.com is a site to help your child develop “elite skills”.

The mathworksheet site.com The website’s name explains it all.

Math lessons – using Smartbooks to go with children’s literature sorted by grade or subject at this page.

Moneyopolis offers financial education for middle-school kids. A challenging game that requires you to demonstrate your math skills in the context of some real life money matters. Created by Ernst & Young, based the accounting firm’s 5-step financial process: assessment, goal setting, strategy setting, implementaton and review/adjust. You begin with as a new resident of Moneyopolis with $600 to your name and your goal is tour all 7 centers, save at least $1,000 and earn three Community Service Medallions.

Do you know what the least populated country in the world is? It’s Pitcairn Island, which only has 45 residents. Or here’s an easy one: What country grants the most patents? It’s Japan, at least per capita. Okay, maybe a Web site dedicated to world statistics doesn’t sound all that entertaining. But NationMaster really sucked me in. I spent hours poring over the information. Once you start exploring the site, I’m sure you’ll find it fascinating, too. But remember, people may get annoyed if you quote the statistics you learn too often! www.nationmaster.com

Storynory website’s Prince Bertie the Frog brings you a free audio story every week. Each one is read specially for him by his friend Natasha. Over 75 children’s stories in audio in the archives as well. These include classic fairy tales such as Cinderella, Snow White and Ginger Bread Man.

Good resources–FANTASTIC library of documents–“Liberty Library” at Constitution.org

Another World Statistics website at Worldometers.info/

Download a world map to print. Choose from Political or Physical… the
Physical even shows the underwater ridges and mountains.
http://www.mywonderfulworld.org/maps.html

Welcome to Mama Lisa’s World, home of the internet’s largest collection of childrens songs and nursery rhymes from around the world. Whatever the culture a child belongs to, whatever the flag he or she lives under, this is the place to find the lyrics to kids songs, in English and in the original languages! Some songs include MP3’s, RealAudio or Midi music.
http://www.mamalisa.com/world/

For those of us with children who are always digging holes. Are you concerned about where you go to arrive if you dig a very deep straight infinitous hole on Earth? Surf on the map below, find where you will dig your hole and click there. After this, click on “Dig here!” and you will see the place where, one day, you will (believe me) put your feet. http://map.pequenopolis.com/

Tobins lab.com – a good science website that even has stuff for lapbooking!

No matter what you want to do, somebody’s already done it–and posted instructions online! You can find instructions for just about anything at the INSTRUCTABLES

This site sells software to develop your own Virtual Field Trips and they offer several FREE field trips already made! Tramline.com/

 

 

 

Book Adventures.com is a program similar to Accelerated Reader that was designed by Sylvan Learning centers. It is all online and can be done by any family. Parents must be involved and approve books and prize choices. They also receive emails about how much time the child spends on the website and more. THE CONCEPT: Book Adventure is a free resource that was created in response to the staggering percentage of students reading below grade-level in the United States. Clearly, young people should read more — Book Adventure makes them want to read more. Leading literacy experts conclude that it is not enough to teach children to read; children must choose to read independently if they are to become versatile, engaged, lifelong readers. It is also understood that for students to succeed in today’s society, we must incorporate technology into the learning process. Using Book Adventure, young readers not only receive the intrinsic satisfaction of reading a book and demonstrating their comprehension through short quizzes, but also earn rewards for reading and demonstrating comprehension of the books they’ve read. Research has shown that providing extrinsic incentives can build a love of reading that lasts a lifetime. Book Adventure is the first Web-based, organization dedicated exclusively to motivating children to read using a technology platform. Developed and initially funded by the Sylvan Learning Centers and Sylvan Learning Foundation in April of 1999, Book Adventure is designed to encourage students in grades K-8 to read more often, for longer periods of time, with greater understanding. Over 446,000 parents, teachers and children registered with Book Adventure in the first year! And more than 1,900,000 quizzes completed!

A Christian site for homeschoolers who have reached the end of the road – Homeschool Alumni.org

Free guides as a starting point for teaching about a particular novel or play, there are a number of no-cost options for many well-known books at Antistudy.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

Folks are most happy to receive Uncle Dan’s Free 180-page “Algebra Workbook” by e-mail attachment. It took him mountains of hours to prepare, but he is willing to it out with a simple click as it doesn’t cost him a penny. He’s glad to be able to help people so easily, and sending out the Workbook helps spread the word about Uncle Dan’s Algebra videos (which are now also available on DVD) as well as his OCTA-TETRA construction sets. He will also e-mail out the files of my “OCTA-TETRA Instruction Booklet” for Free to all who so request. More info at Uncle Dan’s website homespun4homeschoolers.com Email him at uncledan@homespun4homeschoolers.com

Help for Spelling Time:

http://www.spellingtime.com is a free online program. It doesn’t go into the details of spelling rules, etc. that this website seems to, but it does group words according to sounds.
You can even delete words or use your own list of words. After the kids complete the day’s work, it gives them a token or two to play one of the REALLY COOL games in their game room. The five-day week progresses so:

Monday: introduce the week’s list and have the kid spell all the words.

Tuesday: Hangman / Wednesday: Word Scramble / Thursday: Pop Quiz / Friday: Spelling Test

My son (10yo) really enjoys this. I always review the words with him (stating any relavent spelling rules) prior to starting the week’s words. You can get a list of the spelling rules from a number of places, like: Dyslexia.org and lewrockwell.com

These programs are free to page through (each and every page in the book!) online, but just doesn’t allow you to print them out: Evan-moor.com catalog

Here is a free online spelling program. I’ve not used it, so I cannot comment on it’s effectivness: Splashesfromtheriver.com/spelling/

Here’s another program that might be worth checking
out: Everydayspelling.com/

Finding a good telescope tips: Choosing Telescopes. Do a little research to save yourself some money and get the best view for your yen. I was told by David Albert (The Skylark Sings for Me) author and homeschooling dad to not “waste your
money on the department store telescopes”. They tend to be low quality, hard to use (especially for kids) and a lesson in frustration. He steered us towards a larger cannon looking type with a base that looked like a tree trunk called a Newtonian with a Dobson
base. A bit more expensive but you can potentially see the rings on Saturn. In Japan, on the shopping channel (which my son spotted) you can purchase telescopes. At the Shopping Channel website click on the top right hand corner of the portal page, type in the product number for Product 322363. A telescope that has an incredible range usually costing around 100,000 yen now only 29,988 yen (may be for limited period only, I don’t know) Phone: 0120-000123. Otherwise, read up a bit and make and informed decision. Check out these links: Galileo Telescope, Choosing your first telescope, Skywatcher telescope

‘Free educational board games at the Edweb site. You need to make them yourself, but the instructions and examples are all there.’

Map outlines at this site, some in color, some blank, some with hints, etc. Many
to choose from based on the age you need it for.

Spelling help links:

Spellingtime.com is a free online program. It doesn’t go into the details of spelling rules, etc. that this website seems to, but it does group words according to sounds. You can even delete words or use your own list of words. After the kids complete the day’s work, it gives them a token or two to play one of the REALLY COOL games in their game room. The five-day week progresses so: Monday: introduce the week’s list and have the kid spell all the words. Tuesday: Hangman – Wednesday: Word Scramble – Thursday: Pop Quiz – Friday: Spelling Test. My son (10yo) really enjoys this. I always review the words with him (stating any relavent spelling rules) prior to starting the week’s words.

You can get a list of the spelling rules from a number of places, like Dyslexia.org or lewrockwell.com The following programs are free to page through (each and every page in the book!) online, but just doesn’t allow you to print them out: Evan-moor.com, Splashes from the River.com, Everyday Spelling.com and Spell zone.com (testimonial: “I would like to share a website that I came across when trying to help my son with his reading/spelling as he was finding this very difficult to pick up.I feel that without this to TEACH him what/how to do it, he would still be quite far behind, he has just amazed me and so confident to spell in front of others now. There is a free demo, but if you want the years course it is £20.00.I feel it is the best £20.00 I have spent.”) – Kathy

Globalization101 is a website that has lesson plans on globalization. It is sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment, etc. and the lesson plans are designed for high school and college.

Looking for ways to keep your classroom on track? You’ll find it all here. Browse the issues of The BIC® Teacher Times, a classroom tips newsletter. Or, print off posters, flash cards, reproducible games and other classroom tools in the Classroom Essentials section. (All issues are in PDF format. If you don’t have Adobe® Acrobat Reader®, you can download it (it’s free!) at: http://www.adobe.com.)
 
Historical movies in chronological order http://www.vernonjohns.org/snuffy1186/movies.html
 
Free typing games online here
 
A cool webpage giving you the opportunity to download a software you might otherwise have to buy if you wanted it. The catch is that it is only available for a few hours and then a new offering is up. You can see the ones they have given away in the past: http://www.giveawayoftheday.com
 
For creative learning ideas, mnemonic tips and great resources be sure and sign up for The Education Through Imagination newsletter from Trigger Memory Systems 
 
Jeannie’s Journal s a Free Quarterly e-Newsletter filled with curriculum reviews, homeschooling tips, spiritual encouragement and free prizes.
 
e-News from Knowledge Quest.com - to  develop your kids love of history and geography. Sign up and receive helpful teaching tips along with hands-on unit studies, free biographies. Send a blank email to knowledge-quest@aweber.com
 
Living Books curriculum.com offers the Parent's Journal, a free e-newsletter, rich in ideas and encouragement for homeschooling using the Charlotte Mason method, plus free downloads, updates, special offers.
 
Knowledge Box Knews is a fun-filled newsletter from Knowledge Box Central. Lapbooks, CopyWork Notebooks, and Notebooking Pages galore, contests, freebies, along with "subscriber only" specials make.
 
Subscribe to Harvey and Laurie Bluedorn’s Homeschooling with the Trivium -- an e-letter for families interested in homeschooling from a classical approach.