Weekend Website #130: EngageNY

Every week, I share a website that inspired my students. Here’s one that I’ve found effective in supporting the pedagogic changes to Common Core

Weekend Website #127: Brown Bear Typing

Every week, I share a website that inspired my students. Here’s one that I’ve found effective in… Here’s a great website to answer that question.

Weekend Website #126: BrainPop Game Up

Every week, I share a website that inspired my students. Here’s one that I’ve found effective in… Here’s a great website to answer that question.

Weekend Website #125: Starfall Math

Every week, I share a website that inspired my students. Here’s one you may have missed. Starfall is a lot more than reading…

Weekend Website 123: Google Gravity

Inquiring minds don’t always need a purpose. Fun is often inspiration enough. Check out this clever rendition of Google Search:

Weekend Website #121: Class Badges

Every week, I share a website that inspired, excited, and/or informed my classes. Here’s one on a popular trend in education–awarding badges:

Free Lesson Plans–Visit My TeachersPayTeachers Store

Looking for something to spice up your classroom? Here are a variety of projects you can download for free. Just visit my TeacherPayTeachers store, click download, and they’re yours. If you enjoy them, please add a few stars to the recommendation list:

A Colonization Brochure in Publisher

A Publisher trifold on American colonies (or any
other topic you’re covering in your classroom). Includes step-by-step directions, standards addressed, time required, prior knowledge expected, vocabulary used, higher-order thinking skills addressed, samples, reproducibles, grading rubrics, and more.

His Words in Our Words

Students interpret the words of Dr Martin Luther King in their own words in a visual organizer. Great project that gets students thinking about impact of words on history. Common Core aligned

Weekend Website #118: Scale of the Universe

Wondering what’s out there, past our Earthly bounds? Here’s a great website to answer that question.

Weekend Website #120: Spelling Teacher App

Every week, I share a website or app that inspired my students. I have a great one this week that teaches spelling as you’ve always wanted it taught.

10 Most Popular Tech Tips in 2012

As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems. Each Tuesday in 2012, I shared one of those with you. Here are the

Top Ten tech tips from 2012. Between these ten, they had 48,001 visitors during the year. They better be good or a lot of people were disappointed!

1. Tech Tip #18: Ten Best MS Word Tips–How Did You Survive Without Them
2. Tech Tip #18: 10 Best MS Word Tips
3. Ten Best Keyboarding Hints You’ll Ever See
4. Twenty-one Techie Problems Every Student Can Fix
5. Tech Tip #2: The PrintScreen Key
6. Tech Tip #19: How to Activate a Link in Word
7. Tech Tip #12: Wrap Text Around an Image
8. Tech Tip #2: The PrintScreen Key
9. Tech Tip #57: How to Create a Chart Really Fast
10. Tech Tip #1: the Insert Key

Weekend Website 40: NORAD Santa

It’s the time of year when inquiring young minds want to know–Where’s Santa? Here’s a great website to answer that question.

Track Santa on Xmas Eve

Tech Tip #33: My Desktop Icons are Messed Up

As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems. Each Tuesday, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy!

Q: I have several kids/students who share the same computer. Kids being kids loving moving the icons around on the desktop. Sometimes they create the first letter of their name in icons. It’s cute, but makes it difficult for the next student to find the shortcut they need. What’s the best way to handle this?

A:  I’ve tried everything. Refusing to allow them to play doesn’t work and asking them to undo their play at the end of their time doesn’t either. The best solution is to teach all students how to organize their desktop:

• Right click on the desktop
• Select ‘arrange icons’
• If you’re in Win &, pick ‘sort by’ and ‘type

This can be part of their start-up maintenance when they sit down to begin their class. They’ve learned a new skill. They feel empowered to solve their own problems. Life is good.

Weekend Website #114: 55 Digital Citizenship Links

Understanding how to use the internet has become a cornerstone issue for students. No longer do they complete their research on projects solely in the library. Now, there is a vast landscape of resources available on the internet.

But with wealth comes responsibility. As soon as children begin to visit the online world, they need the knowledge to do that safely, securely, responsibly. I’ve collected resources here so you can make your choices.

Here’s a list of 55 Digital citizenship links. They cover K-6. I’ve given the list a permanent address here.

Weekend Website #112: Nanoogo

Are your students visual learners rather than linguistic? If you answered yes, you’ll want to visit this site.

5 Great FREE Programs for Students

When I started as a tech teacher, I pushed my administration for lots of software. I wanted a different one for each theme–human body, space, math. Now, they’re all on the internet–for FREE–which means we can use our tech budget for iPads, microphones, splitters… Wait–we have no budget. Good thing I’m addicted to FREE.

7 Great Labor Day Websites

You’re bbq-ing. Friends are over. Life is good. Summer is ending, but that’s tomorrow. Not today. Today is about fun.

What do you do with the child who got sunburned so badly s/he can’t stay outside? Or those last fifteen minutes when the kids are hungry, tired, and completely disconnected with everything that they’ve been doing? Here’s a list of websites they’ll find irresistible. I’ve pulled out five I think are the best starters, but you can decide:

Dear Otto: What Can I Use Besides TuxPaint/KidPix?

Do you have a tech question?

Dear Otto is an occasional column where I answer questions I get from readers about teaching tech. If you have a question, please complete the form below and I’ll answer it here. For your privacy, I use only first names.

Mrs. V had this question:

We are switching to Windows 7 on all our computers at school that can work with Windows 7. This means a lot of “free” open source software will not work; so we are “losing” all those programs. My main concern is losing the drawing program TUX PAINT for the K, 1, 2 students. Paint is too hard for them to learn, I think. Are there any other programs/software that could replace that “free” slot?

I haven’t heard that TuxPaint doesn’t work on Win 7. Anyone have experience with that?

Nevertheless, what’s important is that in this particular case it doesn’t work. There is another fun paint program called Kerpoof. It is entirely online–no download–and has many of the tools TuxPaint provides to teach essential mouse skills–drag-and-drop, click and double-click, drag (to paint). You can make a card, a drawing, and/or a story. It has tutorials and tips, and provides lesson plans and cross-references them with state standards. You can also sign up an entire class so you can track them (although the standard Kerpoof drawing program is free). Many teachers use it in the classroom in conjunction with KidPix/TuxPaint.

Book Review: First Grade Technology Textbook

1st Grade technology curriculum

First Grade Technology: 32 Lessons Every First Grader Can Accomplish on a Computer

by Structured Learning IT Teaching Team

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’m often asked what books I’d recommend for teaching technology in the classroom. Each year about this time, I do a series of reviews on my favorite tech ed books. If you’re already looking ahead to next year’s technology curriculum and want to fix some of this year’s problems, I suggest you consider the seven-volume K-6 technology curriculum series that’s used in hundreds of school districts across the country (and a few internationally). It’s skills-based, project-based, aligned with NETS national standards and fully integratable into state core classroom standards.

The second in the series, the 63-page First Grade Technology: 32 Lessons Any First Grader Can Do, is the Fourth Edition (Structured Learning 2011), updated to MS Office 2007/10, available in print or digital, and perfect for Smartscreens, iPads, laptops. It  includes many  age-appropriate samples, reproducibles, Web 2.0 connections, thematic websites, and how-to’s. Because I edited this book, I made sure it includes pieces that I as a teacher knew to be critical to the classroom:

Tech Tip #102: Doc Saved Over? No Problem

As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems. Each Tuesday, I’ll share one of those with you. They’re always brief and always focused. Enjoy!

Q: My youngers constantly save a blank document over their MS Word file. How? Instead of ‘file>open’, they use the menu command ‘file>save-as’ and then they lose all their work. Is there any way to retrieve the file?

A: Absolutely. I just found out about this recently. Bring the student’s file folder in Windows Explorer (I’m using Win 7). Right click on the file name for the lost Word file and select ‘Restore previous version’. Select the latest version that’s not today. 

Every time I do this, I’m a hero for ten minutes.

Monday Freebie #34: How to Teach Dolch Words with KidPix

This year more than any before, classroom budgets have been cut making it more difficult than ever to equip the education of our children with quality teaching materials. I understand that. I teach K-8. Because of that, I’ve decided to give the lesson plans my publisher sells in the Technology Toolkit (110 Lesson Plans that I use in my classroom to integrate technology into core units of inquiry while insuring a fun, age-appropriate, developmentally-appropriate experience for students) for FREE. To be sure you don’t miss any of these:

• Subscribe to Ask a Tech Teacher by Email
• Sign up to the RSS feed

…and start each week off with a fully-adaptable K-8 lesson that includes step-by-step directions as well as relevant ISTE national standards, tie-ins, extensions, troubleshooting and more. Eventually, you’ll get the entire Technology Toolkit book. If you can’t wait, you can purchase the curriculum here.

I love giving my material away for free. Thankfully, I have a publisher who supports that. If everyone did, we would reach true equity in international education.

Teach Dolch Words With KidPix

Reinforce Dolch words and sentence structure with KidPix text tool and drawing options. Before you start this project, be sure to go through How to KidPix I and How to KidPix II.

Weekend Websites #90: Free Audio Books

Every Friday, I’ll send you a wonderful website (or more) that my classes and my parents love. I think you’ll find they’ll be a favorite of your students as they are of mine.

Weekend Website #89: Rubrics for Web 2.0 Tools

Drop by every Friday to discover what wonderful website my classes and parents loved this week. I think you’ll find they’ll be a favorite of yours as they are of mine.

Monday Freebies #38: Introduction to Google Earth

This year more than any before, classroom budgets have been cut making it more difficult than ever to equip the education of our children with quality teaching materials. I understand that. I teach K-8. Because of that, I’ve decided to give the lesson plans my publisher sells in the Technology Toolkit (110 Lesson Plans that I use in my classroom to integrate technology into core units of inquiry while insuring a fun, age-appropriate, developmentally-appropriate experience for students) for FREE. To be sure you don’t miss any of these:

• Subscribe to Ask a Tech Teacher by Email
• Sign up to the RSS feed

…and start each week off with a fully-adaptable K-8 lesson that includes step-by-step directions as well as relevant ISTE national standards, tie-ins, extensions, troubleshooting and more. Eventually, you’ll get the entire Technology Toolkit book. If you can’t wait, you can purchase the curriculum here.

I love giving my material away for free. Thankfully, I have a publisher who supports that. If everyone did, we would reach true equity in international education.

Intro to Google Earth

Google Earth can be used for so many classroom activities. It is a favorite of even my kindergartners. I start by showing them how to pan in and out, drag to move the globe, change the perspective of the earth’s surface, use the built in tour or one I add on Calif. Missions or the solar system. I have fifth graders create a tour that the youngers then watch as a tie in.  I also let them type in their address and visit their home, including street view.

62 First Grade Websites That Tie into Classroom Lessons

These are my 62 favorite first grade websites. I sprinkle them in throughout the year, adding several each week to the class internet start page, deleting others. I make sure I have 3-4 each

week that integrate with classroom lesson plans, 3-4 that deal with technology skills and a few that simply excite students about tech in education.

Here’s the list:

1. Aesop Fables—no ads
2. Audio stories—read by actors
3. Audio stories—speakaboos
4. Alphabet—Kerpoof Letters
5. Alphabetic order
6. American Symbols
7. Build a Neighborhood
8. Breathing earth– the environment
9. Brown Bear Typing
10. Childhood Stories
11. Classic fairy tales
12. Clifford
13. Clocks
14. Clocks II
15. Comic Builder
16. Create a story
17. Dino Fossils then and now
18. Drag and drop skills
19. Edugames at PBS
20. Edugames from BBC
21. Egyptian Madlibs
22. Fairy Tales and Fables
23. Games that make you think
24. Geography—find msg around the world
25. Greece-Rome—Winged Sandals
26. Groundhog Day
27. Hangman
28. Healthy food game
29. Internet safety
30. Kerpoof
31. Keyboarding—Hyper Spider Typing
32. Kid’s videos
33. Make a Face
34. Make Believe Comix
35. Make your own Story
36. Make another story
37. Map game
38. Math Games
39. Math/LA Videos by grade level
40. Mighty Book
41. Money flashcards
42. Money—counting
43. Mouse skillsMr. Picasso Head
44. Museum of Modern Art
45. Music with Hands
46. My Online Neighborhood
47. Number concepts
48. Number Order
49. Online typing practice
50. Pharaoh’s Tomb Game
51. Plants—life cycle
52. Puzzle
53. Science websites
54. Shapes, colors, letters, numbers
55. Starfall
56. Stories for children
57. Stories from PBS
58. Talking Pets
59. The Magic Schoolbus
60. Where is Santa?
61. Wild on Math—simple to use
62. Word games—k-2

Monday Freebies #35: Sponge Activities for Vocabulary Building

This year more than any before, classroom budgets have been cut making it more difficult than ever to equip the education of our children with quality teaching materials. I understand that. I teach K-8. Because of that, I’ve decided to give the lesson plans my publisher sells in the Technology Toolkit (110 Lesson Plans that I use in my classroom to integrate technology into core units of inquiry while insuring a fun, age-appropriate, developmentally-appropriate experience for students) for FREE. To be sure you don’t miss any of these:

• Subscribe to Ask a Tech Teacher by Email
• Sign up to the RSS feed

…and start each week off with a fully-adaptable K-8 lesson that includes step-by-step directions as well as relevant ISTE national standards, tie-ins, extensions, troubleshooting and more. Eventually, you’ll get the entire Technology Toolkit book. If you can’t wait, you can purchase the curriculum here.

I love giving my material away for free. Thankfully, I have a publisher who supports that. If everyone did, we would reach true equity in international education.

Sponge Activities for Vocabulary Building

There are lots of great online vocabulary websites to help kids learn high-frequency and dolch words. I’ll share five of them. Maybe you have some to share with the group.

62 Kindergarten Websites That Tie into Classroom Lessons

These are my 62 favorite kindergarten websites. I sprinkle them in throughout the year, adding several each week to the class internet start page, deleting others. I make sure I have 3-4

each week that integrate with classroom lesson plans, 3-4 that deal with technology skills and a few that simply excite students about tech.

Here’s the list:

1. Aesop Fables
2. Aesop Fables—no ads
3. Alphabet—Kerpoof Letters
4. Alphabet Animals
5. Alphabet Doors
6. Audio stories
7. Barnaby and Bellinda Bear
8. Bembo’s Zoo
9. Brown Bear Typing
10. Build a Neighborhood
11. Color US Symbols
12. Counting Money
13. Clocks
14. Clock Talk
15. Create Music
16. Dinosaurs
17. Dinosaurs II
18. Dinosaurs III
19. Dinosaurs IV
20. Dinosaurs V
21. Dinosaurs VI
22. Dinosaur VII
23. Dino Fossiles then and now
24. Dr. Seuss
25. Edugames at Pauly’s Playhouse
26. Edugames—drag-and-drop puzzles
27. Fairy Tales and Fables
28. Find a dog
29. Game Goo—wacky games that teach
30. Games to teach mouse skills, problem-solving
31. Games to teach problem-solving skills
32. Geogreeting—find letters around the world
33. Holiday Gingerbread house
34. Interactive sites
35. Kerpoof
36. Kid’s Videos
37. Keyboarding—Hyper Spider Typing
38. Kindergarten Links—Science, etc.
39. Kindergartend Math Links
40. Kinder Stories
41. Learn to Read
42. Make a Face
43. Make a Monster
44. Make a Scary Spud
45. Make a Story
46. Math for K
47. Math/LA Videos by grade level
48. Math Games
49. Mightybook Stories–visual
50. Mr. Picasso Head
51. Museum of Modern Art
52. My Online Neighborhood
53. Puzzle
54. Shapes and colors
55. Starfall
56. Stories—non-text
57. Storytime for Me
58. The Learning Planet
59. Time
60. Virtual Farm
61. Virtual Zoo
62. Word games—k-2

10 Most Popular Tech Tips in 2011

As a working technology teacher, I get hundreds of questions from parents about their home computers, how to do stuff, how to solve problems. Each Tuesday in 2011, I shared one of those with you. Here are the

Top Tech Tips of 2011

Top Ten tech tips from 2011. Between these ten, they had 40,510 visitors during the year. They better be good or a lot of people were disappointed!

1. Ten Best Keyboarding Hints You’ll Ever See
2. Twenty-one Techie Problems Every Student Can Fix
3. What Do You Think is the Hardest Techie Problem?
4. Tech Tip #18: Ten Best MS Word Tips–How Did You Survive Without Them
5. 25 Tips for Not-so-Techy Folk
6. Tech Tip #1: the Insert Key
7. Tech Tip #2: The PrintScreen Key
8. Tech Tip #19: How to Activate a Link in Word
9. Tech Tip #12: Wrap Text Around a Picture
10. Tech Tip #57: How to Create a Chart Really Fast

Monday Freebies #19: My Bookcover in KidPix

This year more than any before, classroom budgets have been cut making it more difficult than ever to equip the education of our children with quality teaching materials. I understand that. I teach K-8. Because of that, I’ve decided to give the lesson plans my publisher sells in the Technology Toolkit (110 Lesson Plans that I use in my classroom to integrate technology into core units of inquiry while insuring a fun, age-appropriate, developmentally-appropriate experience for students) for FREE. To be sure you don’t miss any of these:

• Subscribe to Ask a Tech Teacher by Email
• Sign up to the RSS feed

…and start each week off with a fully-adaptable K-8 lesson that includes step-by-step directions as well as relevant ISTE national standards, tie-ins, extensions, troubleshooting and more. Eventually, you’ll get the entire Technology Toolkit book. If you can’t wait, you can purchase the curriculum here.

I love giving my material away for free. Thankfully, I have a publisher who supports that. If everyone did, we would reach true equity in international education.

My Bookcover in KidPix

Draw a cover for a classroom project or unit of inquiry or use one of Kidpix’s templates. Have students nicely mix text and pictures for an attractive design. Introduce KidPix fonts, font sizes, font colors to grade 1

Weekend Website 40: NORAD Santa

It’s the time of year when inquiring young minds want to know–Where’s Santa? Here’s a great website to answer that question.

Track Santa on Xmas Eve

What Should You Expect of Younger Keyboarders?

Please check out my guest post for BAM! Radio, What Should You Expect of Younger Keyboarders, a continuation of our on-radio discussion about younger keyboarders. I take the sometimes controversial stand that youngers can keyboard if it’s taught in an age-appropriate and developmentally-healthy manner.

Here’s a teaser:

Before I answer that question, let’s back up a step and answer a more fundamental question: Should you expect youngers to keyboard? I’m talking about students between kindergarten and fifth grade. Are they mature enough? Do they have the fine motor skills required to use the pinkie to push the A key? Do they have that kind of focus and concentration? Should they be playing outside rather than typing at a computer?

The answer is: Yes, as a rule, though when I reviewed the literature on this subject, it is all over the place as far as when students should begin. Some say third grade; some say not until fifth or sixth. From my experience, it’s third grade, though I teach pre-keyboard skills as young as kindergarten. That might be why my students are ready in third grade.

Here’s a caveat: You’ll have to be the arbiter as to whether this is true for your group. If you determine your students aren’t ready, wait a year. You’re the teacher. You’ll know when they’re ready.

Keyboarding for Youngers? There are Three Sides to the Story

Is Teaching Keyboarding in Kindergarten Developmentally Appropriate?
Rae Pica with Cris Rowan, Jacqui Murray, Lisa Guernsey

Many argue that teaching penmanship is a thing of the past, but at what age should children be taught to use a computer keyboard? Some are starting as early as kindergarten, but is it developmentally appropriate? We turn to a panel of experts for guidance on when to start teaching children to hunt and peck and use proper finger placement.

Listen to the radio broadcast here. Here’s a summary I posted earlier, then, read my article What Should You Expect of Younger Keyboarders?, also on BAM Radio.

What’s your opinion on keyboarding for K-2?

Weekend Website #73: 3 Programs to Teach Architecture in First Grade

Every Friday I’ll send you a wonderful website that my classes and my parents love. I think you’ll find they’ll be a favorite of your students as they are of mine.

Age:

1st Grade

Topic:

Architecture, structures

Review:

Three projects over six weeks and your students will learn about blueprints, room layout, dimensions. Plus, they’ll understand how to think about a three-dimensional object and then spatially lay it out on paper. This is challenging, but fun for first graders.

Spend two weeks on each projects. Incorporate a discussion of spaces, neighborhoods, communities one week. Practice the drawing, then do the final project which students can save and print. Kids will love this unit.

• First, draw a picture in KidPix of the child’s home using the KidPix architecture tools (use TuxPaint if you don’t have KidPix–it’s free). Have kids think about their house, walk through it. They’ll have to think in three dimensions and will soon realize they can’t draw a two-story house. In that case, allow them to pick which rooms they wish to include and concentrate on what’s in the room. Use the ‘stamps’ tool (in KidPix) to find items.

Classroom layout--through the eyes of a First Grader

Monday Freebies #3: Make Your Own Wallpaper

This year more than any before, classroom budgets have been cut making it more difficult than ever to equip the education of our children with quality teaching materials. I understand that. I teach K-8. Because of that, I’ve decided to give the lesson plans my publisher sells in the Technology Toolkit (110 Lesson Plans that I use in my classroom to integrate technology into core units of inquiry while insuring a fun, age-appropriate, developmentally-appropriate experience for students) for FREE. To be sure you don’t miss any of these:

• Subscribe to Ask a Tech Teacher by Email
• Sign up to the RSS feed

…and start each week off with a fully-adaptable K-8 lesson that includes step-by-step directions as well as relevant ISTE national standards, tie-ins, extensions, troubleshooting and more. Eventually, you’ll get the entire Technology Toolkit book. If you can’t wait, you can purchase the curriculum here.

I love giving my material away for free. If everyone did, we would reach true equity in international education.

#3: I Can Make My Own Wallpaper

Kids love personalizing their computer stations. Show them how to create their own wallpaper using internet pictures, pictures on the computer or their own photos or drawings

Weekend Website #72: 62 Favorite 1st Grade Websites

Every Friday I’ll send you a wonderful website that my classes and my parents love. I think you’ll find they’ll be a favorite of your students as they are of mine.

Age:

1st Grade

Topic:

General academic

Review:

These are my 62 favorite first grade websites. I sprinkle them in throughout the year, adding several each week to the class internet start page, deleting others. I make sure I have 3-4 each week that integrate with classroom lesson plans, 3-4 that deal with technology skills and a few that simply excite students about tech in education.

Here’s the list:

Weekend Website #71: 5 Great FREE Programs for Kids

Every Friday I’ll send you a wonderful website that my classes and my parents love. I think you’ll find they’ll be a favorite of your students as they are of mine.

Age:

Kindergarten, 1st, 2nd

Topic:

Overall

Review:

When I started as a tech teacher, I pushed my administration for lots of software. I wanted a different one for each theme–human body, space, math. Now, they’re all on the internet–for FREE–which means we can use our tech budget for doc scanners, Dragon Speak… Wait–we have no budget. Good thing I’m addicted to FREE.

How to Organize the First Grade Class

This is the second in a series on classroom management through wikis. Here are links for grades 1-5.

• Kindergarten
• Second Grade Wiki
• Third Grade Wiki
• Fourth Grade Wiki
• Fifth Grade Wiki

This one is Kindergarten:

Click here to visit my first grade class wiki

You can organize a classroom with blogs, internet start pages (click for more on internet start pages), wikis, even twitter (Click for more on twitter). Wikis are the most thorough. Take a look at my first grade class wiki . I have room for student and parent resources, homework, What we did Today (for absent students or parents), grade-level skills, favorite links. You can even add student pages, created by students. This is very popular in the older grades. When students are absent, I send them to this wiki to see what we did and what they need help with. When we’re getting ready to submit a project, they can check out the grading rubric here, be sure they have all required pieces. This is a great spot to include extensions for those precocious students who finish everything early. I’m going to add a ‘sponge’ page, for just that reason: a place students can go to try theme-oriented websites that can be completed in 5-10 minutes.

#99: How to Teach Internet Basics to Kids

Review the basics of internet, including the address bar, forward/back buttons, links, favorites, plagiarism, and netiquette

• All Pages

Lesson Description

• Federal, state and local governments have spent millions of dollars to connect students to the Internet. By 2005, 94% of public school classrooms had internet access. Hopes are high that Internet use will change the process of education and enhance student learning.
• The internet offers a multitude of freeware to enthuse students about a myriad of educational subjects. The days of purchased software on a budget are gone. If you know what to do.
• Throughout this workbook, we’ve listed dozens of free websites on common academic subjects. In this lesson, we’ll talk about internet basics: How to access those confusing web addresses and links.

Computer Activity

5 Great Labor Day Websites

You’re bbq-ing. Friends are over. Life is good. Summer is ending, but that’s tomorrow. Not today. Today is about fun.

What do you do with the child who got sunburned so badly s/he can’t stay outside? Or those last fifteen minutes when the kids are hungry, tired, and completely disconnected with everything that they’ve been doing? Here’s a list of websites they’ll find irresistible. I’ve pulled out five I think are the best starters, but you can decide:

Weekend Websites #58: 12 Music Websites for the Non-Geeks in Your Class

Every Friday, I’ll send you a wonderful website (or more) that my classes and my parents love. I think you’ll find they’ll be a favorite of your students as they are of mine.

Click image; click a square to create music--lovely!

Weekend Websites #59: 62 First Grade Websites That Tie into Classroom Lessons

Every Friday I’ll send you a wonderful website that my classes and my parents love. I think you’ll find they’ll be a favorite of your students as they are of mine.

Here's my internet start page for first grade--you'll see the websites we focused on at the end of this school year