Website Review ~ Amazon.com

Website: Amazon.com

Appropriate for ages: all ages

Helps with: Getting school supplies

Review: By now, I think we all know that you can buy things easily and safely from Amazon.com. You can even order your toilet paper from them! They have everything. But, have you considered ordering your school supplies from Amazon? I suggest this for a few reasons:

1. When you take kids to shop for school supplies, a lot of overpriced, unnecessary items catch their attention. You'll end up either fighting them off with a LOT of "no's" or you'll spend more money than you needed to spend. In this economy, that is probably not something you want to do. By ordering from Amazon, you can pick out school supplies when your kids are not around to drool over Hannah Montana notebooks and Transformer folders.
2. You can find good deals on Amazon. Often even after you pay a shipping fee (or qualify for FREE shipping) you spent less than you would have at the store.
   
3. It's convenient. We've all fought the crowds that surround the back to school section in stores. It's unbelievable! Avoid the crowds.
4. It's easy. You can buy packs that are pre-assembled with everything that your child will need. For example, there is a Back to School Kit with Essential School Supplies that includes Fiskars scissors, an 8 pack of Crayola Markers, 4 oz. bottle of Elmer's glue, 24 count box of colored pencils, a pink pearl eraser, a spiral notebook, a 12 inch ruler, a box of Puffs tissues, a 2 pocket folder, a box of No. 2 pencils, a pack of Crayola crayons (16 count,) a glue stick, a pack of loose leaf paper, and a one inch three ring binder all for $22.52 (valued at $56.29). Sounds like the basic supply list for an elementary student, doesn't it? There is another elementary school pack called the Grade School Age Back to School Kit with Essential Supplies that includes most of the above plus an additional, glue stick, 300 more sheets of loose leaf paper, 3 extra spiral notebooks, a 12 pack of erasable ball point pens, a pencil sharpener, 2 more pink erasers, a canister of Clorox disinfecting wipes, and a pencil box. (This one does not include the Elmer's glue or the folder.) This one sells for $33.90 (valued at $84.69.) Of course you can also buy packs for middle school, high school, and even college aged kids as well as individual items in case you are missing an item or you really do want Hannah Montana notebooks and Transformer folders. To see all items click here.
   
5. I know that most schools provide textbooks for the students to borrow during the year, but if by chance you go to a school where students must buy their own textbooks, or you home school and buy your own textbooks, Amazon is a great place to find those as well. Search for textbooks here.
   

Website Review ~ ASLpro.com

Website: ASLpro.com

Appropriate for ages: all ages

Helps with: Learning American Sign Language

Review: Kids are interested in Sign Language. This is a great website to help them get started on the basics. It is not a website to take you from knowing nothing about Sign Language to being fluent in signs, but it will help you learn some signs that you can experiment with. When you first load the page, you will see an introduction. Scroll down; from there you will see links to area of the site. The site is grouped by categories of signs such as signs for babies, religious signs, conversational signs, etc. Click the link to start learning what you are interested in. Once you feel confident, you can even try to take a multi-choice quiz. The thing that I liked about this site is that it shows videos of each sign. This is much more effective for teaching signs than illustrations! Elementary age kids are often very interested in Sign Language. See if you can't experiment and learn a few.

Summer Learning Calendar

Website: http://www.ed.gov/pubs/parents/GrowthSeason/calendar.html

Appropriate for ages: 5 - 11

Helps with: Summer Learning

Review: This is a calendar of small things to do every day for seven weeks of summer vacation. The calendar is designed to accommodate all elementary age children. Most of the activities are very simple and short. Quite often they are fun things that kids will enjoy doing. The activities are varied and cover reading, teaching, learning, culture, and even college.

Website Review ~ Coloring Pages

Website: http://www.coloring.ws/coloring.html

Appropriate for ages: 8 and under

Helps with: Coloring

Review: There are many websites where you can get coloring pages. This is one of my favorites. There are quite a lot of different kinds of coloring pages. They are nice large patterns that are fun and easy to color. I also like how the site is pretty well organized. It is easy to find what you want.

Website Review ~ Family Fun

Website: familyfun.go.com

Appropriate for ages: 5-13

Helps with: Traveling

Review: This is a great site for more fun things to do in the car. You can print puzzles like mazes, word searches, find the differences, etc. Everything is really pretty and eye catching, but it may eat up some of your color ink in the process. Over all, I think it would be worth it.

Website Review ~ String Figures

Website: http://alysion.org/figures/main.htm

Appropriate for ages: 7-13

Helps with: Following Directions

Review: This is a site that teaches kids how to make shapes with string like Jacob's ladder, cup and saucer, crow's feet, etc. It also teaches how to play Cat's Cradle. I like this website because the illustrations are clear and simple to follow. I have seen many kids (girls especially) get so excited when they learn a new string trick. This may be a great activity to work on during a long road trip.

Website Review ~ Car Games

Website: Mom's Minivan Printable Games

Appropriate for ages: 5-14

Helps with: Traveling

This is a great site for finding games to play in the car. I am going to post the links to several printable games.

The Dot Game (Where you take turns drawing a line to make squares)

Tic Tac Toe

Car scavenger hunt for big kids

Car scavenger hunt for little kids

Battleship (with instructions)

Battleship (with more game boards instead of instructions)

List of states (to mark off which license plates you see)

Silly song lyrics

Website Review ~ Car Bingo

Website: Roadside Bingo
Car Bingo

Appropriate for ages: 5-14

Helps with: Traveling

I used these Bingo boards with teens on a 10 hour trip last summer. I think that they can be fun for all ages who want to play. The links include 2 kinds of bingo boards. The first one is things that you would see on the side of the road. The other is different kinds of vehicles you may see as you travel. It is a mess to use bingo chips, pennies, etc. to mark what you have found. I suggest you just print off enough that you can mark things off with a pencil or pen instead of trying to reuse boards.

Obviously, you don't want everyone to have identical boards. Each of these games comes with 4 kinds of boards. I have included the links to the first ones. When you open them, look way up at the top and you will see an arrow that says "Next Card" by it. Click there to find the other 3 boards. Make sure you print a variety. If you have more than 4 players, you can work as teams or give a couple people matching boards. Chances are they won't see things exactly the same way so it will not be a problem.

 

Website Review ~ NASA Kid’s Club

Website: http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forkids/kidsclub/flash/index.html

Appropriate for ages: 6-13

Helps with: Science

Review: This website has several games for kids. Many are educational. At the top you can click on the level you want to play on and it will scroll to the appropriate games. The bottom has games that are for all ages. Kids can play with Buzz Lightyear and learn space facts, and science skills, or dress up for space while learning about the parts of a space suit. There are quite a few game options.

Website Review ~ National Library of Virtual Manipulatives

Website: http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/topic_t_1.html
Appropriate for ages: 7-12
Helps with: math    

Review: This website has every kind of math manipulative imaginable. You can make charts, practice with money, work with base 10 blocks, try patterns, use number lines, and much more. This is great for practice. I think it also may help with homework. Often kids get to practice with these kinds of items in class, but most families do not have these kits at home. By using this website, kids can use familiar items to help them visualize homework problems.

Website Review ~ RIF Reading Planet

Website: http://www.rif.org/readingplanet/content/read_aloud_stories.mspx
Appropriate for ages: 7 and under    
Helps with: Reading

Review: This is a place where you can read books (picture books) on-line. The site will read out loud for the child, but words are also on the screen so kids can practice reading along. Several books are available.

Website Review ~ Language Adventure

Website: languageadventure.net
Appropriate for ages: 5 and up
Helps with: Spanish Vocabulary         

Review: This website has categories of words (like food, verbs, etc.) After clicking on the category you will see pictures to illustrate different words. The Spanish word for that picture is underneath the graphic. If you click on the picture, the site will pronounce the word for you so that you can hear it. I noticed that I had to keep hitting the back button on my browser after listening to the pronunciation, however. This is a nice website, because kids absorb new languages so well. The optimal time to learn a new language has been reported to be 12 and under. Also, young children are interested in trying new languages, so this can be a good way to expose them to new words in Spanish. After kids have mastered the words, there is a link to try a few games. (You actually have to click on the description below the word games and not on the actual word "games.") Kids can try to play matching type games here to test out their new language skills.

Website Review ~ Animal Corner

Website: animalcorner.co.uk
Appropriate for ages: 7-12
Helps with: Science, Research    

Review: This website is full of animal information. It's not the most kid friendly layout, but they will quickly figure it out. Kids might like to even just look around on the site just for fun, but I can see it being a big help if they have to write an animal report. Animals are categorized by where they live to help kids find what they are looking for.

Website Review ~ A + Math

Website: Aplusmath.com
Appropriate for ages: 6 – 10    
Helps with: Math

Review: This website has math games, flashcards, worksheets, and help for homework. I like the home work helper because it allows kids to put in the problem along with their answer. Then, it tells them if it's correct or if they should give it another try. I like that feature because it does not just give kids the answers. It makes them figure it out for themselves. I think you will find quite a bit of math activities for your kids to experiment with.

Website Review ~ Weather Eye

Website: http://weathereye.kgan.com/cadet/forecast/figger_cloud.html
Appropriate for ages: 8 - 12
Helps with: Science     

Review: This website teaches kids how to predict the weather by looking at clouds. Then, it gives them a couple opportunities to try out their new skill. I think it will be interesting for kids, because it is something they can try in real life. After trying the little quiz, you can try wind forecasting if you like.

Website Review ~ AAA Math

Website: www.aaamath.com
Appropriate for ages: 7-11
Helps with: math    

Review: This site is designed to help children practice writing numbers in expanded and standard forms. First you will see a brief description of how expanded form works. Scroll down and there is a box for practicing. You must push start. Then, the computer will give you three digit numbers written in expanded form. The child needs to write the number in standard form and push enter. I have noticed as a teacher, that some kids have a tough time grasping this concept. I think that if your child falls into that category, this would be excellent practice. It gives some easier and some tougher problems to help them practice on all kinds of numbers. The down side is that I did not find a place to practice going the other direction (turning standard form into expanded form.)

Website Review ~ Free Rice

Website: www.freerice.com
Appropriate for ages: 8 and up
Helps with: math, vocabulary, foreign languages, geography

Review: This is a great site because children can practice scholastic skills and help fight hunger around the world at the same time. The idea is that you pick a subject and answer questions. For each question that you answer correctly, 10 grains of rice are donated to hungry people through the UN World Food Program. If you go to freerice.com, it will automatically put you in the vocabulary section. But, if you go to the top of the page, you can click on the subjects tab. That will give you the option of answering questions about famous art, chemistry, English grammar or vocabulary, geography, foreign language, and math. Kids can pick a topic of interest and try their best to answer (learning new things at random,) or they can pick a topic like multiplication where even an upper elementary student could be successful. It is a great way to practice your multiplication facts while helping others at the same time. The nice thing about the site is that you can adjust the level of the questioning. Also, the site learns to adapt to your skill level. Questions get gradually tougher, but as you start to miss them, they start to ease up again. As you get questions correct, your bowl (on the right side of the page) will fill up with rice.

Website Review ~ Hippo Campus

Website: http://www.hippocampus.org/
Appropriate for ages: 8 and up    
Helps with: Math, Science, Government, History, Psychology, and Statistics    

Review: This website is a great tool. You can search through all of the topics listed above and find video lessons on hundreds of subtopics. For example, you can search U.S. History and find videos of most major historical events. Additionally, you can switch to the textbook tab and search through quite a few textbooks. Each textbook includes a list of topics to help you find what you are looking for quickly. This site is very easy to navigate through and holds a wealth of information.

Website Review ~ Kids Health

Website: http://kidshealth.org/index.html
Appropriate for ages: 8 and up
Helps with: Learning about health

Review: This website has individual pages for parents, kids, and teens. The site provides articles about health as well as ideas for science experiments and health related puzzles. The kids' site is very age appropriate. I think that kids might enjoy some of the puzzles. Also, I think this site would be very helpful if a student needs to do any research relating to health. There are lots of articles to read and a glossary of medical terms.

Website Review ~ Circus Builder

Website: http://www.sadlier-oxford.com/phonics/3_4/circus/circus.htm
Appropriate for ages: 6-10
Helps with: Phonics – Vowel sounds

Review: This is a quick game that helps children learn their vowel sounds. However, it is not as simple as it may sound. It is geared more for a second through fourth grade student. I do believe that it would be good for younger students as well, but they may need assistance reading some of the words. The basic idea is this: you read a word, then, pick from three choices the word that uses the same vowel sound. What makes this a bit more challenging is that all three words might have the same vowel, but all using different sounds. It is a good little review game if your child needs extra practice in this area.