Cyberkidz: games for math, literacy, geography, creativity and science

What it is: Cyberkidz is a great new website packed full of great learning practice games for kids age 4 to 11.  The games reinforce skills in a variety of disciplines including math, literacy, geography, creativity and science.

Math– amounts, pattern, scale, number recognition, counting, scale, sums to 10, sums to 20, weights, multiplication, telling time, money, measurement, calendar, volume, percentage, distance, division, mathmix, area

Literacy– letter recognition, alphabetical order, hangman, crosswords, typing, singular and plural words, sayings and quotes, learning Spanish, learning Dutch

Geography– America, state capitals, countries of the world, Asia, Africa, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, South Africa, Ireland, flags

Creative– painting, music, coloring, maze

Science– food for animals, skeletal system, body parts, animals, solar system, mammals, the eye

The games in each category are great for practice and skill building.

How to integrate Cyberkidz into the classroom: Cyberkidz is a fun place for students to work on the knowledge level of Bloom’s Taxonomy.  The music game is the only creative game that I would truly place in the “create” category of Bloom’s Taxonomy because it gives students free rein to explore music and create a recording.   The majority of the games are designed to help students build skills and remember key concepts that are a necessary foundation for other learning.  These are a nice alternative to worksheet skill practice.  Students will enjoy the game quality of these practice activities.  Each activity can be advanced through relatively quickly making them perfect as a center on classroom computers.  Students can visit the game as a math, literacy, geography or science “practice” center before advancing to put those newly honed skills to work in a higher order thinking center.

These practice activities could also be completed as a class using an interactive whiteboard or projector connected computer.  Split students into teams and rotate them up to the whiteboard for a class practice session.

Tips: On each game screen, students can scroll to the bottom for instructions on the game.  Most of the games are pretty self-explanatory and kids will figure them out quickly.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using  Cyberkidz in your classroom!

Pilot Handwriting: Turn Handwriting into a Font

What it is: This is a fun site. Pilot Handwriting let’s students turn their handwriting into a font of their own.  The site is easy to use: print the template for students to fill out, take a picture of the completed template with a webcam (scanner and digital camera options also available), click on individual letters to adjust the look, save the handwriting by creating an account, click “let’s write” to use the font.  Writing completed on the Pilot Handwriting site can be emailed.  Saving the handwriting does require students to create an account. The account has no age limit but asks for an email address.  If you are teaching students who don’t have an email address, they can use a @tempinbox.com or @mailinator.com ending so they don’t have to create an email account.

How to integrate Pilot Handwriting into the classroom: I’ll be honest, I am not a big fan of handwriting worksheets- this is due to my own experience with them. I remember feeling like the practice page was endless and in the end didn’t give me a good feel for handwriting (especially in cursive) because I was writing letters individually; how often do you do that in real life?  The Pilot Handwriting font creator would be a fun way for students to end those handwriting practice sessions.  When they have a letter down, they can write it on the template.  The template could be filled out over several weeks as they learn and practice new letters.  At the end, they can turn all that practice into their very own computer font…as unique as their fingerprint!  The finished font can be used for learning how to write a friendly letter.  Students can compose a letter to a teacher, another student, or a parent using their font and send the finished letter via email.

Pilot Handwriting let’s students create multiple fonts within one account.  Students could create a font at the beginning of the school year and again at the end of the school year (or in subsequent years) to compare their growth.  Handwriting can tell us so much about how students are developing and thinking. This is a great way to record that development digitally.

My students love creating their own font, it makes all writing and practice more fun.  I caught a fifth grader typing out her spelling and vocabulary words just so that she could use her font.  In that one exercise she was practicing her handwriting, typing, and spelling/vocabulary.  Not too shabby 🙂

Tips: This is a neat site for students to share with their families. I have great handwritten notes from my grandmothers, recipes from my mom, and birthday cards from aunts and uncles.  There is something about a handwritten note that feels so personal and meaningful, it is capturing a piece of who that person is.  Students may want to ask their family members to create a font with their handwriting.  I had one student who was creating a family tree for class, he had each member of his family fill out the template and create a font.  He then asked them to send an email to him with the information needed for his tree using the font.  He cut and paste these onto poster board. It was honestly the coolest family tree I have seen, he had his family get involved and created a keepsake in the process.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Pilot Handwriting in your classroom!

Kidopo

What it is: Kidopo is an online coloring application where kids can color online coloring books.  The application simulates a real coloring experience (in other words you can color outside the lines and the more you color over a spot, the darker it gets.). There are a lot of coloring pages to choose from with categories like animals, cars and transportation, cartoons, food, toys, holidays, learning, circus, sports, music, nature, occupation, seasons, and more.  Kidopo has fun printables for the classroom including coloring sheets, bookmarks, birthday printables, awards and certificates, mazes, writing paper, connect the dots, room decorations, and stickers.  You will find a collection of flash games for kids including brain games, card/board games, math games, memory games, puzzle games, science games, and word games.  In the craft section of the website are videos that walk students step by step through a craft.

How to integrate Kidopo into your curriculum: The online coloring book on Kidopo is a great way to help primary students practice mouse manipulation.  I like that you can color inside or outside of the lines just like in a real coloring book.  If you are in a computer lab setting, the Kidopo coloring book is a fun way for students to practice, and a good way for you to gauge where their fine motor skills are.

The printables on Kidopo are perfect for the classroom.  Bookmarks are always fun classroom give aways and the awards and certificates are a good way to recognize your students.

The learning games on Kidopo make a good practice center activity on classroom computers.  My favorite are the math games that help students with fact recall through fun arcade-type games.   In the word games, you will find a fun game called Word Frenzy that will give your students a place to practice typing.  Check out the games, some are better than others but they are definitely worth a look!

Tips: One of the downfalls of Kidopo are the advertisements in the sidebar and introducing the games.  I use websites with this type of advertising to teach my students about how to spot ads and discuss with them why ads are placed on websites.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Kidopo in your classroom!

Typing Practice

Picture 1

What it is: This blogging alliance has been expanding my knowledge of great tools for the classroom faster than I can keep up with!  Recently, I found two more excellent ways for students to practice typing from @2sparkley‘s blog.  The first is reminiscent of the popular Rock Band, called UpBeat.  Students can choose a song and level of difficulty.  They must type the letters as they appear to keep the song going smoothly.  This had my students absolutely SILENT while they practiced typing.  They were so involved and having a great time trying to keep up.  The way the game is set up, really challenges kids to touch type.  They can’t very easily keep up without touch typing!  Students stopped by my lab the morning after I introduced the site to tell me how many combos they were able to get.  The second typing site is called Typing Chef. In this game students try to type words as they float past on bubbles.  The goal is to type the word on the bubble before it pops. It gets increasingly harder as more bubbles float up and speed up.

Picture 2

How to integrate UpBeat and Typing Chef into the classroom: Typing can be a subject that elicits groans.  Adding these games in the mix as additional opportunities for practice is sure to make students happy to practice.  I try to keep typing to a minimal in my classroom.  With only 35 minutes once a week with students, I don’t want to spend all of our time practicing typing. I have the kids do the majority of typing practice at home.  Once a year (sometimes twice) I hold a big typing Olympics competition.  Students can earn a free break dress code day (we have uniforms), this is great incentive…like gold to them!  The fastest boy and girl touch typist in each class get the break dress code certificate.  I make a huge deal about how athletes who participate in the Olympics have to train hard.  Practice doesn’t always make perfect but we are aiming for practice makes permanant (good habits).  I created the following website for my students to use in their training www.typing.weebly.com.  Upbeat and Typing Chef have both been added to the games page of my Typing website.

Tips: UpBeat is a Mini-clip game. This site is often blocked at schools, make sure it is unblocked at your school before you plan on using it in class.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using UpBeat and Typing Chef in your classroom.

Typing Olympics

6433548

This year I am teaching 3rd- 5th grade only.  My remaining time is spent helping teachers to integrate technology in their classrooms effectively and supporting our new Promethean boards.  I see my students once a week for 35 minutes.  Any of you that teach a specials class know that at least 5 minutes of class is spent getting students ready to learn after the hallway transition.  This leaves me with 30 minutes with my students.  In that 30 minutes I have to teach a lesson and give students an opportunity to practice it on the computer.  In a school year I see my students a total of 24 times (that is if we never have a snow day, or lose a day due to field trips or special events).  I love teaching my students how to use technology as a tool to help them learn.  I do not want to spend my time with them typing.  Although typing is a valuable skill for them to learn, there is SO much more than our brand new iMacs can do.  My other hang up with spending computer class focused on typing is that I still only see my students 24 times in a school year.  Even if we spent every class typing, I don’t feel like this is adequate time to really learn and build touch typing skills.

My solution was to come up with a typing competition that will take one class period.  I call it the Typing Olympics.  I make a BIG deal out of this day.  We have opening ceremonies, olympic fanfare music, and even paper doves.  Students compete against each other to find out who is the fastest touch typist with the greatest accuracy in each class.  There are two gold winners, one boy and one girl.  The winners receive a gold medal in the closing ceremonies along with a break dresscode pass (these are like gold to our students!).  There are also silver and bronze winners who receive medals.  The students know that the Typing Olympics happens in the spring.  We talk in class extensively about how hard athletes like Michael Phelps have to train before the Olympics.  At this point I give students the goal to train for our Typing Olympics.  This year I decided to create a special website for the training and created a Typing Training Club.  Students can visit the site for links to websites that will help build their typing skills.  There is also a blog page where I give students suggestions about which keys to practice each week building up to the Typing Olympics.  This helps break down practice into a manageable skill each week.  We type in class one day prior to the Olympics.  The rest is up to them.  For my students, a break dress code day is enough incentive to practice typing on their own time.  Obviously, some students will take this more seriously than others.  For our situation, I think this is our best option for building touch typing skills.  I have some students who can type at 53 WPM and some at 8 WPM, but at least we have learned more during the year than just touch typing.  I suspect I would get similar results even if we used the 24 classes in the year for typing practice.

What are you doing at your school to build touch typing skills?

Pac Man Typing with Typing Master

Picture 2

What it is: Typing Masters has a great typing game that your students can play for free to increase their typing skills.  PacMan Typing gives students the familiar Pac Man game, instead of moving Pac Man with the arrow keys, students have to type letters to make him move.  The faster students can type, the higher their score will be.

How to integrate Pac Man Typing into the classroom: Pac Man Typing is a great motivating typing game.  Students will want to build up their touch typing skills to master this game.  Hold a friendly competition in your class to see who can get high score in Pac Man Typing.  This is another site that will build student typing skills through a fun game.

Tips: I learned about Pac Man Typing this morning on Twitter from @SheilaT, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…my PLN is the best!

Related Resources: Keyboard Climber, Typing Web,  Novel Games- Flash,  eLearning,  Dance Mat Typing

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Pac Man Typing in your classroom.

Keyboard Climber

Picture 1

What it is: Keyboarding is a necessary evil in the computer classroom.  I say this because truly mastering touch typing takes practice, a lot of it.  However, I don’t want to spend all my class time in the computer lab teaching kids to type.  There is SO much more that our brand new iMacs can do.  To use them as typewriters feels ridiculous.  Combine that with my 35 minutes once a week with students and keyboarding really becomes a necessary evil.  In my classroom, I focus on typing practice very little.  I encourage my students to practice keyboarding at home with fun online typing games.  Keyboard Climber is one of these games.  It is a fun little game that helps students build those touch typing skills in or out of the classroom.  In Keyboard Climber, the goal is to help a monkey climb up a tree and score bananas by typing letters.  If the student types the incorrect letter, a coconut falls on the monkey’s head and he falls down to a lower level.  There is fun music and sound effects that accompany the game, kids love it, I find it a bit too monotonous.  The only other thing that I don’t love about the game is that all of the letters are displayed as capital letters.  However, students never have to actually type a capital letter (with shift or caps lock).

How to integrate Keyboard Climber into the classroom: Keyboard Climber is a fun little game to help students practice typing.  Use it in the computer classroom as a short warm up and see how many points students can accumulate in a set amount of time.  Hopefully this number will increase throughout the year.  Encourage students to play Keyboard Climber at home to practice typing.  I have students take a screen shot of their highest level and points to post on one of my bulletin boards.

Tips: I learned about Keyboard Climber from @techfacil, thanks for the tip Julie!

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Keyboard Climber in your classroom.

Toy Theater

 

What it is: Toy Theater is a fun place for students to practice math, reading, art, and music through puzzle type games.  Toy Theater encourages students in k-4 to get their problem solving brain cells working as they explore and discover the games in Toy Theater.  In the art section, students can animate their own cartoon character, put on a puppet show, or make a Matisse.  In the music section, students can make music with the Composer, interact with notes with The Music Maker, or go on a pounding mission with the Drum Beats, you will have miniature maestros in no time.  In Math students can practice math facts with flippy flashcards, or feeding Freddy, and take a math practice test to put those math skills to the test.  In the reading section students can enjoy a good joke, play with words with a sliding crossword puzzle (highly entertaining for teachers too), write their own road sign, or practice their typing skills.  In the puzzle section students brains gt put to the limit with tic tac toe and memory games.  In the playset section, students can create their very own virtual diorama about cars, sea creatures, plant, insects, ships, characters, aircraft, blocks, dinosaurs, and buildings.

How to integrate Toy Theater into the classroom: Toy Theater is a great website to use as a learning center in your classroom.  The short, easy to play games are perfect for short center activities.  I love the puzzle type environment that encourages problem solving and bends the brain a little.  The playset universe would be a great section to use with an interactive whiteboard, students could take turns creating a ‘universe’ to showcase learning on a topic such as ocean, plants, insects, dinosaurs, geometry, etc.  Students can work together to show what they know together.  After students create a playset, have them pull out a writing journal and journal about the playset the class created.  Being a computer teacher I am constantly looking for fun ways to let students practice typing skills.  In the read section you will find a game called letter fall, letter blocks fall from the sky, students have to type the letter before 5 blocks can stack up. There are multiple speeds to make the game a challenge for your different typing levels.  In the computer lab setting, see who can last the longest before 5 letter blocks stack up (there is a timer at the bottom of the screen).  

 

Tips:  This is a great site to send your students to when they finish work early and are asking “what can I do now?”  

 

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Toy Theater  in your classroom.

Updated Websites

Over the past week I have been re-vamping my websites.  Tenkely.org is a site that I created for my students to use.  I have pages for first through fifth grade with links to all of the sites that we use in class throughout the year.  I also have a page for parents about how my classroom runs and tips for keeping kids safe online.   The teacher site for tenkely.org  has also been completely re-done.  I added TONS of new goodies for teachers.  Obviously, I created these sites with my students and colleagues in mind but I hope that they are a source of inspiration for you too!  I am already keeping tally of links that aren’t working right so if you run across any, leave a comment so I can get them fixed up.

Typing Web

 

What it is: Typing Web is an awesome website I ran across yesterday. It is a free to use typing tutor, tester, and also includes games. Typing Web tracks students progress and provides a place for them to practice their most frequently mis-typed letters. Students can personalize their Typing Web site by choosing a “skin” to decorate the typing practice page. I don’t know about you, but as soon as my students can personalize anything they are hooked! The web based software makes it possible for students to practice typing from anywhere they have an Internet connected computer. There is also a NEW free iPhone or iPod Touch Typing Tutor for those that are so lucky 🙂 .

How to integrate Typing Web into your curriculum: Typing Web is best used in a computer lab setting where students can have blocks of time set aside for typing practice. You can also set up a practice center in your classroom where students can take turns practicing their typing skills. Because Typing Web is web based students can practice at home too!

Tips: Typing web has a school version where teachers have more control over the individual student set up as well as data collection. The school version is subscription based.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Typing Web in your classroom.