Tag: games

Math-A-Thon

Kelly Tenkely2 Comments on Math-A-Thon3181 views

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What it is: Math-A-Thon is an excellent math site with a good cause.  “Math-A-Thon is a volunteer-based fundraising program for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The program includes a free math curriculum supplement for grades K-8 that students complete after obtaining sponsorships from family and friends.”  Students work on math and comprehension skills, age appropriate math problems while building empathy and character.  By practicing math, students can raise money and awareness for St. Jude patients who are battling cancer and various other childhood diseases.  In addition to the free curriculum and math fun books, Math-A-Thon has entertaining online math games and math character profiles.  The Numerators are a math superhero team that is made up of Minus, Symmetry, Octagon and Fraction.  The characters have math super powers that will help students as they solve problems in their Funbook and work at defeating evil robots.   Each character has a fantastic character description (these remind me of the characters on Grammaropolis). Games on Math-A-Thon include Add Like Mad, Subtraction Action, and Bubble Bugs.  Bubble Bugs is an enchanting game where students catch bugs inside bubbles, they practice counting, mouse control, and fine motor skills.

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How to integrate Math-A-Thon into the classroom: Math-A-Thon is a website that will help get your students fired up and excited about math and helping others.  The games are available for play whether or not you sign up for the full Math-A-Thon challenge.  Students in kindergarten through eighth grade can work together to help other kids by working on their math skills.  Challenge your class or whole school to raise money for other kids using math as the vehicle.  Add Like Mad and Subtraction Action would be fun games for a math center on classroom computers or as a whole class game using an interactive whiteboard.  To play either game with the whole class, divide your students into two (or more) teams.  Team 1 lines up at the IWB, the first person in the line completes the first problem and then passes play to the next student in line relay style.  Teams try to clear the tiles in the least amount of time.  After Team 1 has a final time, Team 2 tries to beat it.  My students love this kind of friendly competition.

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Use the Numerators team characters to learn about math concepts and vocabulary.  There are four members of the current team, encourage your students to add to the superhero team with additional math team members.  Students can create character profiles and back stories about their math operation superhero.  Students could create individual baseball trading cards of their math superhero team member.

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Tips: Download a free Funbook sample, these are high quality math workbooks that will have your students problem solving and having fun with math.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Math-A-Thon in your classroom.

What’s Your News?

Kelly Tenkely5 Comments on What’s Your News?2143 views

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What it is: What’s Your News is an online newsroom staffed by ants.  Complete with anchormen and a studio, What’s Your News is a “news show” aimed at 4-7 year old students that introduces them to the wider world.  The news covered is kids news, and it comes right from their homes (or classrooms).  News stories could be anything from the arrival of a new pet, to a lost tooth, or being able to play a new tune on the piano.  Students can submit their own Breaking News with the help of a teacher or a parent.  There are fun games to play that teach students about how news gets reported.  Learn about all of the characters by visiting them backstage.  Watch fun clips from the What’s Your News Nick Jr. TV show.  Print some fun activities including a make your own newspaper, build a What’s Your News studio, or download a special reporter pack that helps your students become roving reporters.  

How to integrate What’s Your News into the classroom: This site is just so cute, you can’t help but fall in love with it (and the characters).  What’s Your News is perfect for a communities/neighbors unit.  Students will learn about what is happening from news reports created by other kids.  I love the way this site involves kids in sharing news.  It would be fun to share classroom news on What’s Your News each week.  Download the special reporter pack for your students and have them put on their own weekly news show for your classroom.  Introduce your students to the wider world through this kid-friendly news show.

Tips: Before you post student pictures online, please make sure that you have school and parent permission to do so.  If you can’t post students pictures online, consider taking pictures and reporting on special class projects, a class pet, or a science experiment.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using What’s Your News in your classroom.

Magic Tree House

Kelly Tenkely2 Comments on Magic Tree House2464 views

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What it is: The Magic Tree House is a popular book series for kids that teaches them about history through fun adventures that take place with the help of a time traveling Tree House.  Now students can take their love of the Magic Tree House Books online with the Magic Tree House Website.  Here, students can enter the Tree House and collect stamps for their passport by answering questions about each of the books.  Students can learn more about the Magic Tree House books, even reading excerpts from the books.  There are fun online games and printable activities for students to play and screen savers and wallpapers to download.

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How to integrate Magic Tree House into the classroom: This is a great site for those students who are reading the Magic Tree House books.  The quizzes are a fun way for students to check comprehension and reflect on what they have read.  I love the passport that gets stamped each time they finish a book.  If you are reading the Magic Tree House books to your students, create a class passport for the year, your whole class can help answer the questions to earn the stamps.  The site is geared toward encouraging reading and a love of reading.  It just doesn’t get better than that!

Tips: Be sure to take a look at the Teacher Tree for some great reading suggestions and lesson plan ideas.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Magic Tree House in your classroom.

Ollie’s World

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Ollie’s World2996 views

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What it is: Earth Day is April 22nd, Ollie’s World is a fantastic place to begin the celebration early.  Here students will learn about the 4 R’s: reduce, reuse, recycle, rethink as they apply to the 5 action issues of waste, water, energy, air, and biodiversity.  The site is packed full of games, puzzles, information and projects.  Students can create web pages using a free (downloadable) version of WebEasy.  The information section has kid-friendly reading about the 4 R’s and 5 action issues.  In Ollie’s clubhouse, students can play games and work on puzzles.  Students can also watch the Mis-adventures of Ollie, 3 animated videos about Ollie and his friends, dealing with issues of sustainability (currently there is only 1 video available).  In the movie section, students can watch short flash movies about important environmental issues.  This site is loaded with information, games, and video.

How to integrate Ollie’s World into the classroom: Ollie’s World is a nice introduction for students learning about their ecological footprint.  Starting out in info, students can read about the 4 R’s and how they apply to the 5 action issues.  Students can watch videos and play games that reinforce the lessons they are learning.  You can use the videos as discussion starters in your classroom.   Download WebEasy to your classroom computers where students can build a webpage about their new learning.

Tips: Check out the educators section of Ollie’s World for professional development opportunities, lesson ideas, and project instructions.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Ollie’s World in your classroom.

Neo K12

Kelly Tenkely13 Comments on Neo K124291 views

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What it is: Neo K12 is an outstanding online collection of educational videos, lessons and games for students in grades k-12.  Neo K12 believes that “kids learn best by ‘seeing’ the real world.”  They have created this site with that belief in mind.  Neo K12 has cataloged the best free online educational videos from the Internet in one place.  Each video is watched and reviewed by k-12 educators to ensure their accuracy and appropriateness for students.  Subjects include physical science, life science, human body, earth and space, social studies, math, English (including phonics, stories, and grammar), and fun videos such as time lapse, slow motion, arts and crafts, learn magic, music lessons, and sports lessons.   In addition to videos, Neo K12 has Web 2.0 tools.  The  School Presentation tool is a mashup of Flickr and Wikipedia, and allows users to create and share presentations online. To create a presentation, students choose pictures for their presentation from Flickr, read and article about the subject from Wikipedia, and then add text to their presentation.   When the presentation is finished, it can be printed or viewed online as a slideshow.  Quizzes, games, and puzzles on Neo K12 are an interactive way to improve learning.  Teachers can create and share videos playlists complete with notes and instructions for their students. 

How to integrate Neo K12 into the classroom: Videos provide excellent opportunities for learning, they make it possible for kids to visualize and build a model in their minds.  This helps them to better understand key concepts and can stimulate curiosity in a subject.  When students or teachers search a subject, they are given a list of related videos, quizzes, games, and puzzles.  When a teacher creates an account, they can create a complete assignment within Neo K12 that includes instructions and notes for the students.  Students can complete the assignment by watching videos, playing related games and creating a School Presentation that shows understanding.  The presentations are easy enough for even young students to create.  Primary students can skip reading the Wikipedia article and just choose pictures and add some captions about facts they learned from a video they viewed.  These videos are a great way to introduce new learning, expand on previous learning, or to spark curiosity in a topic.

Many of the educational games and puzzles would be great for an interactive whiteboard as whole class activities.  They could, of course, also be used as classroom center activities, or completed individually in the computer lab. The jigsaw puzzles can be used as teasers to introduce a new topic.  The jigsaw puzzles use incredible images from Flickr.  Have students take turns coming up to the interactive whiteboard to put puzzle pieces together.  Students waiting at their seats can take guesses about what new learning you will be doing in class.

Tips: Create a free Neo K12 account, you will receive a dashboard where you can store videos, games, presentations, quizzes, and add notes and instructions.  You get a unique URL for your dashboard to share.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Neo K12 in your classroom.

I have, Who has Contraction Game

Kelly Tenkely8 Comments on I have, Who has Contraction Game2760 views

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What it is: Today I was looking for fun interactive games for students to play to practice “not” contractions.  I have used iKnow That: Alien Word Mine to practice the not contraction, but was looking for another opportunity for students to practice.  I searched for some fun activities and came up blank.  I decided to make an offline game that students could play as a class called “I have, who has?”.  In this card game, each student chooses a game card.  Each game card starts with the separate words (for example: can not) and has a contraction (for example: aren’t).  Students stand in a circle holding there game card.  Choose one student to begin by reading their card: “I have can not, who has aren’t?”  The student holding the card with “are not” responds: “I have are not, who has don’t?”.  Play continues until all matches have been made.


How to integrate I Have, Who Has Contraction Game into the classroom: There are several ways to play the I have, Who has Contraction Game.  The first way is to play as a class, with students reading the cards aloud and creating matches.  The game could also be played more like a dominoes game where students match up all the cards end to end with the correct contraction match.  I have, Who has can be played for multiple subjects.  For math facts the cards could read “I have 5+5 who has 12?”  The student holding “5+7” would respond “I have 5+7, Who has 9?” and so on.  This game can be adapted for matching states and capitals, math facts, parts of speech, vocabulary practice, etc.  Students have a great time playing “I have, Who has?” as a class.  It is a fabulous listening game and helps practice a variety of learning.


Tips: I have attached my Contraction Game here. Download and play with your students!


Leave a comment if you have found other contraction games that your students enjoy or your adaptations of “I have, Who has?”

Learn English Kids

Kelly Tenkely6 Comments on Learn English Kids3877 views

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What it is: Learn English Kids is a website especially for students who are learning English or need some remedial help in language development.  Created by the British Council, Learn English Kids has fun games, songs, stories, and offline activities to help students learn English.  All of the activities are created so that they can be done independently or with family members or friends.  In the listen and watch section of the site are animated stories and songs, many have accompanying activities to use in the classroom.  There are also videos and online activities designed to build listening skills and comprehension.  In the read write section are downloadable materials designed to help develop reading and writing skills.  The make section features online activities in which students can create something.  There are also arts and crafts directions to download and videos of children creating things.  In the explore section are additional resources and websites for English language learners. The game section features several games broken down into language games, fun with English, little Kids games, and games to play with friends.  Students learn basic English vocabulary, alphabetical order, phoneme matching (matching phoneme to its sound), hieroglyphics, months in a year, famous landmarks, seasons, recycling, ancient Egypt, animal habitats, around the world, bugs, Chinese New Year, Christmas, cities, colors, computers, countries, currency, daily routines, days of the week, dinosaurs, directions, environment, fairy tales, food, Great Barrier Reef, health, holidays, human body, maps, money, nature, numbers, Olympic games, pets, planets, plants, school, solar system, space, sports, technology, weather, just to name a few.


How to integrate Learn English Kids into the classroom: Learn English Kids is a comprehensive resource that can be used in your classroom in a variety of ways.  The site was designed specifically for English Language Learners (or ESL students) but is appropriate for primary students or students who need some remedial language building.  The site has been created to be navigated and used independently and many of the activities would be perfect as a center that students can visit.  The games are outstanding for vocabulary and language building.  Listen and Watch has an impressive collection of songs that are traditional children tunes like Hickory, dickory dock, teaching songs that help students remember things like months in a year, and themed songs.  Each song is accompanied by a pdf of the lyrics and a print activity.   There are several well made short stories for your students to read along with.  The animated stories can be read with or without audio.  Each story comes with the ability to print and includes accompanying activity suggestions.  Kids Talk features videos of kids answering a variety of questions.  The Listen and Watch section also has a place for students to practice their listening skills.  Students watch an animated video and listen to what the characters say.  Then they are asked to interact with the activity according to what they heard.  These activities are great for ELL, but would also be excellent for students with sensory integration problems.  In the Read and Write section, students read a passage and are given follow up questions that they can write about themselves.  These would make an excellent writing center for students who need some prompting to write.  In the Create section students can create online stories, characters, etc.  There are also some offline printable activities and suggestions of things to create.  This site features so many great resources, it will keep you ready with activities for your students.  Every one of the activities/songs/read alongs are high quality and engaging.  Students will love this site!  I cannot stress enough that this site has something for every student, not just English Language Learners.  My kindergarten and first grade students really enjoy using this site.


Tips: This site could take you hours to explore to find all of it’s hidden treasures.  If you are looking for a specific game, story, or topic, you may want to click on “Site Map” at the very bottom of the webpage.  Here you can sort through all of the resources by topic, finding exactly what you need quickly.  What a great website!! Be sure to check out the Teacher page where you will find lesson plans, resources, and guidance for teaching your ELL students.


Leave a comment and share how you are using Learn English Kids in your classroom.

NASA Space Place

Kelly Tenkely1 Comment on NASA Space Place2841 views

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What it is: NASA has hundreds of excellent educational resources online.  NASA Space Place is another awesome site for elementary kids to explore science and space.  The Space Place has fun online games, animations, projects, and fun facts about Earth, space and technology.  Space Place Live is an animated talk show where all the guests are real scientists and engineers who work on space and Earth missions.  Students can find out what it is like to work for NASA, how the scientist or engineer got started, and what they like to do for fun.  There are currently 7 episodes that students can enjoy topics include: solar wind, satellites, weather, space missions, telescopes, engineering, the birth of stars, Mars, robots, and black holes.  Even though the show is animated, the experts involved are the actual experts.  NASA Space Place has a variety of on and offline games with everything from scrambled pictures, to world puzzles, crazy quizzes and board games.  Students can learn more about weather, space, satellites, the environment, (and much more) through game play.  There are a variety of projects and experiments on the site with step by step directions for students.  These are great for the classroom, science fair, or at home on a rainy day.  Space Place makes finding games, animations, and projects related to your curriculum easy arranging the site by subjects.  Use Space Place when you are learning about planets and the solar system, stars, galaxies, and black holes, laws of the universe (light, motion, gravity), the Earth, and space technology.  Space Place has several storybooks that can be viewed on or offline.


How to integrate NASA Space Place into the classroom: Because of the wealth of resources on this site, there are a variety of ways to use it in your classroom.  The animations are a neat way to bring expert scientists and engineers into your classroom.  Share an animated video a week as your students explore the solar system and universe.  The games reinforce learning, use them as a center activity on the classroom computers as they relate to your curriculum.  Many of the games encourage exploration and trial and error (these are my favorite kind of learning games for students).  Students can explore the Amazing Facts section of the site and then complete the trivia game to test out their understanding.  In the project section, you will find experiments and science crafts. Choose some of these to complete as a class or assign each student a different project to test and share with the class.  Projects would also make an excellent stop during science fair time.  Use the Space Place Storybooks as animated flipbooks online as a class with a projector/interactive whiteboard, or print them out for your classroom library.  The books could be used as an online reading center on your classroom computers as well.  These stories are sure to capture your students imagination!


Tips: Be sure to check out the educator page on NASA Space Place, it is packed full of good ideas, newsletters, printable images of space for bulletin boards, space related articles, math related articles, printable posters, and podcasts to download.  With the renewed push for STEM education, there has never been a better time to include sites like NASA Space Place to excite and engage your students.


Leave a comment and share how you are using Nasa Interactive Timeline in your classroom.

GeoEdu

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on GeoEdu15677 views

 

What it is:  GeoEdu is a free software download for both Macs and PC’s.  The software contains two parts, the first is an atlas with interactive maps and details for each country including the capital, flag, land and water borders, length of the coasts, the population, official languages, internet and country code, currency, international organization membership, and more.  The second part of the software is a game offering more than 100,000 geography questions about worldwide geography.  The game lets players give an answer or choose to answer with clues or multiple choice.  After answering a question, students can view their score and look at detailed data for the territory.

 

How to integrate GeoEdu into the classroom:   I’m not sure why school supply stores still sell the pull down atlas, with all of the amazing atlas and map tools available for free, buying a map seems so last century!  GeoEdu is a bright and colorful interactive atlas with great details for each country.  This free software is perfect for use with an interactive whiteboard or projector.  The game included is a great way to increase student geography knowledge.  Play the game as a class during geography or any time you have a few extra minutes.  Keep a running score going throughout the year that can be added to easily.  GeoEdu is also a great download for classroom and library computers.  Use GeoEdu as a geography/atlas center where students can stop by and interact with maps and play the game.

 

Tips:   This site does require a download so be sure to add it to your wish list before the start of school.

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