Parent of a home-schooled child? Seeking supplemental educational website activities? Here are 10 recommend by classroom teachers. A few of these sites are completely free and others have sections accessible without a subscription.
Educational Websites
ABCya!
Abcya.com is a teacher-created website which provides fun and educational games and apps for kids to use under the guidance of their parents and teachers. The games do not collect personal information and children and adults are able to visit the site and play the games without providing any personal information to ABCya.com. To learn more about the author and how the site was created please read the ABCya! story.
Sheppard Software
The purpose of Sheppard Software is to add sound and visual effects to make learning fun and more memorable, to design games with many difficulty levels so that players will continue to be challenged no matter how far they progress, and to provide games that will exercise players’ brains.
IXL
IXL Learning was founded in 1998 when they released Quia Web, the first website that allowed teachers and learners to create and share customized study materials. The initial version featured three formats: a matching game, a concentration game, and flash cards. Soon after, quizzes were added, along with a dozen more game types. The concept was an overnight success, and Quia Web quickly became one of the most popular education sites in the early days of the internet.
FunBrain
Parents can trust Funbrain to deliver a fun and safe experience for even the youngest children. The Playground helps parents introduce their preschoolers to the Internet and teaches them how to manipulate the mouse and keyboard. Selected by FamilyFun magazine in its September 2010 issue as one of the top ten websites for kids, Funbrain is committed to providing a safe gaming environment that bridges learning and entertainment.
Magic Keys
There are 26 original stories with color illustrations for young children as well as older children and young adults. Children’s Storybooks Online seeks to combine education and entertainment to amuse and engage children\’s imaginations. There are riddles, mazes, coloring book pages and a page with children\’s links that have won Children’s Storybooks Online Award for excellence.
Storyline Online
Storyline Online features Screen Actors Guild Foundation recordings of well-known actors reading children’s books and making graphically dynamic videos so that children around the world can be read to with just the click of a Storyline Online video book image. Reading to children has been repeatedly shown to improve their reading, writing and communication skills, logical thinking, concentration and general academic aptitude… as well as inspire a love of reading.
Many teachers play SAG Foundation’s Storyline Online videos for their students. Doctors and nurses play Storyline Online videos for children in hospitals. And parents and children around the world watch Storyline Online videos millions of times every month.
Starfall
Starfall.com opened in September of 2002 as a free public service and has been teaching children to read with phonics ever since. Their systematic approach, in conjunction with phonemic awareness practice, is perfect for preschool, kindergarten, first grade, second grade, special education, homeschool, and English language development (ELD, ELL, ESL). Starfall is an educational alternative to other entertainment choices for children.
SoftSchools
SoftSchools provides free math worksheets, free math games, grammar quizzes, free phonics worksheets, and games. Worksheets and games are organized by grades and topics. These printable math and phonics worksheets are auto generated.
Mr. Nussbaum
MrNussbaum.com was developed with the idea that crucial concepts, themes, ideas, and fact sets taught in the classroom can be enhanced over the internet through interactivity. Furthermore, for teachers to have a reliable k -8 internet site to use in the computer lab or in the classroom, that likely covers one or many themes currently being taught. MrNussbaum.com offers dozens of interactive games specifically designed to pinpoint one or several essential concepts taught in elementary years, and dozens of research themes designed to make the process of gathering information interactive and enjoyable. MrNussbaum.com, however, does not just present information, but in addition, provides numerous interactive activities to complement the presentation of interactive information.
Vooks
This is the Netflix of storybook sites. You can cast these animations to your smartTV through Google Chromcast and free coordinating lesson plans for the stories are also available. Parents can listen to the stories with their kids and then go through the lesson without printing. One month free trial is available.
