2 great websites

Someone clued us in to some really fabulous websites recently.

Here they are.

For children learning to read, check out www.starfall.com.  

There are various levels of activities, from A-B-C's and learning their sounds, to short stories.  Primarily designed for first grade, Starfall is also useful for pre-kindergarten, kindergarten and second grade.  I especially appreciate the way a beginning reader can click on each word of the story and hear it sounded out for them, as each part of the word lights up.  It's like having a helper on hand to give your child extra reading lessons.  And they LOVE it!  The girls try to get their work done fast, so they can earn a couple "games"!  The music that plays once in a while is not objectionable either, which is very nice.  The older girls do the A-B-C part w/ Chase, and he loves it.  Very much like animated phonics flash cards!  Starts out with saying the name of the particular letter, and then uses the sound of that letter repeatedly after that.  Very phonetically-correct.  The short stories are cute, funny, and engaging.  After a page is "read", the child can click on the picture, and usually something interesting will happen with the characters shown.  Oh, and the stories aren't brain-dead, mind-numbing, ridiculous either.  

The other site is used more by Emelie and Marissa, and covers a wide range of subjects.  Go to www.iknowthat.com.  You can choose grade level (up to 6th grade) and topic.  Most recently the girls have enjoyed "thinking games", and constructing their own "contraptions" using all sorts of widgets.  Yesterday it was starting from scratch and assembling a complicated ball factory with all types of interesting pieces that they could drag and drop and join together to make fascinating contraptions on the screen.  I was thinking that boys could spend hours doing this.  Day before that it was assembling organisms/animals in the proper order to form a food chain.  (That was under Science.)  

Again, this sort of stuff is great motivation for getting schoolwork done, chores, etc.!  They'll race to beat everyone else, so they can get in a game or 2!  Fine with me!  We haven't checked out everything on this site yet, so I can't recommend it ALL wholeheartedly.  For instance, to show/teach gravity and projectile motion, there is a food-fight game.  I don't let the girls do that one, for obvious reasons, but it's easy to see what each game is going to be like before you click on it.

Chase is in solitary confinement.  Don't let the smile fool you.

He microwaved Johnny's cell phone.  Really, he did.  He likes to pull a chair up to the kitchen counter and open the door to hear the "ding!".  Recently he learned how to turn it on for a few seconds, which gives him an additional "ding!" when it shuts off.  Well, I have started unplugging it when I see him headed in that direction, because he saw people putting things IN there, and started doing the same, which resulted in a completely melted stick of butter, and other such items.  Well, yesterday, I wasn't around......JB's phone was lying there, and it got nuked.  It stayed HOT, as in VERY HOT TO THE TOUCH! for a looooooooooong time!  As Johnny put it, "it's toast, literally".  

We'll let him out when he's maybe 5 or 6.  :)   Check out the video.  This boy is so funny!