Here is a growing list of interesting sites to explore for elementary school students. Please add any favorites of yours in the comment section.

Elementary Learning Sites

• Learning your Alphabet
  Help a monkey shake coconuts out of the tree
• Count Us in Games
  Games designed to help children understand basic number concepts
• Between the Lions
  Get Wild about Reading
• English & Math & Science
  from BBC
• Early Reading Skills
  Educational Games
• Spelling City
  Enter your own spelling words, then select: Test me, Teach me or Play a Game
• Reading Website for emerging Readers
• 50 One Stop Online Learning Activities by Scholastic
• Sight Words with Samson
  Kindergarten & 1st Grade
• ABCya
  Activities include earn the alphabet , uppercase to lowercase letter matching, categorizing, mouse manipulation, drawing, addition, subtraction, counting money, keyboarding practice, identifying computer parts, and much more! Customized for different grade levels
• WordGirl
  What is your favorite Word? PowerWords ,and Dunk Huggy are just a few games you can play on this site
• Academic Skill Builder
  Play online games, while practicing multiplication, division, addition, words, vowels, etc.
• 4Kids.org
  Coconut Vowels, Demolition Division, Word Frog, Word Invasion, Alien Addition, Word Viper, Meteor Multiplication, Minus Mission, Word wizard, State Finder, Coloring Book, Musical Instruments, Beekeeper Game
• Spin and Spell
  Practice your spelling skills. Similar to Wheel of Fortune
• Word Central Play games from Merriam-Webster- Robo-Bee, BIGbot, Jumble Kids
• Puzzle Blocks
  Puzzle play and problem solving. Playing with games and puzzles helps hone our ability to recognize and understand categories, patterns, and associations. Being able to recognize patterns and find new ones helps us bring together what we know to find a single solution to a problem.
• World Play
• Word World
  by PBS
• TVOKids
  Art & Music Games, Adventures and Sports, Puzzle and Words, Math and Science Games
• Sesame Street Games
  An amazing amount of games from the beloved Sesame Street. Learn about Rhymes, Sorting, Letters, Numbers, Shapes, Math and much more…

Simulation

• Create a City
• Virtual Knee Surgery
• The Amazing Adventure of the Food Detective
• PanWapa World

Creativity- Drawing

• Create Sand Art
• Pointillism Practice Page
• Matisse for Kids
• Keith Haring Coloring Book
• Create an imaginary jungle scene
• Online Coloring
  Choose from a wide variety of coloring pages. Ex. Aesop Fables, Fairy Tales, Greek Mythology, Animals, etc.
• Bomomo
  Like abstract art? A different kind of painting tool. Try it out.
• National Gallery of Art
  Interactive Art that you can make online
• Kerpoof.com
  Make a picture, story or movie
• We are Multicolored
  Design and create your own flag. Learn about the symbols and significance of world flags. Remember not to give out your full name when you publish your flag. Use your online identity, avatar’s name or first name only.
• PaperCritters
  Create digital Paper Toys
• GirlSense
  Social Network Site. You will need to sign up for this site. Ask your parents for permission first!
  Games, Fashion Design Studio, Create your own Boutique.
• Cloud Dreamer
  Use your powers of make-believe to conjure up a cloud of your own design.
• ArtPad
• Shidonni
  Draw your own critters, then animate them and create a virtual world for them

Digital Storytelling

• Microsoft Photostory
• Windows Moviemaker (comes pre-installed on your Windows machine)
• Create your Own Wildlife Movie
  from National Geographic
• Myths and Legends
  Create your own myth or legend. Record even your own voice
• Junior Net
  Make your own movie

Programming

• Scratch
  Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share your creations on the web. Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design

Typing Programs

• Tux Typing 2 (free to download)
• BBC Practice Typing
• http://sense-lang.org/typing/
• Fun School Super Speller Play a game and improve your typing speed
• Krazy Keyboarding for Kids
• Stack Cups
• Key Seeker Keyboarding for Kindergarteners
• Super Hyper Spider Typer Hungry lizards with words on their backs are after Berry the hairy spider!

Games

• MyDinos
  Go Questing, play games, make buddies
• Elephant Odyssey
  On a journey through time, you’ll learn the ways of the mammoths and their modern day descendants, the elephants. Go back 200,000 years and test your skills.
• Drawminos
  Design your own Domino game. Position each domino piece or ball perfectly
• Fantastic Contraptions
  A fun Online Physics Puzzle Game
• Zoopz
  Games that make you think
• Cubescape
  Stack some cubes
• LineRider
  Learn about cause and effect
• Connect All Four
  Game of Strategy
• I do Dog Tricks
  Type in a command and watch the dog do tricks
• FancyPants
  Practice your hand-eye coordination. The pants may not look like much to you, but to a stick figure, they’re stylin’ threads! Jump on spiders and find your way to the next level!
• Animal Planet Games
  have fun playing animal games
• Lego.com Games
  Indiana Jones Adventure, Deep Jungle, Speed Session. Cryst Alien Conflict, Castle Battle, Lego City
• Fun School
  Pre-School through 6th grade Activities and Games
• Crickweb
  Series of fun games
• Blobs
  Fun game that makes you think!
• CBeebies
  Fun and Games from BBC: Rhyme Maker, Character Maker, Sharing Stories, Make your own picture stories, Talking stories and more
• Prongo Games
  Lots of different games for ages 3-12

Social Studies

• History Games for Kids
• OLogy
  American Museum of Natural History: Archeology, Einstein, Biodiversity, Astronomy, Earth & Genetics

Geography

• Need a map? Use the Map Machine from National Geographic
• USA Map Tetris
  Test your knowledge about the States in the USA
• GeoSpy Game
  National Geographic: Identify continents, countries, states and provinces
• GeoNet Game
  Test our knowledge about the USA or the world
• Do you know all your States in the USA?
  Are you smarter than a Third Grader?
• GeoGames
  Build Planet Earth, Cities and Countries
• USA- States and Capitals
  Check how many states and their capitals you know
• Where on the map is?
  Flash Games to locate states and countries- Europe, Middle East, South America, Central America, Africa, Canada, Australia, Find the Difference
• Map your World
  Very cool site. Find out how maps became flat. Can you find countries when the map is “upside down”?

Research & Reference

• Encyclopedia Britannica
  We will be giving you a username and password for this site, so you can access all the information at home.
• Math Dictionary for Kids
  Great visual dictionary for mathematical terms.
• Sensible Units
  Convert measurements into real objects
• Copyright Issues
  Get some answers to your Copyright questions

Science

• Earth & Sky for Kids
  Science News and Podcasts for kids.
• Solar System Jigsaw Puzzle
• Pest World for Kids
  Come explore the world of pests. Then you can use your knowledge to outwit the pests in your world.
  Remember, that you DO NOT give out your name or e-mail address, unless you are WITH your parent.
• The Science Museum
  Building Bonanza, Energy Flows, ID-fit, and more…
• EekoWorld by PBS Kids
  Learn about the Environment, Air & Water, Garbage & Recycling, Games, etc.
• Tinker Ball
  Build a track for our ball by tinkering with everyday objects.
  Exploratory play is about asking questions: “What happens when I do this?” “What if I did it this way?” Experimenting with materials and pushing their limits encourages us to consider a wide range of possibilities when problem-solving. Playing around with objects and ideas helps us see that there may be more than one solution.

Generators

• Make fun and customized pictures
• Create your own M&M character
• Transform yourself into a Dark Ages History character
• Text to Speech Generators
  • Ottogram- Dress up an Otter and have him say something
  • Design your own Pirate and have him say something
• Create your own comic strip with
  • Captain Underpants
    
  • Tell-a-Story-Builder
  • My Comic Strip

Here is my Top Ten “Learn by Playing Sites list for Elementary School age kids. No particularly order. They include links from categories, such as drawing, simulations, digital storytelling, programming and puzzle solving.

http://langwitches.glogster.com/LearnByPlaying/

1. Kerpoof
2. Linerider
3. Scratch
4. Fantastic Contraptions
5. Virtual Knee Surgery
6. Art Pad
7. Wildlife Film Maker
8. Tinker Ball
9. Glogster Edu
10. YOUR favorite “Learn by Playing” Site

As you may have noticed, Number 10 in this list is YOUR favorite “Learn by Playing” for Elementary School students. Please add the site and link in the comment section.

ShareTabs is a new tool I just heard about. It looks like a great tool to use in presentations, but also for your elementary school classroom.

It is very visual by displaying a thumbnail of the website link, but also has tabs open with the links you specify open, ready for your students to click on.

You will get one URL where all your links will be displayed.

She did it! Paige McGee from LeadingToLearn (can’t wait to finally read her first blog post ) found a cute little tool before I had caught it in my RSS reader or from my Twitter network. She is getting ALL  the credit for this one.

How cute for lower level elementary school kids to creat  their own Valentine Heart made from their creative text. Teachers can print, save or take a screenshot of the heart to be placed on the classroom blog or in the students’ e- portfolio.

Valentine Writing/Printing from the Festisite site.

I have found an amazing resource, while researching and planning the coordination of teaching research skills in our elementary school. This incredible website is a fantastic site for media specialists, technology coordinators, literacy specialists and classroom teachers in their quest for introducing and supporting research skills in elementary age students.

The site guides your students through the process of researching. It includes media, such as books, magazines & newspaper articles as well as websites. This website is useful, when you are planning your school’s research skill sequence across grade levels, as well as an individual grade level unit plan.

How to do Research? from the Kentucky Virtual Library

Step 1: Plan your project

Plan your projectDefine your subject

Brainstorm

What do you already know?

Group similar ideas

Identify key words and phrases

Make a quest strategy

Gather your tools

Step 2: Search for information

Search for informationThe Kentucky Virtual Library

The library catalog

Encyclopedia

Reference books: table of contents and index

Magazines and newspaper articles

Dictionary

What if you can’t find anything?

Search the Internet (also called the World Wide Web)

1. What is a search engine?

2. How do you search the Internet?

3. For super searchers only

Step 3: Take Notes

Take notesThe KWL method

Fact finder method

Data sheets

Clustering method (also called mapping or webbing)

Venn diagram method

Note cards

Prints and photocopies

Bibliography page

Step 4: Use the information

Use the informationScan the page first

The five finger test

Is the information true or bogus?

Put it in your own words

Organize the information

Compare and contrast

Put the information in order

Add your own conclusions

Step 5: Report

Share what you’ve learned

Step 6: Evaluate

Ask yourself, “How did I do?”A final word: Thanks for your help

The Research Frontier

Link to other resources

Piclits came to my attention via Kevin Jarrett’s amazing NCS-Tech blog.

PicLits.com is a creative writing site that matches beautiful images with carefully selected keywords in order to inspire you. The object is to put the right words in the right place and the right order to capture the essence, story, and meaning of the picture.

I gave it a try and immediately felt the power that writing or expressing yourself gives you. The images you can choose from are inspiring and literally scream for words to be added to express YOU!

See the full PicLit at PicLits.com

I am thinking of the possibilities to introduce our students to free writing. Even if you don’t have access to this site at your school, you could still collect Creative Commons images from Flickr or other sources and practice “Inspired Picture Writing”.

Last year, our third graders had a great time increasing their vocabulary while donating free rice through the UN World Food Program. I just learned that the site has added more subject areas to their questions:

• Famous paintings
• Chemistry symbols
• English Grammar
• English Vocabulary
• Geography: World Capitals
• Languages: German, Spanish, Italian, French
• Math: Multiplication

Directly skipping over the debate, if it is really necessary to dedicate specific (precious) time to teach AND practice keyboarding skills during school hours… our tech team was asked to “teach” keyboarding at our Elementary School.  Parents “demand” it, since it is something “visual” for them to understand that they child is “getting” technology instruction. Some teachers also feel that it is a “vital” skill to have for our students to succeed.

Yes, let’s skip over the debate, if students will really be handicapped in the 21st century,  if they do not use their pinky to type an “A” or the index finger for a “G”.

Let me forget that my three teenage daughters never took an official typing class and can type faster with their 10 fingers than I can on their Facebooks and MySpaces and on their cellphones with their thumbs.

Is the method (homekeys with proper finger placement) most of the older generation holds on to just because “That is the way we learned it” or is it because, if you did not take a typing class in the “old” days, you would automatically be doomed to the “Peack and Hunt” method for the rest of your life.

Let’s forget that we are dealing with digital natives here. Natives that are confronted with typing for almost EVERYTHING they do these days: cellphones, their social network places, e-mailing, school work, etc. That was not the case for the “Peck and Hunt” generation.

Does it really matter with which finger you typed a letter? Isn’t the content more important? Yes, of course it will take you longer if you have to look for each letter you are typing. I am arguing though that digital natives will pick up the skill anyway along the way. They have the opportunities to practice and most importantly they have the motivation to practice in so many different environments.  How else do we explain that teenagers learned to type on their tiny little cellphones at lightning speed without ever having attended a “Keyboarding for Cellphones” class.

Oops, I forgot that we were skipping the debate part…

I have to get back to my keyboarding lesson plan that I am working on for my elementary school students…

Check back for that post later…

Just found this amazing site, that allows students to create Character Trading Cards from Read Write and Think. Thank you CLong from Tech Integration in School.

Students will be asked question by question to fill out an analisis of a book character for example.

Once completed, students can print it out, to fold and then glue together. There is also a space for kids to add an image of their character afterwards. I did not see that the image could be added electonically though.

Download example of character-trading-card as a .pdf

Neat possibility to create a game in your classroom around characters of a story or a book.

Here are additional interesting material / links from the Read Write and Think

• Create and Print your own Flip Book
• Read and create your own Fractured Fairy Tales

I have briefly highlighted a few screen capturing tools and keyboard shortcuts on Langwitches before. Here is a quick run down, links to original posts or links to the software website:

1. Windows Keyboard Shortcut
   1. Capturing the entire desktop: Use the Print Screen button on your keyboard to place the image on your clipboard, then past (CTRL+V) the image
   2. Capturing the active window: ALT + Print Screen button
2. Mac Keyboard Shortcuts
   1. Command+Shift+3 shortcut for taking a screen capture of your entire screen. Places a copy of the image on your desktop.
   2. Command+Shift+4: gives you a crosshair cursor. Drag the cursor out over the area you want to capture. Places a copy of that image on your desktop.
   3. Control+Command+Shift+3 (or +4): instead of creating a file on your desktop, copies the captured area into your Clipboard. Paste (CTRL+V) the image where you want to.
3. Kwout- Screen Capturing and Quoting tool (web based)
   
4. Skitch (for MACs only)
5. Jing Project (MAC and PC)
   I have been using Jing for a while and love that it is simply there. After installation jing will be the "sunshine" on top of your screen window.
   
   The crosshair cursor will create a cross on your screen that you can drag over the area you want to capture. You can save the captured image as a .png file on your hard drive or upload to screencast.com , flickr or upload via FTP directly to a location. You can also receive an embed code for that image. I use the image tool almost every day for trouble shooting visuals, creating step-by-step instructions for faculty and even to re-size images quickly while I have them on the screen, instead of opening up Photoshop to do it. I admit, that I have not used their video capturing tool on a consistent basis.
   Usually I add text and/or arrows to the screenshot to point out a button or an option.
   
6. Snag it (Same company who developed Jing)
7. I was able to get a free licensed copy (version 7) of this program as well as Camtasia a couple of months back. I had not played with it, until Sue Waters used some pretty nice screen shots in her post "Can you smell the benefits of CoComment? " I asked what tool she was using and that brought me back to checking out Snag It.
   I like there more professional options to jazz up your arrows, add stickers and above all the ability to edit the screen shots right there, without having to save and then import into Photoshop to resize. That is a real issue for me, since my WordPress layout theme, does not like me to insert images greater than 500 px.
   

   Snag It allows you to save your shots in MANY different formats, while Jing will export as a .png file. It also allows you to choose between different options of capturing. While Jing will capture a rectangular area, in Snag It you can choose between the Screen, a window, an active window, a freehand region, a fixed region, an object and multiple areas. The best feature though is the scrolling area. With the other screen capture tools I have, I cannot include any part of the screen that is hidden below. Very cool tool.

One feature that I am still looking for is the one that allows me to capture dropdown menus. Usually they disappear when I move my mouse away from it to define the area of the shot. Anyone now of a way to do this with any of the tools mentioned here? A tip would be greatly appreciated.

You can find another review list for screen capturing tools on Digital Inspiration . They include a few tools, that I have not used.

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