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Writing in the sand and beyond

Anotherplanet

Originally uploaded by gumbootspearlz.

Maybe you wrote your first words in the sand. It’s a great place to begin but the tide washes it away. Then you learn that writing it on paper, and computers, blogs and notebooks and it starts to stay alive for longer.  I have been searching sites that encourage children to write. I came across some real gems and my children have been enjoying my findings and have been writing using the prompts all afternoon.

I love this site,
http://www.brucevanpatter.com/piratedog_book.html
http://www.brucevanpatter.com/inventaworld.html  

It has lots of cool activities. I especially like the visual prompts.   There are some great looking books which when I have enough look like they are worth purchasing.

http://www.brucevanpatter.com/storykitchen.html  (Story kitchen site)
http://www.brucevanpatter.com/creativetimestips.html

Another site that is lots of fun is the writing fix site http://writingfix.com/writingfix_for_kids.htm  It has some fun writing prompt games focusing on different aspects like adjectives, setting, colour and memory. My kids really enjoyed mucking around with it and writing down some of the mixtures from the screen down. Basically you click the options until you get a subject that you really love particularly like. My kids got inspired and started to substitute their own words into it. One started to write a story about a dog that cleaned clouds- it turned into a story about a dog cleaning space, and my daughter is working on one about a rainbow coloured cat.  When I visited the official Crayola site I found some really useful ideas that I might like to use in my writing workshops.

Crayola has a few things worth looking at.  The story spinner idea would be fun to make.

Writing Crayola
http://www.crayola.com/free-coloring-pages/print/crayola-poetry-coloring-page/
http://www.crayola.com/free-coloring-pages/print/movie-frame-coloring-page/  
http://www.crayola.com/free-coloring-pages/print/once-upon-a-time-coloring-page/  
http://www.crayola.com/free-coloring-pages/print/story-spinner-coloring-page/  
http://www.crayola.com/free-coloring-pages/print/edgar-allan-poe-coloring-page/  

Other Interesting Websites
This site has a tram that you jump on with creative tasks like the lunchbox interview and other ideas.

http://www.outbackonline.net/tram/activity6.htm  [Making a suitcase]

There are many more sites to explore and I will continue searching for great creative writing ones.  We’ve found enough to do us for now though!

Felt Boards and Bahai Class

leaf still life

Originally uploaded by gumbootspearlz.

What is it about a bit of interaction with a felt board that makes a story for some kids come alive? I think it’s having moments where you can narrate on that felt board. It might also be that it’s like having a low tech holodeck moment (Star Trek creative space).

Today I told a story of an Honest Woodsman (see Peace Pack book 3, lessons on truthfulness) using a felt board. I gave each child some felt to add to the story picture board for me. They placed them on for me and made the images of the story. The youngest member of the class really enjoyed playing with this whilst some of the older students were doing other activities.

We have a visiting soft toy Cheetah, Vanessa, who is taking turns to visit children in the class. Today one of the kids read out the account of her visit and she was very friendly towards her cheetah. I thought it worked beautifully. Vanessa goes home to see kids with a virtue card and has a special bag. It is a bit of an event for her to go home.

Travelling beyond the shores- Geography web surf

look at what i found

Originally uploaded by gumbootspearlz.

In second year high school my social studies teacher was horrified because most of the class did not know their geography. So she gave us a crash course, and we had to memorize the maps and fill them in. We also did a special project on one particular country.

My kids have always loved their atlases but as they have not yet travelled, well except to New Zealand and around Australia. I don’t want them to have their sos teachers horrified at their general knowledge. Besides which I think it’s great from them to understand different cultures and places, especially because of the diversity in Australia.   I do hope we soon take them further than New Zealand.

A lady I heard do a lot of public speaking used to say in “Australia we can travel the whole world within our nation”- and I think that’s so true, especially when you live in the big cities of Australia for any length of time. Although rural areas are becoming increasingly culturally diverse.

I came across several sites that would be helpful in teaching my kids to learn their geography. http://www.printablemaps.net  

You can print outline maps from it, and labelled maps for Australia, South, North and Central America, Europe and Africa. This means the kids can colour them in, and then try and label the blank one when they know it and test themselves. If they laminate them they can test themselves again and again by writing on their unlabelled blank one with a marker!

Another one of my favourite sites, which I must admit I haven’t visited for a while is Kidzone. http://www.kidzone.ws/  

It has a section on geography and of course several other subjects. Its geography section includes,Canada, Egypt, and the United States.

The DLT website http://www.dltk-kids.com/world/index.htm  has several crafts and activities for classrooms doing around the world themes- Australia, Canada, Native American, China, Denmark, Hawaii, Egypt, Greece, India, Norway, Spain are some of the places linked with. Some of it’s not up my alley (too much use of toilet paper rolls?) but some of its useful. I like the Australian and Egyptian sections as they have some really interesting activities, like writing your name in heiroglypics, anagrams

First School is great for preschooler activities on geography and language http://www.first-school.ws/  It has topics like Nursery Rhymes and Fables. Why not start them understanding the diversity of the world from a young age!

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Finding out about Rainforests in Australia

pathways to peace

Originally uploaded by gumbootspearlz.

In my web wanderings today I found some wonderful educational work on Rainforests.

The Wet Tropics Management Authority on their website have had permission to put PDF of fact sheets on many topics, such as bats, butterflies, foodchains, plants- and on top of this there is a teacher and students resource with units for Prep through to year 8 which make use of many creative teaching and thinking strategies, just as thinking hats, bloom gardeners matrix, the multiple intelligences, games, composing poetry, and role plays to explore issues of caring for the rainforest and the nature of the wildlife and fauna there.

If you are a teacher or parent wanting to educate your children about the Rainforest in Australia this is a great site for supporting you in your in efforts. If you want to also see creative teaching methods applied to a particular teaching unit this is a very interesting site that demonstrates this.  I can’t wait to encourage my own kids to explore this site and  do some of the activities on it, particularly as they are studying plants and food chains at the moment.  There is also in the rainforest explorer units a consideration of Aboriginal people living in the wet tropics environment.

http://www.wettropics.gov.au/st/rainforest_explorer

Maths on line- interactive sites

Today I went looking for fun interactive activities for children to learn about maths on line.   I thought it would be helpful to save my findings here for any other parents who are looking for the same kinds of materials and to remind myself and my kids what sites are fun for them to visit.  If you have any other sites to add to this post please post them in comments and I will take a look at them.

The BBC UK has an interesting site with an activity and a quiz for- shapes, measurement, and number.  Some of the topics include decimals, problem solving,  subtraction, the number system, fractions, division, multiplication,  addition.  The money problems work in pounds and pence so maybe are not so useful if you are not from the UK (but great if you are soon to visit there).  Initially some of the activities take a while to load (maybe that’s just our computer?) but they are quite sound activities when they are all systems go.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/maths/activities/shapes.shtml

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/maths/number.shtml

Superkids http://www.superkids.com/aweb/tools/math/  helps you to generate your own worksheets and is full of inspiring quotes and brainfood!

Funbrain  http://www.funbrain.com/kidscenter.html has levels for the interactive activities, easy, hard, medium and superbrain, some of the topics in Funbrain are fractions, measure it- and there are some activities that are applied maths like working out how to tip a penguin, as well as problems of working out area and perimeter.  For those who like their music as well as maths there is a piano player game ( http://www.funbrain.com/notes/index.html)  You can also search games for an age level match.  Unlike the BBC site it doesn’t explain things to you but its good reinforcement practice when you have learnt something and want loads of practice at it.

An Australian site with plenty of interactive games, but the added bonus of a maths dictionary is Jenny Eather’s Rainforest Maths http://www.rainforestmaths.com/

Well that’s all to log for my searches today- I think the kids and I will check these sites out for a while and see how we go.  I am going to ask them to rate the sites in different areas, usefulness, fun, time to download, enjoyment etc. 

Like any online learning it’s also great for it to be backed up by learning by other modes, chatting with parents, hands on maths, and reading and puzzles.