In my quest to keep learning fun--so they won't notice that they're actually learning, I have researched the World Wide Web for quality educational sites. Anyone who has journeyed the Web knows what an overwhelming place it can be for parents, teachers and students. Fortunately, many dedicated people have realized this fact and have organized several excellent resources into some wonderful sites to explore. Let me share my favorite sites devoted to K-12 students.
The Hotlists
We'll begin our journey with the big picture--educational hotlists. You could spend months on these sites alone. The better ones I found are:
(1) The Franklin Institute's Educational Hotlist with several resources designed to stimulate creative thinking. Suggestions on interactive activities on science, art, history, literature, math and more are provided.
(2) CyberEd is a national, educational technology initiative consisting of school, business and community partnerships devoted to providing our children with a 21st century education. The Cyber hotlist is called Exemplary World Wide Web Education Sites .
(3) Another voluminous educational hotlist has links to even more hotlists by subject matter. For example, click insects and you'll pull up over 50 links to insect sites. The subjects are listed alphabetically and range from Africa to Wind Energy.
(4) Inez Ramsey's Kids Sites is a fun-filled site with activities & games, a chance for kids to meet favorite authors, arts and crafts, cartoons, genealogy, museum visits, pets, photography and more.
(5) Vose School Education Resources is a fabulous umbrella page with links to a wide variety of resources.
Select Sites By Subject for Parents and Kids
A fun place to visit for math enrichment is the Big Sky Telegraph gopher site . Although geared for teachers, parents who are interested in providing math enrichment to their children will find this site a stimulating source of interactive games and activities such as math shortcuts, using math for cooking, grocery store estimation games, secret codes, dice games and probability games using the sports page or rock, paper, scissors.
A wonderful reading site is Project Gutenberg . Named after Johann Gutenberg, the creative whiz who invented the printing press, Project Gutenberg makes literature available online. The site is designed to make information easy to read, use and quote. There are three portions of the Project Gutenberg Library: (1) Light Literature such as Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan and Aesop's Fables; (2) Heavy Literature; such as the Bible and Shakespeare and (3) References such as Roget's Thesaurus, a set of encyclopedias and dictionaries.
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