Week of 4/15

In honor of Earth Week, I shared several excellent, interactive websites for kids that are focused on the 3 Rs (Reducing, Reusing & Recycling):

The Greens (created by WGBH in Boston) - cool, very short episodes on assorted conservation topics. There are also games, downloadables, etc. Very fun and appropriate for most kids over 8 or so.

Recycle Round Up (Nat Geo Kids) - Kids can help Max (the gorilla...) to clean up the park by picking up and sorting trash into recycling, compost or garbage containers. The activity is timed. Kids can compare scores! Even the little ones will enjoy playing this!

Water Wiz (Nat Geo Kids) - Kids learn how much water is used to accomplish assorted daily activities such as taking a shower, brushing teeth, running the dishwasher. Very educational, but engaging at the same time. Kids under 8 probably won't stick with it for too long.

My Garbology - a site created by a non-profit called NatureBridge. Kids select a garbage item and choose where it belongs (compost, recycle bin, garbage or repurpose). Each time an object goes in its appropriate bin, players learn a little about conservation. Cute.

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• 950s - Countries and major events of Asia
  
  
• 960s - Countries and major events of Africa
  
  

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• 929.9 - World Flags, State Flags, and.....State License Plates!
  
  
• 930s - Archeology
  
  • 932 Ancient Egypt
  • 937 Ancient Rome
    
  • 938 Ancient Greece
    
    
• 940s - Europe (continents)
  
  • World Wars I and II
    
    

 Websites we visited this week:

The Children's University of Manchester (History) - a very interactive site with all sorts of engaging activities, like "Catapult" or "Make a Mummy"!
        
Europa.eu (Kids Corner) - site for kids offering information on the European Union. Many fun EU-themed games for 3 different age groups.

Ducksters.com (Europe) - a site covering a variety of content areas. We visited the Europe page, where you can learn all about the continent, and then about each country in the continent.

    We also enjoyed playing Battleship with the computer!

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• 909.82 - The 20th Century
  
  
• 910s - Explorers! Pirates! Shipwrecks! Titanic!
  
  
• 912 - Maps, Atlases & Globes
  
  
• 919.8 - Polar Exploration

 Websites we visited this week:

National Geographic Kids - An assortment of geography games, including long-time                        
         favorite..."CopyCat"!
All About Explorers (.com) - Students can find an assortment of information about a number of well-known explorers, do Treasure Hunts, etc.

Biography.com - Biography of Ernest Shackleton (Endurance)
South Pole Quest (.com) - an informative website created by students who spent time in Antartica in 2009. Interesting videos, maps, facts and more.

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(Week of 1/21)

3rd Grade
This week, we continued reading aloud a personal favorite--Chocolate Fever by Robert Kimmel Smith. I encouraged students to think about what the cure might be...and to maybe write their own "fever" stories!

4th and 5th Grades

We continued our "tour" of non-fiction in our library--visiting the 800s (Literature) section. This section, while consisting of many books, actually only has books up to 818, since a majority of the other call numbers over 820 are for fiction from other parts of the world. Our world literature is shelved in another location and has the call number "WL" for World Literature.

Here are some of the "neighborhoods" we visited this week:

• 808 - "How to Write" books
• 811 - Poetry (our biggest section in the 800s) 
  • While visiting this section, we read a variety of examples of different types of poetry, including concrete, "reverso" and haiku.
• 818 - Jokes and Riddles

Websites we visited this week:

Jack Prelutsky - a very engaging website giving kids the opportunity to choose a poem to read 

Shel Silverstein - another engaging, very "Shel Silverstein" site! Many activities and games, downloadable and printable items, all having to with Silverstein's unique poetry!     

Just Joking - this National Geographic Kids page was the most "kid-fun" joke site I could find! Cute animals "tell" animal-themed jokes or ask riddles. Visitors must click to find the answers.     

*****I didn't have an opportunity to enter last week's activities, but wanted to share the one website we visited!

Sports Illustrated Kids - we had fun watching the video of 2 year-old Titus' amazing hoop throwing!!       

                                                                                            (Week of 1/7)

3rd Grade

This week, 3rd graders continued working in pairs using the title page, verso page, glossary and index to search for answers to questions I generated from an assortment of non-fiction materials. It was amazing watching these pairs working together so efficiently on this task! The skills they acquired and used will really help these students when they are doing research!

4th and 5th Grades

We continued our "tour" of the non-fiction section this week. We visited the first half of our 700s (Arts & Recreation) section. Here are a few "neighborhoods" we visited:

• 700 - Art Appreciation, Art History, Art in Culture
• 720 - Architecture
• 736 - Paper Crafting
  • Origami!
• 741.5 - Graphic Novels (our most popular section in non-fiction!)
  • while graphic novels are very popular with many of our students, we encourage them as much as possible to include books from a variety of genres in their daily reading!
• 743 - Drawing
  
• 745 - Misc. Crafting
• 750 - Painting & Paintings
  
  

Websites we visited this week:

NGA Kids - Presented by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. One of the neatest art websites I've seen! Numerous opportunities for students to interact with real art! We visited "Faces and Places" and made George Washington dance!

Peppy123 - This website is touted as a "girls" hangout, but the drawing pages are for everyone! Visitors can learn how to draw a variety of genres or just work on skills such as 3-D, shading, coloring, etc. Templates can be printed and colored, or follow step-by-step visual instructions to complete a neat drawing.

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Happy New Year!

Students have been begging for me to share links to the websites I included in my non-fiction tours prior to getting this blog up and running. So...down below are links to those websites and the non-fiction sections they correspond to. 

Happy surfing!

152.14 Optical Illusions - Illusions.org

    Favorite illusions were the Black and White Dog illusion and the Skin-Crawling Spiral!

419 Sign Language - PBS Sign Design

    Students learn to finger spell their names, sign short phrases, and more!

428.2 English Language/Grammar - The World of Brian P. Cleary

    A super fun, interactive website filled with activities and games for language arts, math, and a little bit of      science!

510 Mathematics - Cool Math 4 Kids
 
    A site offering an assortment of math games, some engaging--others not so. We had fun playing Monster Mind Reader! See if you can figure it out!

551 Earth & Weather Events - Current US Volcano Status

   Check this United States Geological Survey (USGS) site to see the current status of all active US volcanoes!

   Type "earthquakes" into your google search box to see the most current earthquake activity worldwide (maintained and updated by USGS)

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                                                                 (Week of 12/17)

3rd Grade

This week, 3rd graders continued working in pairs using the title page, verso page, glossary and index to search for answers to questions I generated from an assortment of non-fiction materials. This activity will be completed the week we return from Winter Break.

4th and 5th Grades

We continued our "tour" of the non-fiction section this week. We visited the second half of our 600s (Technology) section. Here are a few "neighborhoods we visited":

• 629.4 - Space Exploration
• 636 - Domesticated Animals (Farm Animals and Pets)
  • 636.7 Dogs
  • 636.8 Cats
• 641 - Food & Cooking
• 649 - Babysitting
• 652 - Codes & Ciphers
  
  

 Websites we visited this week:

Pets 101(Animal Planet) - Use the Dog/Cat Breed Selector to choose your next pet! Find more information about other pets as well!
Break the Code (CIA) - Part of the CIA Kids site. Learn how to break codes and crack ciphers!

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                                                                 (Week of 12/10)

3rd Grade

This week, 3rd graders began an activity using four parts of non-fiction books to find answers to questions from 24 different texts. Pairs used the title page, verso page (ask your 3rd grader what that is!), glossary and index to search for answers. This activity will continue next week and most likely the week we get back from Break. Besides giving students the opportunity to find information in these books, I'm also hoping that they might also encounter some books (or topics) they'd previously never considered before!

4th and 5th Grades

We continued our "tour" of the non-fiction section this week. We visited the first half of our 600s (Technology) section. Here are a few "neighborhoods we visited":

• 612 & 613 - Human Body & Health/Disease
• 621 - Inventions & Simple Machines
• 623.7 - Military Machines (HumVees, fighter jets, warships, etc.)
• 629 - Transportation
  
  

 Websites we visited this week:

Invention at Play - Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation
All Systems Go! - Interactive at Science Net Links (discover the parts of the body's systems!)
Simple Machines - Part of th EdHeads, a website providing interactive games in science and math to promote critical thinking

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