Online Writing Class

This website has since been retired.

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A very nicely conceived and executed online writing class.  It is self-paced, customizable, web and email based for upper elementary and middle school students.

http://www.rayofwrite.com/

Online Grammar Class

Just discovered a really interesting site for learning English grammar.

https://www.noredink.com/

A child needs to mention his/her grade, and gets to list her/his interests.  For instance, my son picked Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings.

On picking Adverbs and Adjectives, he was presented with material to learn about the concepts.  To practice, he got to work on sentences related to his interests.  Really cool.

Parent Coaching on Khan Academy

I recently came across a set of features on Khan Academy that make it easy for parents to understand the progress made by their kids.  These help track stats about the percentage of concepts from a particular grade mastered by the student, the amount of energy being expended by the student (
I assume this takes into account the time spent on practicing and watching videos),  the list of concepts that are mastered, that are being practiced as well as concepts that are difficult for the student.  The Mastery Challenges that involve getting a certain number of questions correct in a row determine mastery.   All in all, this is the first online service I have seen that provides something that gives parents solid data about how their kids are faring.

As far as the kids are concerned, they love to watch their points and percentages go up.  They also earn "badges", and just like stickers, these badges seem to be great motivators.  :)

Here are some screenshots:

Brainpop

Brainpop (there is a website as well as tablet apps) is a wonderful resource for elementary school kids.  It covers subjects ranging from Math to Social Studies, Science to English.  It uses animation to depict a conversation between a robot and a child.  Brainpop jr. features a little girl called "annie".  Brainpop features a little boy.  The kids answer questions from the robot.   The explanations are super clear, and my kids are quite addicted to the app version of this.  Highly recommended!

Blogging from the Babe's Mouth

My 6 year old loves to talk.  When she learned about blogging from Brainpop (more about that later), she wanted to "start a blog".  I brushed her aside initially but after she persisted, I set up a blog for her.  She dictated and I typed.  As the blog started building, I realized that this is such a nice way to capture memories of her life.  I wonder what she will think of this 10 years from now.  I am loving it in the meantime.  Here is a link to her blog: http://medhasarkar.blogspot.com   

Preserving Memories

I, for one, is a sentimentalist when it comes to not forgetting wonderful moments in life.  Kids provide so much fodder for good memories.  To preserve them for my and my husband's enjoyment in our old age, and for kids to read when they grow up, I set up email accounts for my kids as soon as they were born.  As and when I feel there is something I want to preserve, I describe it in an email to them.  The anticipation of hearing their reaction to these events is so wonderful.  I highly recommend this!

iPad Apps for teaching Indian Languages

I overhead my son telling someome "My dad speaks Belongi".  Taken aback, I was not sure whether to laugh or cry.  My Bengali husband, and I, with my Tamil background, had failed to teach any Indian language to our US born kids.  As usual, I turned to the first resource I could think of - the App store on our iPad.

So, I started experimenting with iPad apps for learning Indian languages.  I downloaded apps for both Bangla and Hindi.  I have given up on Tamil since I was raised in Mumbai, and can't read or write in Tamil.

There are two types of apps - those that are like online flash cards that show a picture and say the Bangla/Hindi word for it, and others that let kids trace out letters using their fingers.  So, far these apps have caught my 5 year old's imagination.  She can watch and trace for hours.

Ones I have used so far to teach Bangla are -

Utalk Bengali

Iwritebangla

Utalk Bengali is great for learning words and phrases:

iwritebangla is great for learning to write the letters.  There is something to be said about using one's fingers to trace on a glass surface.  The tactile experience is even more fun than writing with a pen or pencil.

Just found one more app that is highly rated.  Am yet to try it out.  Will do so soon, and post our experience with it - Hashi Khushi Bangla App.

Ones I have used so far to teach Hindi are -

Hindi!

Hindi cards

Learn Hindi

The Hindi Flash cards app such as Hindi Cards work for kids with a lot of patience.  My five year old can go through these.  But, my eight year old, who is not self motivated to learn any language other than English could not care less for these.

Am yet to find apps for Hindi that are truly high quality and captivating.  Will keep looking!

Fidgety Kids

I finally found a physical aid that helps my son sit still in class.  It is an inflatable disc.  Here is the link to it on Amazon:  Chair Cushion.  My 8 year old loves it, and diligently packs it in his school bag every morning since it helps him focus in class.  Not sure if it works for all kids, but definitely worked for us!

Khan Academy

I have heard and read a lot of Khan Academy, and even watched Salman Khan speak at a local TED conference.  However, it never occurred to me that any of his videos could be helpful for my 7 and 4 year old kids.  This evening, when my 7 year old was working on him Math multiplicaton Kumon sheets (yes, we are back to experimenting with Kumon...more about that later), I desperately looked online for resources to help him.  One of the sites had a link to a video, and I clicked on it not realizing that it lead to a Khan Academy video.  My 7 year old and we (the parents) watched it together.  The effect of it on my son was just amazing. Not sure if it was the reassuring voice, but he sat up and really paid attention.  The line that really got him was when Khan said "I'm not a big fan of memorization.  But, the one thing about multiplication is that if you memorize your multiplication tables that we'll start to do in this video, it'll pay huge benefits for the rest of your life".  Wow, the impact was just huge.    More interestingly, my almost 5 year old insisted that we find a video for her.  We found one of basic addition where Khan talks about adding avacadoes.  Again, I had shown my kids how to cut open an avacado just today, and that was quite a happy coincidence.  :)

Link to the multiplication video: Khan Academy Multiplication Video   

Number Lines Worksheets | Number Lines Worksheets for Study

Number Lines Worksheets | Number Lines Worksheets for Study

Hunted all over for a mechanical number line for a more tactile experience. Unable to find one, decided to go with number line worksheets.

Online Chess

Just found this great site for kids to play chess without having to download a program. 

 

Finland...What makes their educational system "better"?

Frequently, I have come across articles and conversation about Finland's education system being among the best in the world.  So, I decided to look into the reasons.  Here are some points I encountered -

• kids learn to read very early
• relatively relaxed educational environment
• the competition to get into a good school isn't so intense
• intense individualization...Finnish teachers are expected to customize lessons for students
• teachers are trained extensively. They must have master's degrees, and 40 people apply for every job.
• acceleration is possible

The point that seemed to be repeated in many news articles is "high-quality teachers at the heart of Finland’s education success story"

What Happened Before the Big Bang?

What happened before the big bang?

Nice page to use when confronted with this ever popular question from kids.  Although, it is very likely going to trigger more questions.  Especially this sentence - time did not always exist; and second, there was no first moment of time.

How To Help Your Child's Brain Grow Up Strong

How to Help your Child's Brain Grow up Strong

This is the first time I have read about teaching self control and willpower.  This seems to tie to something I once heard on a BBC program about how children learn how to deal with stress as well as reslience to stress from their parents.

"This is really critical because there are so many things parents want to do when they read parenting books," he says. "They take steps to teach their children math or reading ... but a big thing we can do for our children is to do the best to foster the development of self-control and willpower. Self-control and the ability to restrain impulses is associated with success at every age, whether it means being able to read at age 4, or being able to restrain impulses at a later age, or even what your peers think of you in high school. At all of these ages, willpower and self-control is a stronger predictor of academic success than IQ.""

Telling Time

My seven year old was having a hard time reading the time on an analog clock, understanding the difference between AM and PM, as well as answering questions such as "if it is 11:30 AM, what will be the time 3 hours and 20 minutes later".   Here is one site I found with a clock that kids can play with to learn to read the time.  I used it as a tool to teach my son.  The only drawback is that when you add or subtract an hour, the hour hand moves ahead or forward, but it does not show the minute hand traveling around the clock.  That would have helped emphasize the point that it takes one hour for the hour hand to move from say 12 to 1, and it takes one hour for the minute hand to travel around the clock.  In spite of that drawback, I would still say that this is a very handy tool.

Teaching Mental Math

Along the lines of Number Talks, I was looking for lesson plans on teaching mental math.  I found this site with a discussion about teaching Math to struggling students.   It has some nice tips such as:

Talk about how the pairs that make 10 can help her with mental addition and subtraction. If she needs to add 5+8, she knows that:

and

So

This seems like a nice start. 

Number Talks

Last month, we attended a workshop about "Number Talks".  It was about a  novel way of teaching Math.  I have not tried it with my children, but it definitely sounds promising.    I could not find any free resources related to it.  However, I did find these:

http://www.mathsolutions.com/index.cfm?page=wp18&contentid=1238&crid=98&mcrid=107

The package with a Multimedia CD that costs 65$.  

Here is an example from Chapter 1 from the first link -

49  x 5

The goal of number talk is to help a student approach this problem like this for instance:

50 x 5 and then subtract one group of 5 to arrive at the answer of 245.

I also found a book titled Number Talks: Helping Children Build Mental Math and Computation Strategies, Grades K-5

Neuroscience for Kids

My son was trying to avoid practising the piano. To motivate him, I decide to teach him about nerve cells or neurons. I came across this fabulous site called "Neuroscience for Kids".

I poked around a little - great games to show kids how the brain processes information.  My son loved the game where he had to name the color of the font without reading the words that were names of colors.  Not sure if I am explaining this correctly.  Check it out.  I am sure your kids will like this site.

Online Chess

Nice site for kids to practise playing chess.

Opportunity for kids to showcase their photographs

Well, this is really not a teaching resource, but it seems like such a fun opportunity for kids to showcase their photos.  Which kid does not like using their parents' digital camera?  Here is the site: http://kids-myshot.nationalgeographic.com/