Favorite Educational Links
Here you’ll find a compilation of our favorite educational resources. It’s an ever growing list. What are you favorites? I’d love to know!
IXL.com– Awesome Math Practice Site For Pre-K to Grade 8!
Www.ixl.com is one of our favorite and most-used math practice sites. It’s about $10 a month (or a bit less) and has thousands of practice questions per grade level. For the first grade level, students work through 151 Skills and thousands of practice problems to truly grasp and master problems. The website covers grades pre-k through grade 8. We use it almost daily and my children’s’ math skills and confidence levels have increased dramatically.
Each week we receive an email outlining the children’s weekly progress. It tells us how many problems they got correct and lets us know where they are struggling. It’s printable for record keeping. I also love how they email awards to the kids every time they reach a milestone, such as “60% competency in First Grade Math” or “1000 questions answered.” In the parents section, I can see how my kids are doing compared to state standards. We love this website!
Time4Learning.com– Great All-Around, Interactive Curriculum for Pre-k to 8
Time4Learning.com is a great all-around curriculum for kids in pre-k through grade 8. It presents topics like math, science, language arts, social studies, and more in interactive media presentations. Kids love using computer games to learn, and this website truly makes learning fun. We’ve used their pre-k program, kindergarten, and first grade lessons as a supplement to our homeschool curriculum and love it. The kids can’t wait for their Time4Learning lessons. I can rest easy knowing that they’re learning great concepts. It’s especially helpful for visual learners.
Perhaps best of all, parents can print detailed weekly reports of their child’s activities and progress, including test and quiz scores. This is great for record keeping!
Whether you homeshool or not, this is a fun resource. Some people choose to use it as their only curriculum, and that’s great. I like it as a supplement. It’s a bit pricey at just under $20 a month. However, we think it’s worth the price. I really like how easy it is to change grade levels by subject. If your child finds their grade level’s math too easy, for example, you simply bump him or her up a grade. You can have up to three grade-levels of work available to your child at one time. It doesn’t matter if your child’s reading and math levels are different, because Time4Learning can adapt and help your child progress.
There’s a 14-day money-back guarantee too, so if you don’t love it simply cancel and get your money back. How easy is that?
www.handwritingworksheets.com– Great Resource for Print and Cursive Practice!
When it comes to handwriting practice, www.handwritingworksheets.com is an awesome tool! You can create printable pages for your child in print style, D’Nealian style, and cursive. Your worksheets are customizable down to the last detail!
Take Print Style worksheets for example. Your first choice is a “Name and Sentence” print worksheet. I love to customize these for my boys with their first and last name. I can change the test size as I see fit. I also have the option to make words in remaining rows traceable dots or just the starting pencil point dot for more advanced writers. There are also single word worksheets, multi-word worksheets, and paragraph print worksheets. The paragraph print worksheets are great for my kindergartener. I type simple nursery poems into the program and end up with easy-to-trace worksheets that bolster my son’s writing and reading skills.
I also love the cursive sheets for my first-grade daughter. She loves practicing her name in cursive. It’ll be a great resource for years to come. Best of all, it’s free!
Starfall.com Makes Learning to Read Easy and Fun!
We first discovered www.starfall.com when my oldest daughter was a toddler and introduced her to letters on the computer. Starfall.com is a free, entertaining, and hands-on website designed to teach kids to read using phonics. There are several letters arranged according to difficulty: ABC’s, Learn to Read, It’s Fun to Read, and I’m Reading.
Each level is engaging and is awesome for visual and auditory learners. My 3-year-old loves exploring the ABC’s section. It helps him practice letter recognition, letter sounds, and understanding words that begin with particular sounds (like a– apple, b-bat, etc). My 5-year-old son loves the Learn To Read lessons. He can read the interesting stories alone, or click on each word to have it read for him. He calls it his “computer game.” I love how much it’s helped his reading skills improve.
So far, three out of four kids in our family have used Starfall for beginning reading skills and loved it. The fourth kid is too young. I think that’s a pretty good score, don’t you?
