Projects for Parents and Kids Together
All of these sites include projects you can print out and do "off-line"...
Links
Challenge
http://www.ed.gov/inits/americareads/spidey/index.htmlAll of these sites include projects you can print out and do "off-line".
Spider-Man in Amazing Adventures, jointly sponsored by the National Dairy Council and the USOE, is a language project that masquerades as a series of puzzles, "fill in the blank" stories, and games. It has different levels of difficulty and a doorhanger cutout.
The World Book Encyclopedia's Summer Camp site is built around a Craft Cabin, Dining Hall, Nature Walk and Mindbender Cave. Its marketing agenda is to introduce parents and kids to their CD products. These products are quite affordable with unique features such as speech recognition. The online activities are well-thought out and informative (identification of poison ivy and graphing activities, for instance). Not the same as real camp, of course, but a good vacation complement.
Weathereye Playground, brought to you by Station KGAN in Iowa and the U.S. DOEducation and Pillsbury, is divided into cadets (K-5) and experts (6-12). The cadet section includes science topics like Celery Stalks at Midnight (i.e., capillary action) and Attack of the Straws (i.e., inertia) with home experiments. The expert section is devoted to weather. Ideas for real community-based explores are included, also.
Hunkins' experiments were designed by a cartoonist for inquiring minds. Using cartoon-like examples in topics like food and clothes and light and sound, families can make an edible candle, learn to use a watch as a compass, drawing water from a desert or making a rubberband, for instance. Simple but engaging.
Roots Web, a site designed to explore family trees and histories, is comprehensive and appropriate for many ages. The site offers several takes from census information to trees. Certainly,the site can answer the question "Where do I come from?"
Annotation
Sermon: Parents and kids learning together will be the remedy to many of our schools' ills.
If you find similar sites which contain high quality stuff, be sure to tell your local library about them. Then, families who do not have home computers can participate, too.
Teachers can use these sites for fun in-class or homework projects.
