A Few Fun and Useful Learning Links

An interview with a children's author and illustrator who loves nature: Jennifer Thermes at The Grass Stain Guru.

Get out and do World Water Monitoring Day: a great homeschool, school or club project.

School supplies for a penny at Staples: here is the ad - the sale ends today.

For the Kansas City metro folks: enter a local art exhibition (scroll down) in Merriam, Kansas.

Open House tonight to learn about Currclick's new online classes coming this fall.

International Youth Camp - your homeschool teen might like to learn about this.

Learning Stuff Links

I've sought out the best links for learning stuff. There is some great stuff out there, but also a lot you just would waste your time on. Here are my favorite links for learning stuff:

• At How Stuff Works you can learn about everything from bread to pressure cookers, the ocean and gardening. What a wonderful learning resource for all kinds of stuff!
• The stuff at Kids.gov will get you learning about fun things like beaches, the galaxy (NASA), energy and the environment, farming and food and nutrition. There's tons of learning to explore and hopefully we can trust the government as a reliable source!
• The Kids Learning Stuff blog focuses on book reviews with some learning related articles about things such as IQ testing and giftedness. Sarah at the Kinda Learning Stuff blog writes about technology and it's impact on everyday life.
  
• Topscience.org has a bunch of free science activity sheets. I've used their Lentil Science and Electricity programs in homeschooling. They promote a fun and affordable way to do hands-on exploration and learn science and math using household stuff.
• Two more bloggers who write about learning stuff: Will at Work posts research based commentary on learning and Meredith Farkas is a librarian, writer and teacher who calls herself a tech geek and posts about the library profession and the tools used to serve patrons.
  

I thought I was in for writing a really long article here on all the wonderful things that come up when you search Google for learning stuff but this is all I found out of 3 pages of search results! Great, I can go off and get my breakfast and start homeschooling. It's like work got our early for today :-)

In association with Amazon.com, home of the Kindle. Sign up for Kindle alerts at the WiiAlerts site. This site has been used by people I know and I recommend it because it works!

Learning Stuff From My Firefox Tabs

There is so much stuff to learn out there in the Webiverse; it's hard to see how a person could get any sleep! Somehow as I wander around researching this and that I end up with a strange mixture of open Firefox tabs. Here are a few bits and bobs from my current collection of open links. I hope you, my fellow learner, learn something from them.

• Are you celebrating the 10 days of Newton?
• Jodi made a wonderful new friend when she was out visiting the veterans on Christmas day. I wonder, who was it that received the gift?
• Susan has some words of wisdom for those of us mixing home business and home schooling. I will be back to read her blog again.
• Heidi has written very detailed reviews of products of interest to homeschoolers and those who want an afterschool supplement to their child's education.
• I gather that graphic novels are continuing to increase in popularity. Would you, or your kids, like to join the graphic novels challenge?

Enjoy the links, there's lots more where they came from...

Game Boy on Artemis Fowl

My son, nicknamed here Game Boy, enjoys reading the Artemis Fowl series. Here is what he had to say in a recent interview.

Q. When and where did you first discover Artemis Fowl?
A. I don't remember.

Q. How many of the Artemis Fowl books have you read?
A. All of them except the most recent (which will hopefully change soon).

Q. Who is the main character in the books and what's he like?
A. The main character is Artemis Fowl. He's about my age but that doesn't stop him from being a super genius and having a large vocabulary.

Q. What is the setting for Artemis Fowl and what is good about it?
A. It's in Ireland, but it's not realistic. It has fairies in it - generally they are good fairies just trying to stay away from the human race. It's got a nice storyline as well as having some humor.

Q. What is the book basically about?
A. In the first book he kidnaps a fairy in hopes of getting large quantities of gold. It doesn't quite turn out the way he expected.

Q. How many times have you read this book?
A. I've read the first one two, three, or more times.

Thanks Game Boy. By the way, there are six books in the Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer. The most recent book is The Time Paradox. Here are a few related learning links:

• Official Artemis Fowl websites - ArtemisFowl.com and ArtemisFowl.co.uk, which include games and activities.
  
• Artemis Fowl study guide.
• And a couple of Artemis Fowl quizzes - quiz 1 and quiz 2.

Find Artemis Fowl at Amazon.com.
Shop for myth and puzzle books at Usborne.
For more reading suggestions visit Kids Picks - December at 5MinutesForBooks.

Free Math Learning Links and Stuff

There are many wonderful websites with free math activities for you to use with your kids. Some of the links are also great if you need, or want, to brush up on, or advance, yourself in math, or maths (as it is called in the UK). All of the links below were sitting in my bookmarks folder - the result of many years of gathering resources for homeschooling. Masses of free math stuff, in no particular order:

• HomeschoolMath.net has a host of free worksheets, interactive tutorials and quizzes, curriculum guides, help on teaching, and links for online games. The site owner Maria also runs the Homeschool Math blog.
• Try Cool Math 4 Kids for a host of very colorful, free, interactive math games. Their companion Cool Math site has activities for the age 13 and up crowd.
  
• At Multiplication.com you can: download flashcards, worksheets and quizzes; find oodles of free resources for teaching the times tables; and find fun, free, colorful math games for kids.
• On the much less colorful front, download a variety of free online graph and grid papers. The variety of papers here is quite surprising - includes celtic knot paper, perspective paper, triangle paper, axonometric paper and tumbling block paper. I'm not sure what you do with all these, but I'm sure your kids will have some creative ideas!
• Personally I enjoy the patterns in mathematics. Boys are often fascinated by codes and ciphers and the accompanying spy stories. Here are some teaching resources for codes and ciphers, or visit Bletchley Park, the home of secret British codebreaking activities during World War II.
• Moving into more advance mathematical concepts, you can find a free online geometry textbook at Learner.org. Mathematics and art are very related. Learn about Fibonacci numbers and the golden section in art, music and architecture, or study geometry in art and architecture.
• Hippocampus has free Algebra courses.
• This Statistics site is not for the faint of heart - see the best and worst of statistical graphics. It's free and you just might learn something. What more could you want?
• Or maybe you'd prefer a little, light, free Calculus. Something new, or indepth and old is good for the brain cells :-)
  
• Last, but not least, Math Forum - dedicated to the teaching of mathematics.

I hope you find something of interest among these free math resources. Of course I do know of a few more links, which I will have to save for later.

Got a favorite free math resource link? Please let me know.

Find math stuff and homeschool math stuff at Amazon.com.
See the award winning Usborne Illustrated Dictionary of Math, multiplication wrap ups, learning palette 1st grade math manipulative center. Please ask if you need help or advice on something I've mentioned here.

Science Learning Links and Stuff

Are your kids in the doldrums with science? Maybe you need a new resource to add to their studies, or something scientific to get your own adult brain around. Bookmarks, like Firefox windows and tabs, have a habit of accumulating on me. Here are a few great picks from my science bookmarks. I've tried to mark the level of interest to make your life easier.

• Simple Machines in an easy to understand format - great for upper elementary and middle school.
  
• Mad Scientist Network - self explanatory!
• Robotics Academy at Carnegie Mellon University.
• Connecting Music to reading, math and science.
• Instructables Science Guide has lots of information and projects suitable for budding engineers and scientists at high school level.
• The nature of waves from the Physics Classroom.
• Science Daily brings you the latest in science research news, or try Scientific Blogging for a daily dose of science.
  
• Eepybird's Diet Coke and Mentos spectaculars would get any little, or big, rocket scientist excited!
• At Building Big you can find a teacher's guide to simple hands-on activities for 5th-8th graders about the science of large structures.
• How Stuff Works is a place for older kids and adults to explore everything from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to what's inside electronics. Cool!
• Hippocampus is a source for free college level material. Their science courses include Biology, Physics and Environmental Science.
• Searching for something different in textbooks? Galore Park is a British publisher who provides books for ages 10-16 yrs. Access their home educators page at the above link and you can take a look at what they have to offer then visit book information and download free samples.
• Some school districts provide a great set of links, if you can just weed them out from among the masses of pages on their website. Here is a collection of science links for PK-6 courtesy of Shawnee Mission School District in Kansas.
• Got a kid who likes to invent? Maybe they'd be interested in the Wham-O Inventor Contest.
• At IKnowThat.com kids can see science videos and do interactive activities. It's colorful and bright and should appeal to elementary aged kids.

I hope you find something useful and enjoyable. Do let me know if you have written about science or know of a great link I should add.

Happy exploring :-)

Learning Links

I'm not sure what you'll learn, but it's gotta be something! For your enjoyment and perusal today:

• Cool for cats, Cat Trail Tunnels. I'm sure Big Cat and Princess Kitty would love these instead of the emu feather toy I've bought them for Christmas. Whatever will they think of next? Ummm, apparently a pink, kitty purse! Princess Kitty might be a princess but she'd rather have 10 minutes of attention!
  
• Are you a Christmas movie buff. Apparently I'm not. Try the Can You Name That Christmas Movie challenge at Hooked on Houses. Boy, that little stone-built house is so appealing to me. That's what comes of growing up in a country littered with old, crumbling, stone houses.
  
• Got kids? They might want to write a letter to our new President and have it delivered on National Handwriting Day. Details at Handwriting Without Tears (thank you to Sara of RainSolace for bringing this to my attention).
• Need some reading about living wisely? Check out Mother Earth News. One of their articles is on planting edible ground cover. Need some irreverent commentary and inspiration on being kind to the Earth? Try Crunchy Chicken. Is bamboo really Earth friendly -the New York Times on bamboo.
• Bloggers are giving back instead of giving away at Bloggers Give Back.
• What do new moms do all day? The RookieMoms blog brings stuff for new moms to do each day. Cool, it's like homeschooling from Day 1!
• Looking for a new blog design? Smitten Blog Designs has a variety of nice looking, free blog templates and some nifty limited edition designs for a surprisingly great price. Are you putting a new blog design on your holiday wishlist?
• What Christmas ornament are you? Go on, nip over there and find out!
  

There are lots more learning links where these came from, but they'll have to wait for now :-)

Brought to you by GreatFunbooks.com - with Christmas titles from Usborne and Christmas sets from Usborne

Learning Links

Web page tabs are stacking up fast again and it's time to share learning links. Here are some great links that are laying around unused by me and you might as well have them :-)

• Cornell Lab of Ornithology has a vast collection of information on their website. Your family might like to join in with Project Feederwatch. Check out their wonderful Homeschoolers Guide to Project Feederwatch. I love our little feathered friends; anyone else wish they could fly?
• My bloggy friend Janet at Adventures in the 32-Aker Wood pointed me to I Love Mountains. Janet lives right next to a place where a mountain top is being removed for coal mining. Understandably she has had quite a lot to say about this recently. I'm still trying to process all of it. The I Love Mountains website allows you to track companies who are cutting off mountain tops and see whether the coal from these mines is being used by your local electricity supplier. Personally I do love mountains and I'd like to do something to help... still thinking about what that should be.
• If you want to find bloggers who live close to you, http://feedjit.com/ is a great resource. I guess they know from your ISP address where you are located and they serve you up local blogs with the highest rated at the top. What a useful little tool if you want to locate others nearby who share your interests.
• Watch out for the computer virus that comes in an e-mail and pretends to be UPS or FedEx trying to deliver a package to you. Read about the UPS/FedEx Delivery Failure Virus at Snopes.com. Actually my computer virus checker detected this on an e-mail I received this morning. If you've not received it yet it's likely only a matter of time!
• A week or so ago I somehow managed to discover something called Reborn Baby Dolls. These are baby dolls that ladies spend hours hand painting and crafting so that they are VERY realistic baby look-alikes. Although some of them are almost freaky, I can't help but admire the craftsmanship and patience that goes into these. Not only does the skin look very realistic, but they are weighted to resemble real newborn babies. You can read about reborn baby dolls and there are plenty of websites to browse, including DollsRealistic.com, WhoopsyDaisyBabies, and ButterflyBabiesbyBecky. If you were just wondering what to do with your spare time, take a little crawl around these sites, or look on e-bay for reborn dolls. Let me know what you think.

Brought to you by UsborneKC.com - meeting your Usborne Books needs in Kansas City and beyond (Johnson County, Kansas; Wichita, Kansas; Independence, Lee's Summit, North and South Kansas City, Pleasant Valley and Liberty, Missouri; Virginia and New Jersey).

Learning Links

Formerly called Bits and Bobs, Learning Links is my new title for the chaos brought to my computer by manic web surfing. It's happened again, those Firefox tabs have multiplied and I now have 23 windows open, each with at least 5 tabs - that is an estimated 200 or so websites up. It's time to pass along some great learning links, in no particular order, below:

• Fish school - lesson plans for goldfish. Watch Comet the goldfish make goals, swim the slalom, and do the limbo. What a cute, little, well trained guy!
• Do a college search at CollegeBoard.com - I've looked for college information before and this is the nicest site I've seen for finding information. It's very comprehensive, readable and nicely organized, with information that includes majors available, fees, and scholarships.
• British citizens may want to know about the petition to stop Sharia law (Islamic/Koranic law that dictates women cover their faces and that a hand is removed for certain crimes) from being legal under arbitration. I know, it sounds very highly surprising that there could be a loophole to allow this to happen in England (I'm not clear on whether this is just England, but Scotland has it's own law system so I'm guessing that it does not apply to Scotland), but I have checked it out and it's no joke. Read more about it at The Times Online.
• A topic worth a whole post, which I don't have time to write about today, but luckily another homeschooling mom did (she did a muuuuch better job than I would)! Resistance: a communication tool. Every parent and homeschooler has encountered resistance in their kid/spouse etc. This is an extremely thorough and thoughtful article that I think every parent needs to read. Really, make sure you check it out, your stress level will thank you!
  
• How your categories and tags help or hurt your blog. I searched around and this is the best of the articles I found on effectively using tags/labels. "A great blogger will take the time up front to plan out the blog's categories..." Ummm... I'm not a great blogger yet I guess. I'll work on it!
• Blogcarnival.com - the place to find and submit to carnivals. Think outside the box - you might find a whole new set of readers.
• EyewitnesstoHistory.com Wow, this site is beautifully laid out and jam-packed with links to help bring history alive! Check out George Washington's Rules of Good Behaviour, Writing the Declaration of Independence, and, for my British friends, The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots. I must add this site to my right-hand homeschooling links menu!
  
• Take a look at the wonderful, homemade, books, and more from a homeschooling family working with autism, visual-spatial learners, unschooling and foster/adoption. I love how they made books where the child is the star and somehow pasted amongst bison, bears and wolves.

There are many more learning links for me to post. Later... Do let me know your favorite!