Best Online Learning Websites for Kids
For some, summer is almost half over, for others…school will be starting soon. It is never too early or too late in the summer to review and strengthen skills learned in school this past year. It seems that over the summer weeks, kids let their brains take a vacation, too! I see all too often kids may know their math facts or know how to read, but they don’t know how to analyze and synthesize information or understand the importance of financial literacy. Critical thinking skills such as these can be enhanced in many fun ways. Here are five fun online learning websites that do just that with educational games, activities, and more!
Free Fun Learning Websites
Cyberchase on PBS Kids Go!
Vacation, camp, beach trips, and amusement parks are often part of a child’s summer break. But how can they keep from losing the math skills they developed during the school year? Cyberchase online offers fun episodes, web games and hands-on activities and events and free, fun resources to strengthen children’s math skills over the summer.
Visit Cyberchase online at www.pbskidsgo.org/cyberchase with your child or grandchild…or on Facebook, www.facebook.com/cyberchase… to access sneak peeks at the new episodes, fan events, exclusive behind-the-scenes videos, photos and more related to the Cyberchase Summer Challenge. Cyberchase Summer Challenge gives kids opportunities to get points and earn rewards three ways: make games for others to play, play cyber trivia, and do fun activities at home. Watch Cyberchase on your local PBS Station and visit the website, too, for summer learning fun!
Reading is Fundamental – Reading Literacy
A wonderful, interactive website for fun summer learning and continued fun learning throughout the year has been created by Reading is Fundamental, a literacy non-profit. The RIF website is developmentally age appropriate for babies starting at age 0, toddlers, and preschoolers. On the RIF website, parents and grandparents can listen with your youngest children to lullabies, songs, nursery rhymes, and stories along with appropriate reading games and finger plays. Preschoolers can be guided as they interact in reading activities, singing, playing, doodling, and exploring. The Grown-ups section offers advice, additional reading activities, and featured articles supporting children’s literacy.
“Motivating children to read throughout the summer is essential to building lifelong readers,” says Carol H. Rasco, president and CEO of Reading Is Fundamental (RIF), the nation’s largest children’s literacy nonprofit. “And reading is the doorway to all other learning.”
At the end of the day, it all boils down to this: read. Read together, read separately, read aloud, read silently, read everywhere. Read signs, cereal boxes, advertising, comics, directions, magazines, too. It’s the surest way to make certain that your kids will start the school year off right. I love this site. I spend time on RIF.org with all of my grandkids each time they visit. We all enjoy it! The oldest grandchild (9) likes to help her younger sister (pre-k) and brother (toddler). (more…)
