Brain Pop: educational animations in Health, Science, Technology, Math, and English
Brain
Boosters: challenging brain teasers from Discovery School designed
to develop different kids of reasoning (lateral, spacial, etc.). The answers
are right under the puzzles, so don’t let the kids explore the site themselves!
Kidlink is designed to connect kids with other kids around the world through e-mail, projects, chats, and art exchange. Students and teachers have to register to participate in the activities.
Science
PAUSD Science On-Line Guide includes internet links for teachers and students to support the K-6 core science units.
NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day features a spectacular new astronomy picture every day with a shortdescription. Browse the archives for past pictures.
NASA Headlines features a weekly illustrated article about space. You can sign up for their email list to get an email reminder when a new article is posted. Most articles have a link to a Thursday’s Classroom activity.
NASA’s Thursday’s Classroom site is designed to make a connection between NASA’s latest research and the classroom environment. New activites are posted every Thursday. You can sign up for their email list to get an email reminder when a new activity is posted.
NASA’s Quest Challenges are free web-based, interactive explorations designed to engage students in authentic scientific and engineering processes. The solutions relate to issues encountered daily by NASA personnel. Projects include Women of NASA (which was developed to encourage more young women to pursue careers in math, science, and technology), Solar System, Deep Space, Space Team, and Aerospace Team.
The US Naval Observatory has a wonderful website called Sun and Moon Data for One Day where you can find out the times of sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset, transits of the Sun and Moon, and information on the Moon’s phase for any place or date. (It was a new moon the day I was born.) The longitude and latitude of your location is thrown in as an added bonus.
Memento Mori displays streaming seismographic data measured continuously from a site near the Hayward Fault above University of California at Berkeley and is absolutely mesmerizing. You can also view previously recorded seismic events ranging in magnitude from 1.50 to 6.70.
The Yuckiest Site on the Internet features Wendell, the Inquiring Worm Reporter, who will answer your questions about yucky things like, “What is that gunk in my eye?”
Extreme Science has a gallery of science world records and introduces scientists who study bizarre things.
Online Exhibits, created by the Tech Museum of Innovation, includes interactive units for grades 4-8 on Electricity, the Cardiovascular System, Genetics, Earthquakes, Matter, and much more.
Spoot’s Spider Links: connect mainly to tarantula sites (of course) but other spider links are included.
Kid’s Corner at the Monterey Bay Aquarium has a great on-line tour of the exhibits. Don’t miss the WebCam page with links to live
feeds from the Otter Tank, Aviary, Shark Tank, Penquin Exhibit, the Open Ocean, and the Bay.
Score Science (Schools of California Online Resource for Education) features a “Kid’s Corner” with activities for kids of all ages, an “Ask a Scientist” link, and resources for teachers.
The Martian Sun-Times is an interplanetary Internet newspaper intended for middle school students and their teachers.
WhaleNet has background data and activities about whales, seals, and loggerhead turtles.
Math
The Pi Searcher lets you search for any string of digits (up to 120 of them) in the first 200 million digits of Pi. You can also show any substring of Pi.
Fractals Unit for 4th-8th grade students includes on-line activities for students and printable handouts for teachers.
Social Studies
Online Archive of California brings together historical materials from a variety of California institutions, including museums, historical societies, and archives. Over 120,000 images; 50,000 pages of documents, letters, and oral histories; and 8,000 guides to collections are available.
American Heritage Project is a joint project by the University of California at Berkeley, Stanford University, Duke University, and the University of Virginia to provide access to collections documenting American history and culture.
American Memory Collection from the Library of Congress has photographs, prints, documents, motion pictures, and sound recordings.
SCORE History-Social Studies (Schools of California Online Resource for Education) includes grade level resources and activities, maps, and teacher support.
National Women’s Hall of Fame includes biographies, historical articles, photographs, and a Learning Center with games and contests.
Caldecott Medal Home Page has reviews of current and past award winners of this award given to distinguished American picture books.
Newbery Medal Home Page has reviews of current and past award winners of this
award given to distinguished American literature for children.
The Children’s Literature Web Guide (Internet Resources Related to Books for Children and Young Adults) maintained by the University of Calgary, has lots of book lists and links to book-related sites.
HaringKids: The Keith Haring Foundation has created this Haring Kids Website with some wonderful animations of Haring’s art and activities for kids.
Some of my favorites:
