Summer's coming and Devin and I are running out of projects, and have been looking for new and fresh activities. We've started looking more to the internet. I think the internet is a great resource, but not one that we've used much.

Yesterday Devin went to frogguts.com (sp?) and dissected a frog, took a quiz about the parts of a squid, and removed the bones from an owl pellet and put them together to make a rodent. He REALLY enjoyed this site - I can't wait until they add more animals to be dissected. We're really curious about the crawfish.

Then he checked out this -

http://www.funbrain.com/cgi-bin/gg.cgi?A1=m&A2=0&A3=0&AFUNCT=1&ALEVEL=0&INSTRUCTS=1

I think this game in particular showed me he didn't know his parts of speech like I thought he did. We'll be using this one pretty regularly for a while because grammar BORES him and he doesn't do well with it. He IS however competitive and wants to score high on that grammar game, so it mixed up things and I believe this will help.

Anyone have any OTHER homeschool online games that they like?

http://www.brainpop.com is an educational entertainment site with little games and short animated videos, etc. They've got lots of topics to choose from. The catch is that if you play more than 2 per day, you need to pay their annual subscription fee - can't remember what it is since we have not yet subscribed. But we've played around a little on the site and it looks fun for elementary aged kids.

I have been impressed with BBC's online activities for kids - I remember when Sam was really into solar system stuff, he loved playing in the space part of their site. They had activities like matching the planets to the right spot in the solar system, etc. You might just visit and see if you like it - it's all free. Here is a link to the space part that Sam liked:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/playspace/games/jigsaw/jigsaw.shtml

and a link to BBC's "evolution game", another one Sam liked:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/beasts/evolution/evolution_game.shtml

We have a few computer CDs as well, but Sam plays on the PC only about once every week or two - not too often. Some of his favorite CDs are "I am a dinosaur hunter" (simulates a dig, quizzes on where/when dinosaurs lived, how the various dinosaurs are related to modern animals, etc.), and "Infinity City" which has games related to math for all levels of ability, from simple counting to making change in a store, etc. [side note: Sam likes that Infinity City is set in an urban environment which is similar to where we live, as opposed to most media which looks very suburban.]

HTH a little...waiting to see what others like.

Tara