Saturday, February 25, 2012

Surfin' HSA



I've been surfing a bit and checking out some pretty terrific online resources. For homeschoolers, the internet is like the Holy Grail of information sources. There are free or cheap websites of information and games, Youtube with it's endless information and opinion, and every other thing you can imagine.


http://www.edhelper.com/  :  about twenty bucks a year.
http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/  :  free
Youtube:  free
http://us.educationcity.com/  :  29.95 per year per child
http://www.educationworld.com/  :  Free
http://www.funbrain.com/  :  Free
http://www.studentsfriend.com/index.html  :  Free
http://www.kidsknowit.com/  :  Free
http://www.brainpop.com/  :  $195 per year for a homeschool family
http://www.khanacademy.org/  :  Free
http://www.ted.com/talks  :  Free
http://www.watchknowlearn.org/  :  Free


The internet for supplementing your homeschool materials:  PRICELESS.


 Here are a few reviews for those of you who don't have the time to check them out yourself.
If readers are interested, I could review more websites from the perspective of a secular homeschooler.

Edhelper:

I have had a subscription to this site several times over these ten years of homeschooling.  
One time my dad bought me a subscription after, apparently, he did some surfing for educational sites for homeschoolers.  He just surprised me with it!
You know, I had almost forgotten about that.  That was a very loving and lovely thing to do!

Anyway, the site is geared mostly for  early childhood and early elementary.  The list of materials contains links for K-HS work, but the materials get pretty thin after about third grade.

Pros 
  • All of the major subjects contain supplemental materials.  
  • Special theme units offer both fun and educational pages for holidays, cultural events, and other special themes. (A few of those themes are:  Black History Month, Spring, Chinese New Year, Earth Day)
  • If your child enjoys worksheets and word finds and crossword puzzles, Edhelper.com offers these in abundance.
  • Parents can create their own vocabulary sheets and other sheets. These personalized pages make it easy to create worksheets for your special themes or units of study
  •  
  • It contains a "Special Education" section 
  • Good clip art 
  • Many downloadable activities, clip art, maps, flags, etc
  • Available in German, Italian, Spanish, and French
  • Lots of printable graphs and charts
  • Includes test prep
  • the site upgrades and improves available projects
Cons
  • Sparse activities in many of the categories above middle school
  • Repetitive types of activity in vocabulary
  • Website is not child-friendly in that it is not engaging or interactive
National Geographic Kids

Pros 
  •  New and constantly being updated information and features
  • Hundreds of links to follow
  • Easy-to-navigate
  • Dynamic-looking, engaging website for kids to explore
  • Interactive
  • Amazing pictures and text
  • Videos and MANY other types of activities
  • Completely secular
Cons
  •  I couldn't get off of it!  LOL
 YouTube

I have come across some truly fun or GREAT video series on Youtube. Here are a few of them. Please share others that you run across!
That's about all I have time for today.


Do you have a favorite website?
Please share!

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing, I found a couple on your list I didn't know about so I will definetly check them out! My daughter is a youtube and NatGeo addict. I agree about edhelper, we used it a lot for early elementary, but not so much any more (daughter is 6th grade). Thanks again!
    Linda
    Homeschooling one child for five years and always looking for homeschool resources to make our days run smoothly!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great resources you shared! We *live* online. Just about all of our homeschooling is done online. YouTube is a big hit, as well as Netflix (really! my boys have seen some great travel shows, documentaries, etc!)and my 12 year old (who can't decide if he wants to be a chef or a zoologist when he's older, lol) has NGK and NG bookmarked in his browser. I agree about EdHelper running a little thin as the grade levels get higher, but it's a wonderful resource for Prek-3.

    Thanks so much for visiting my blog. Looking forward to reading more of yours! :)

    Katie

    ReplyDelete

Leave a comment!