Spotty Blue Banana

KidsClick is a websearch facility specifically for kids as a safe place to explore and learn. It doesn’t use web spiders or search bots to create its content ‘catalogue’ like other search engines. Instead it is created by librarians, who check the content for suitability. Humans checking the content should mean that it is always appropriate for a younger audience to access. If you have other suitable sites that you think could be added, then you can submit them for inclusion to KidsClick.

These sites might be of interest if you are wanting to learn how to play the piano.

Zebra keys has 50 lessons of various difficulties aimed at children 13 and over or parents wanting to help their children learn. It has flash animations showing video and sound to help you along.

PianoNanny is a well written explanatory site guiding you through from the initial principles of learning to play. It covers starter, intermediate and advanced studies.

Thanks to Donna Guthrie for putting me on to this one.

Meet me at the corner is full of educational videos for kids; who can also create their own videos and send them for editing and display on the site. This looks good, and I’ll be having more of a look around. I liked the simple instructions about how to make a video podcast, very nice for instructing children (and adults for that matter).

This site acts as a catalogue drawing together free videos with educational value for children.

Site link: http://www.neok12.com/

This is a nice looking site that you can use with young children to promote literacy. It has games, worksheets for printing, software for downloading, and so on.

Site link:http://www.roythezebra.com/

I recently came across these online jigsaw puzzles from the National Geographic Magazine stable (I’ll be returning to more of their resources for kids in the future).

Choose a map, then watch it break up into jigsaw puzzle pieces. Click the main picture, then you have to rebuild it against the clock.

ReadWriteThink is a partnership between the International Reading Association (IRA), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), and the Verizon Foundation. The “Learning Beyond the Classroom” site promotes literacy within the home with podcasts, videos, tool tip sheets, etc.