Smories – Children’s stories read by children

What is Smories? Well put simply it’s a brilliant idea. Lots of young children love having stories read to them. They also like having stories read to them by other children; you might have seen siblings reading to one another, or making up stories for each other. Well that is the basis for Smories – video recordings of children reading stories.

If you’ve got a story for children you can submit it and if its good then one of the many narrators is filmed reading it. Simple as that.

If you’ve got kids then point them towards the site and let them go.

The idea for the site came from a couple with children on a long, long car journey. That’s why the site is also accessible from iPhones and the iPod Touch, so you can get a story where ever and whenever you (or more significantly your kids) want to. It would be nice to see if integration and access is as easy from other portable devices, I haven’t checked that yet.

But with a constant stream of new material, they’re aiming for 50 new stories a month, Smories is a place to keep returning to again and again.

Smories is a UK site a month in so currently all narrators are british with UK accents. The intention is to have more US narrators from August.

Memory Squid Game

If you want to exercise your memory then this Memory Squid Game will give it a bit of a workout.

You’re given a sequence of words and have to click on them in the televisions. Get one wrong and a bunny gets zapped. Get all of the words to move on to the next level.

Gamequarium

The Gamequarium is a site that “swims with learning fun”. Drill down the categories to find LOTS of resources for children to use for learning, either independently or supported. I can see myself returning to this site again and again.

International Children’s Digital Library (ICDL)

The International Children’s Digital Library is all about making children’s literature available in different languages. Quoting from their website:

The ICDL Foundation’s goal is to build a collection of books that represents outstanding historical and contemporary books from throughout the world.  Ultimately, the Foundation aspires to have every culture and language represented so that every child can know and appreciate the riches of children’s literature from the world community.

But put simply you can freely access online some great children’s books.

Alphablocks – early literacy games

The games on CBeebies Alphablocks (from the BBC) can help with early stage literacy, as the child forms words using the available letters or watches the songs letters sing.

Boysread

Sometimes teenage boys can show a reluctance to read. Well there is some help from boysread.com to engage them more in reading. I thought the assignments were very useful.

This video succinctly explains what the site authors are attempting.

Storybird – create books or read others

Storybirds are short books you can create online using the beautiful illustrations that are available from a collection of illustrators. You also have access to storybirds others have created on the site. The books are nice and simply designed, giving then a very pleasing appearance.

There are a number of things you can do with storybird. Create books to read to your children, create stories to give your children reading practise if they are learning to read, or what about tapping into their imagination and helping them to create their own books.

There is a useful introductory video about Storybird available.

Squigly educational games

The Squigly site has a few very nice games, split into maths, spelling/typing/reading, geography, memory and matching and making connections. Some time dependent games seem a little quick at first, but maybe with practise the kids will get quicker and more accurate.

abc teach

I came across this excellent site called abcteach. It is nicely categories and has so many worksheets for printing, lots of tools for handwriting, letter/word sorting, word searches, spelling, sudoku. For slightly older children there are maths and science, reading, writing, thinking skills, logic puzzles, and much more. I’d suggest having a good look around.

Roy – the (singing) zebra

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/