Grammar Monster

English is such a confusing language.  Have you ever wondered when it should be an apostrophe before the s or after, or when to use a colon, or semi colon. When to use fewer or less. I just stumbled upon a great site that teaches and tests you on your grammar skills. It's  called Grammar-Monster.com. I love that they work on a little bit of everything grammar related. 

On a Personal Note -

I know I haven't posted for a long time. Things have been crazy at our house. My oldest just started school so we have been adjusting to that schedule, homework, and all the fun that comes with Kindergarten. He is enjoying it and having a blast.

Today I want to talk about what has happened since my son started school. I posted a while ago about my son and about what he can do. My son just turned 6 and has been reading for well over a year now.  He is going to a title 1 school (a school where a majority of the kids are low income so the school receives extra money to help them because most aren't on grade level). I didn't want him to waste a year learning his ABC's when he was already capable of, but doesn't like to, read chapter books. I spoke with his teacher and after testing him to see what his ability level was we decided to put him in a first grade reading group so he wouldn't get bored.

After about two weeks of him going to first grade for reading I finally got to meet the first grade teacher that he is working with. She asked me "If he's in a first grade reading group now what are your plans for him next year?"

Color Fun x2

Playing with food coloring and water can be a fun way to learn about the primary and secondary colors. It's fun to mix and see what you create. 

We started with clear containers so everyone could see what was happening and added red, yellow, and blue food coloring to the water. I grabbed a few extra containers to do the mixing.  

Turtle Diary

 Turtlediary.com is a fun website for pre-K-2nd grade. They offer a wide range of activities including math, esl (which is basically Language Arts), and science games, experiments, videos, stories, worksheets, and more. You can play a a guest, create and account or purchase the upgrade. I just played with the basic account. 

Reading Comprehension - Goodreads.com

My son has just started reading chapter books. We have reached a new educational achievement. The chapter book phase. I'm so excited for him but I still feel it is very important for him to tell me about what he is reading so I can make sure he is comprehending it. See my son is only 5 and hasn't started kindergarten yet. I don't want to push him into things before he is ready. Now before you start getting upset with me for not letting my kid be a kid, I have had people do that or blame it on the fact that I'm a teacher, let me tell you a little bit about my son.

Shodor.org

Oh the things I just happen to stumble upon when I'm trying to avoid laundry. I connected to this site http://shodor.org/interactivate/activities/ through a series of links and was so intrigued by it I stopped to play. This site is really neat and kind of confusing. The site's objective is to help people understand math through visual representations or graphs. I played around in the Number operations section.

How to know if an educational site will be a lemon

I frequently have people ask me what I think about different websites. I LOVE it!!!! Please keep the site you  find coming. I don't know about all the educational websites and love hearing about more. I thought I would list how I judge a website and determine if it's a site I would like my kids to play on or not to help others know what to look for in an educational website.