How would you answer this question?  

How would your young learner answer?

Reading activities for the kindergartener in your life. Try illustrating a fairy tale or baking alphabet pretzels! Better yet, name the letters and then eat the pretzels while listening to another story.

The title says “first grade,” but many of these activities can be adapted for second and third graders, as well. Includes things to make, activities to do, and fun to be had, with many ideas for family activities to practice reading and writing related skills.

Reading activities from Education.com for second graders. “Read-cordings” is a good fluency activity that can double as a gift for someone special! Many of these activities can be enjoyed by learners in first and third grade, as well.

This online activity is designed for beginning and struggling readers to help them recognize word patterns and learn about onset and rime. Students are first asked to select a vowel, and are then presented with a series of words to sort into short-vowel word families. Students can then print their completed word family chart and use it to practice reading the words fluently. Note: Monitor your child's use of this activity. It is possible to drag incorrect words into a category. The site does not indicate that a word is placed incorrectly.

Picture Match is a matching game that reinforces the concept of beginning-letter and short- and long-vowel sounds by prompting students to identify a series of pictures and match them to the first letter or the vowel in the words they represent.

I gave this web site only one star. You probably won't enjoy it. A Series of Unfortunate Events is a series of chapter books you won't want to hear read aloud, and you most certainly won't want to read them yourself. Don't even bother looking at this site. If you are really bored, the video of Lemony Snicket telling why he wrote the series won't help. It's not very interesting, either.

The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) offers over 200 free resources including: ¦Writing and Teaching Writing ¦Research ¦Grammar and Mechanics ¦Style Guides ¦ESL (English as a Second Language) ¦Job Search and Professional Writing

MLA (Modern Language Association) style is most commonly used to write papers and cite sources within the liberal arts and humanities. This resource, updated to reflect the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (7th ed.) and the MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing (3rd ed.), offers examples for the general format of MLA research papers, in-text citations, endnotes/footnotes, and the Works Cited page.

These OWL resources will help you learn how to use the American Psychological Association (APA) citation and format style. This section contains resources on in-text citation and the References page, as well as APA sample papers, slide presentations, and the APA classroom poster.

For the student in grades 7-12 and beyond. Information and strategies about studying, offered by Joseph Landsberger, an education researcher. Some topics offer interactive applications. Translates into many different languages.

The Northwestern Mutual Foundation, the charitable arm of Northwestern Mutual, partnered with the National Council on Economic Education (NCEE) in the development of themint.org. Launched in 1997, the site provides tools to help parents as well as educators teach children to manage money wisely and develop good financial habits: the building blocks for a secure future. Given the current rate of savings and debt in America, this is a lesson that desperately needs to be learned. Sections on this site have been designed for families. Most pages are written in a kid-friendly style so families can work together – or older children can work independently in learning money lessons.

Infoplease is a comprehensive reference source that combines the contents of an encyclopedia, a dictionary, an atlas, and several almanacs loaded with statistics, facts, and historical records. A single search engine allows you to search all these sources at once.

ipl2 is a public service organization and a learning/teaching environment. To date, thousands of students and volunteer library and information science professionals have been involved in answering reference questions for our Ask an ipl2 Librarian service and in designing, building, creating and maintaining the ipl2's collections. It is through the efforts of these students and volunteers that the ipl2 continues to thrive to this day. Information, resources, book lists, articles, and activities abound on this site!

What does it mean to be "ready" for Kindergarten?

The Path to Kindergarten Starts Here is WITF’s early learning resource website for families with children ages 0 – 5 years old, empowering caregivers with knowledge to ready their children for school.

From the web site: Parents and caregivers of young children understand that the early years are important, yet many aren’t sure how to encourage early learning, or feel they don’t have time to do what it takes to help their child succeed in school. Many communities are concerned about children coming to school unprepared, but aren’t coming together to give parents more choices and children more opportunities. In response, United Way of America is partnering with the Ad Council, Civitas and Families and Work Institute to create Born Learning, an innovative public engagement campaign that helps parents, caregivers and communities create quality early learning opportunities for young children. Born Learning is designed as a tool for long-lasting community change that supports young children. It has three cornerstones: 1. Awareness – Providing important information about how young children learn. 2. Education – Providing easy, fun action steps that parents, grandparents and caregivers can use every day. 3. Action – Providing a visible platform for public policy and action. Born Learning puts research-driven products – along with tools and templates for education and outreach – into communities through a national grassroots network that’s creating innovative ideas to help local children. And we’re supporting a mobilization effort that helps any community’s early learning efforts, providing tools, templates and training, along with more intensive national support for targeted communities or states. Our goal is to inspire everyone who impacts young children to make the best possible decisions to boost school readiness. And we aim to give each of them the tools to make long-lasting community change.

Includes research, practical articles, and activities to use in the classroom or at home. A plethora of research-based reading resources!

When children struggle in school, they can easily get discouraged. They might say or think "I'll never learn how to read" or "I'm just dumb." To turn these self-defeating thoughts and feelings around, kids need the help of caring adults. Discover what a child's "put downs" may mean and what "comebacks" you can say or do to encourage a child to keep trying. This site includes an interactive version of the information, as well as a printable summary.

From the article: "I wish my parents had some hobby other than me." How much do parents really need to worry these days? Here are some things to think about for those of us who sometimes hover over our children. (Not me, of course. Really.)

This site is a partnership between the International Reading Association (IRA), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), and the Verizon Foundation. NCTE and IRA are working together to provide educators and students with access to the highest quality practices and resources in reading and language arts instruction through free, Internet-based content.

All Kinds of Minds is a not-for-profit organization that translates the latest research from neuroscience and other disciplines on how children learn — and vary in their learning — into a powerful framework that educators can use in the classroom. Includes information that offers parents ideas to help their child learn. For older children, search "notes" for several articles with ideas for helping students take useful notes and learn from them later. Click on "parent toolkit" for information and interactive resources.

Includes research, practical articles, and activities to use in the classroom. A plethora of research-based reading resources!

Companion site to Doing What Works. From the website: "The What Works Clearinghouse was established in 2002 by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences to provide educators, policymakers, researchers, and the public with a central and trusted source of scientific evidence of what works in education. The WWC aims to promote informed education decision making through a set of easily accessible databases and user-friendly reports that provide education consumers with high-quality reviews of the effectiveness of replicable educational interventions (programs, products, practices, and policies) that intend to improve student outcomes. The WWC is administered by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences through a contract to [several educational research groups]."

This site describes itself as "an amusement park of math designed for fun." A multitude of math activities and information abounds at this site, with sections for younger kids, learners aged 13-100, parents, and teachers. There are practice activities, games, math subject reviews, and lessons that parents can do with their children, all in an easy-to-follow kid- and parent-friendly format.

Offered by the National Center of Education Statistics. Best for upper elementary students and older. Students can input information to create bar, line, area, pie, or xy graphs. The result is a professional-looking graph that can be saved and printed.

Science Friday is a weekly science talk show, broadcast live over public radio stations nationwide from 2-4pm Eastern time every Friday as part of NPR's 'Talk of the Nation' programming. Each week, we focus on science topics that are in the news and try to bring an educated, balanced discussion to bear on the scientific issues at hand. Panels of expert guests join Science Friday's host, Ira Flatow, a veteran science journalist, to discuss science - and to take questions from listeners during the call-in portion of the program. While Science Friday is available on Philadelphia's NPR station WHYY, the program is available to listen online.

This is the companion site to ScienceNews.org, with articles of interest about science for upper elementary students and beyond. Science News has been published since 1922. This award-winning biweekly news magazine covers important and emerging research in all fields of science. It publishes concise, accurate, timely articles that appeal to both general readers and scientists, reaching nearly 130,000 subscribers and more than one million readers. Audible.com distributes an audio edition of Science News. News from the Science News reporting team also appears at www.sciencenews.org. Updated daily, this site covers all areas of science.

Science News has been published since 1922. This award-winning biweekly news magazine covers important and emerging research in all fields of science. It publishes concise, accurate, timely articles that appeal to both general readers and scientists, reaching nearly 130,000 subscribers and more than one million readers. Audible.com distributes an audio edition of Science News. News from the Science News reporting team also appears at www.sciencenews.org. Updated daily, this site covers all areas of science.

Companion site to the magazine and television channel

Blast off to learn about all things space!

For upper elementary students and beyond, this site offers U.S. and world news and multimedia presentations tailored to students. Includes show archives and daily discussion questions about current events.

Companion site to The History Channel. Click on "Topics" and "This Day in History" to explore or search for information on a certain time period!

Companion site to the magazine and television channel

The U.S. Constitution was signed on September 17, 1787. How much do you know about it? Celebrate Constitution Day and explore this site. Includes information about the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, the founding fathers who built the U.S., and the Supreme Court.

Designed to help children in grades Kindergarten through three understand the U.S. Constitution. Includes links for sites targeted for grades four through seven and eight through twelve.

From the March/April 2008 issue of the U.S. Department of Education's publication "The Achiever" newsletter: The U.S. Department of Education's "College Navigator" has been named by Money magazine as "the best first screen" to use for researching colleges online because it is "one of the simplest." In the magazine's Dec. 4, 2007, issue naming the 28 Best Money Web sites in seven categories, the College Navigator was praised for providing "a good comparison tool" and "a full set of the latest data on expenses, aid, enrollment, admissions and graduation rates, majors and more, along with a Google map for pinpointing school locations. Hosted by the Department's National Center for Education Statistics, the site can be accessed at http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/. It allows users to: Refine search criteria; Build a list of favorite schools; Search by such specifics as distance from home, size of school and SAT/ACT scores; and Export search results into a spreadsheet. In addition, for adult learners, the site finds programs that offer extended learning opportunities such as weekend or evening courses, distance learning and credit for life experiences. The College Navigator is one of several new online resources the Department has developed to provide the public with clear and reliable information about federal financial aid and the college selection process. Last year, it unveiled the FAFSA4caster (http://www.fafsa4caster.ed.gov), which instantly calculates the federal financial aid that a student is likely to receive.

College related resources offered by the United States Department of Education

College related information offered by Peterson's

The Princeton Review helps students, parents, and educators achieve the best results at every stage of their educational careers. By focusing on preparation and practice, The Princeton Review helps students improve their performance in the classroom and on standardized tests. Through the website, parents, teachers, students and schools are assisted in navigating the complexities of school admissions.