The venerable and often-quoted adage of “practice makes perfect” has always remained relevant regardless of era, faith, creed or culture. Your grandparents probably swore by it to your parents and almost certainly, you’ll be saying the same thing to your kids (if you haven’t been telling them over and over already).
Getting your children prepped for school – and ultimately life – involves rehearsal and preparation. Having the right practice aids for home use is very handy for moms and dads who aren’t really teachers but who just want their kids to stay on top of their game in school. Here are eight sites that have the resources for making learning easier, fun and more relevant for both kids and parents alike.
1. www.kidzone.ws
A homebrew family-friendly site made by a North American family, Kidzone offers various materials from preschool to Grade 5. Among the subjects available for printed worksheets are animal facts, math, science, geography and reading, and writing the English language. Kidzone also has a wide range of crafting activities to be shared with you and your little preschooler as well as a few online games that teach essentials like reading clocks and basic math skills. The site even has a printable materials page for things like awards, certificates and chores charts (gold star, anyone?) as incentives for your little one to put in that extra bit of effort.
2. www.schoolkid.ph
An invaluable educational tool for Filipino children by cyber-entrepreneur Roxanne Flores-Aquino, this site is a veritable online cornucopia of subjects such as Filipino and Philippine geography. Relevant materials are published in English or Tagalog and some materials are free. For premium members of the site, more materials and benefits are available for download (such as answer keys). Of particular interest are materials on Singapore Math and Tagalog grammar, as the former is normally fairly expensive and the latter is quite scarce online. Schoolkid.ph’s materials are classified according to difficulty level as well, so parents can adjust depending on their child’s learning curve. In addition, the site also sells physical teaching aids, kits, books, toys and even costumes for school plays.
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3. www.kidslearningstation.com
A sister site of the All Kids Network, this site has a plethora of worksheets and teaching materials for the nursery, kindergarten and preparatory levels. Designed for kids by parents of preschoolers, these materials are quite comprehensive and delightfully illustrated to make learning an enjoyable and memorable experience for your preschooler. Among the topics covered are shapes, phonics, colors, sizes, sight-word, alphabet and number sheets, each with as many several dozen different variant exercises. All these materials are free for download.
4. www.thegomom.com
This site is a labor of love by Lilian, a self-described slightly neurotic full-time Filipina mom with three children. Whatever she manages to acquire from friends, family and readers, she shares in her blog, be they worksheets for social studies, Filipino grammar (from pambalana and panitikan to pantig and pantukoy) and syntax, or math word problems. Her materials are highly useful for schools in the local setting and are in PDF format, making them easier to print for personal use. The Go Mom is also a hodgepodge of general interest topics, with entries on parenting, fitness, sales around the city and an online store with everything from hypoallergenic soaps to NERF vests to used Longchamps handbags.
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5. www.the24hourmommy.com
On the surface, the 24 Hour Mommy seems to be another blog featuring parenting tips, useful products, and events. However, the site’s owner, Mauie Flores, is also a language and reading teacher and has access to some extremely useful teaching aids of this kind available for the Philippine setting. Her blog has trimester exam reviewers available courtesy of the Lourdes School of Mandaluyong in science, Filipino and HEKASI (Heograpiya, Kasaysayan at Sibika at Kultura) for grades one to six. It’s a bit tricky navigating this site because of its ads and slightly slapped-together feel, but the nuggets you will mine out of it are solid gold.
6. www.education.com
Living up to its rather expensive domain name, Education.com aims to be as comprehensive a source of information for anything pertaining to learning, from preschool to college. Perhaps the priciest of the websites listed in this article, they nonetheless have some very substantial materials, such as actual textbooks used in North American schools. Their database of printable worksheets number in the hundreds of pages and are best suited for children from kindergarten to grade five. Each tab offers everything from indoor and outdoor activities to a list of places to get SAT reviews and tips on entering the right university in the US. Education.com even goes the extra mile to take on challenging subjects such as bullying and dealing with special needs children.
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7. www.mrdonn.org
Mr. Donn is an American educational library that delves into the social sciences and history of various cultures, both ancient and modern. Although focusing heavily on American history and current events, this site is useful as an encyclopedic primer on various other subjects such as Ancient China, The Bronze Age, The Mayan Civilization, The Middle Ages and more. Think of it as a children’s online Encyclopedia Britannica which doubles as an online teaching resource for creating lesson plans and presentations. The site’s pages are thematically drawn in a cute and engaging style while some link to external websites that contain more in-depth information about fields of interest.
8. www.enchantedlearning.com
In 1993, while developing educational video games for their own children, Jeananda Col and Mitchell Spector came up with the idea of putting together a website that emphasizes creativity and fun while learning. Launched in 1995, Enchanted Learning is a subscription-based resource that covers myriad topics for school-age children, including the K-12 grades. Foreign language dictionaries, science activities, word wheels, animal printouts and coloring pages are among some of the many resources available. Free materials are also on hand for visitors who only wish to casually browse the site’s offerings.
Thumbnail image from tgdaily.com
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