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SMART is giving away a SMART  Table interactive learning center. I just filled out the form and it took 45 seconds. Good luck!

Alphabetimals

Alphabetimals is a wonderful site for working with the letters of the alphabet. The letters double as animal characters, making them cute as well as associating them with a sound (like M is for Monkey).

The ABC book has the animal sounds and the word read aloud. The ABC video is cute, if a little cheesy. The best feature, in my opinion, of the site is the ability to type out your name (or whatever you want) and your word will be spelled out with the Alphabetimals.

The words and phrases you create can be printed or you can order novelty items such as mugs and t-shirts with your phrase.

Finally  there are printable instructional materials such as flashcards as well. Have fun learning the alphabet with Alphbetimals.

Storytime for Me

http://storytimeforme.com/

Story Time For Me has free online stories that your children can enjoy. The sound and picture quality is exceptional. I enjoy the large kid-friendly controls for playing and pausing a story. The site seems a little advertising heavy; if you plan on turning your kids loose on Story Time For Me, show them which items are ads and which items are stories. If you don’t mind navigating around some ads, you’ll  find about 12 animated, controllable, read aloud stories.
Enjoy.

Draw A Stickman

http://www.drawastickman.com/

Have fun drawing a stickman with your Tablet PC and watch him come to life! After you draw your figure, he will have an exciting adventure right there on your computer screen!

A fun way to practice following directions, starting a story, or just have some fun on your Tablet or SMART Board.

Enjoy!

My adventure with MyStickman included a sword, a dragon and some fire...

Create Simple Stories With Stunning Art

Storybird Quick Tour from Storybird on Vimeo.

Site: http://storybird.com/ Source: Life With English

Story Bird looks like a wonderful place for creative students to create writing pieces. The wonderful graphics appear to be easy to use and visually appealing. I wish there was a way around creating accounts, perhaps you could create a generic account or two for your class.  See how Story Bird compares to other online writing options.

StoryNory: Free Audio Stories For Kids

On Monday when we covered music and storytelling resources there was one site that seemed to be more interesting than the others. Out of the Ten Places for Children’s stories read aloud the most popular was StoryNory.  The teachers really liked the variety of stories available. There were fairy tales for the younger set, there were classic tales and there was even a very dramatic, multi-installment story that was like a little soap opera. The best features included the lovely British accent of the story readers, the availability of the text version of the story and, again, the variety of stories available. They have a podcast available, but I think it would be just as easy to bookmark the site and play the stories right from the website.  There is a story for every age and interest level on StoryNory. Enjoy!

Once Upon A Time There Was A Great Podcast…

Site: http://thestoryhome.com/

The Story Home has a collection of classic tales read aloud. Young children will enjoy these high quality and engaging audio files.  The stories can be played from the website, or you can subscribe to them as a podcast.

Got an old iPod or other mp3 player laying around the house? Load it up with fairy tales and let the kids enjoy!

I enjoyed The Story Home because it has a simple and inviting layout. I liked the overview of each story that was provided, and appreciate the option of either subscribing or simply listening on the site. I thought the ‘announcements’ at the outset of the stories I previewed were a little long (45 seconds in one case), but not enough to prevent me from using the site. Finally, I think some teachers would enjoy having the text to the story available and I did not see that feature.

Check out The Story Home and tell me what you think!

For more on kid-friendly podcasts, please visit my Elementary Podcast page where you learn how to subscribe to podcasts and get a few suggestions of podcasts to subscribe to.

Twisty Noodle

Source: Cool Cat Teacher Blog
Site: Twisty Noodle

Twisty Noodle has a collection of free handwriting and coloring worksheets. Most sites of this nature are riddled with pop-up ads and can be difficult to search. I found this one to be well organized and subtle. It is a great source of coloring sheets, whether you need something for that emergency sub folder or rainy day recess. The handwriting sheets are sorted in to many categories, so you shouldn’t have trouble finding a practice sheet that interests your students. Need to demo? Don’t forget that you can “Print” to SMART Notebook or Windows Journal and make use of your stylus.

Use Triptico For Stunning Manipulatives

Site: http://www.triptico.co.uk/

The collection of Tablet PC and SMART Board friendly tools at Triptico has expanded greatly.  There are over 30 manipulatives available for teaching and learning.

They are all worth checking out, but let me highlight some of my favorites that they offer.

1. The Scoreboard and Score Clicker

Use the scoreboard for class games and competitions. You can have up to six teams playing and this resource will help you easily keep up with the score of that review game. I like how easy it is to set up team names and the ability to give negative scores.

Use the Score Clicker for competitions between two players or teams.  This tool allows you to assign point values of 5, 10 and 20 at a time and has some kid-friendly sound effects.

2.  Number and Question Dice

Another option for rolling the dice. Use for probability illustration or for a quick math fact generators. The students will enjoy the three dimensional animation of the rolls.

3. Word Magnets

The word magnet tool allows you to create (type them in or copy them from elsewhere and paste them) individual word magnets that can be dragged around the screen for teaching purposes. I especially like the backgrounds that you can choose from. You have several options including many of the basic graphic organizers.  There is a newer version of the word magnets from triptico  that is available on a separate website, I intend to explore that one later.

In addition to the items above, there is a simple full screen calculator, several types of spinners and a timer that are all very hand

Lit2Go

Site: http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/index.htm

I have been keeping an eye out for resources that read aloud to young children. I’m convinced it is a positive experience for students to hear different voices modeling fluency.  I saw this site being discussed by some teachers on twitter and I like it a lot, though I think it could be better.

The things I like about it:

There are  a variety of reading levels represented.

The audio recordings are high quality and read with enthusiasm.

The stories have the text available to students, so they can follow along on paper or on the computer screen.

The things that I don’t care for:

A child would have to know how to navigate two tabs or windows on his or her web browser in order to use the text and audio story together.

The text is a pdf file, which is great for printing but must be opened separately from the audio file. This is easy enough for a teacher to wrangle, but I wonder how many young children could do this on their own.

I would certainly recommend investigating it. I think that with some training and practice the site will be accessible to your students. Once they are used to it you could use the site to expose children to different stories according to ability and interest level.

Let me know if, and how, you used this with your students. Enjoy!

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