While those on the west coast have been dragging themselves through a heat wave this past week, those of us on the east have been dealing with some fairly gloomy, rainy weather.
With any weather extreme, kids are more apt to stay in doors. Instead of just plopping them down in front of the TV, here are a few fun, educational, and most importantly free sites that the children in your life can enjoy:
- FunBrain.com provides unique learning experiences that focus on math and literacy for elementary aged children. Activities like Math Baseball and the Grammar Gorillas bring some excitement into grammar and math lessons. And for some good old fashioned silliness, be sure to check out their Mad Libs section.
- The Exploratorium is the home page for San Francisco's science museum, but it is also filled with a handful of fun activities for kids. With Never Lost: Planetarium, you'll gaze at the stars and learn all about major constellations. You can also learn how to build a solar system or a telescope, or maybe you're interested in discovering just what qualities make an animal or an object "cute" with Cute-ify.
- For a more hands on approach to creativity, have your kids visit the ToyMaker, where they can print out images of animals and creatures, cut them out, piece them together, and let their imaginations run wild. Scissors and glue are necessary for this site, so depending on your children's ages, they might need supervision.
It does stink when the weather isn't great and you have nothing to do with the kids. You gave us a lot of options though. Thank you. I would like to also put my 2 cents in and suggest these 2 sites...
http://www.drawinghowtodraw.com/ (A site with 100s of drawing lessons, online drawing tools, as well as a library full of 1000s of drawing tutorials elsewhere on the net.)
and
http://www.artistshelpingchildren.org/ (A great place for kids, parents, and teachers to find fun arts and crafts activities, color book pages, paper folding instructions, and much more.)
Thanks again.,
Rachel