Tech Kids

Every week or so, we make a trip to our school's computer lab. It's always a highlight of the week!

While our focus in the Early Learning Program is on co-operative play and hands-on inquiry, it's also important for the new generation of students to be computer literate.

This year, we noticed an interesting trend....lots of kids who obviously were familiar with computers, but had no idea how to use a mouse! The trend towards touch screens is becoming obvious. Soon computer mice will be gone the way of cassette tapes and VHS players!

Here at school, we LOVE the website www.starfall.com. It is a free, non-commercial website that covers literacy, from letter recognition all the way to fluent reading.

Here are a few other sites and apps we recommend:

tvokids.com
sesamestreet.org
helpkidzlearn.com  (try for free, then a $16 subscription)

As for apps, Starfall has a series of paid apps available (or you can get the same content online for free). Helpkidzlearn also has some paid apps.

Letterland, our beloved phonics program, has some online options.

The storybooks are available on the iTunes iBook store for about $7. Judging by the popularity of our Letterland storybook in our class, we think any of our students would LOVE having Letterland at home!

If you have any more apps or websites you use at home, please leave a comment below.