SCRATCH This! SCRATCH That!

Scratch is a cool coding site that allows users to create stories, games, and animations from SCRATCH! Once something is created, you can share it with the world, remix it into something even cooler, and create endless possibilities. It is available in 150 + countries and 40 + different languages making it widely accessible.
Designed specifically for ages 8-16, but fun for all ages, Scratch helps to teach coding; which is an important skill in today's society. Learning to code to some degree is essential to literacy as it promotes a higher level of thinking and problem solving. It can be used across all disciplines as there are games and stories about many topics such as weather, Super Mario, history and even Fortnite; all of which is created by the users.  Things are more meaningful if students create it themselves, giving them a sense of accomplishment.

Amazon Smile

Funding is certainly one area of that affects all teachers, students, administrators, communities. Here in the State of Michigan, we were ranked dead last in terms of school funding growth. Per pupil spending has declined 15% in the last 20 years and these numbers don't look any promising anytime soon. This is where Amazon Smile may come in handy as a way to raise money for your local school. Amazon Smile is a simple, automatic, and free way to support any charitable organization every time you shop, including schools. Nothing about Amazon changes in terms of prices, accessibility, etc. The one catch is that whoever wants Amazon to donate a portion of the purchase price to your school of choice should go to AmazonSmile first.

You can access AmazonSmile from the web browser on your computer or mobile device. You can even bookmark it for even easier access. Amazon and AmazonSmile can be accessed using the same account so no need to change your account. Nothing changes. There are tens of millions of products eligible for donations. However, recurring Subscribe-and-Save purchases and subscription renewals are not currently eligible. Once you have determined which organization you'd like to support, you need to select it and it will be remembered automatically and start donations with every single eligible purchase. Also, there is no commitment. If you want to change the organization that receives your donations, that is always an option for you. There are over 1 million eligible 501(c)(3) public charitable organizations to choose from. Once you have established where you want your donations to go, AmazonSmile will begin to donate 0.5% of the purchase price to your charity of choice. This 0.5% includes the purchase of the item minus any rebates and excluding shipping and handling, gift-wrapping fees, taxes, or service charges. Amazon may even offer special promotions increasing the amount. However, the only downside I can see to AmazonSmile is that donations are not tax deductible by you.

I would highly recommend setting up an AmazonSmile account with your school today and seizing the benefits of this great opportunity.

ABCYA

                                                            ABCYA

     ABCYA is another exciting educational web site for kids of K-6+, ABCYA has lots of interesting fun videos that enhances motivation. This fun website has search games that are categorized into age groups and subject matters, and the content categories are split into two main categories and then spilt into subgroups. The main categories are numbers, letters, holiday, strategy and skills, games, and activities are designed to meet the Common Core State Standards Initiative, the site itself is easy to navigate and GUI friendly for both adult and kids.

Vocabahead

Vocabahead is a wonderful site where students can learn new words. The site has lists of words from A-Z for grade levels 6-11. It also has other categories, one serving as SAT prep. This site contains illustrations for the words, as well as audio recordings that are played along with the definition. Not only does the site define and provide imagery for the word, but it also gives at least three sentences that use the word in it. These examples function to show the learner multiple cases that the word takes place. While I was browsing through the lists, I was shocked to see how many complex words were available. Vocabahead can be a cool site for teachers to encourage students to increase their vocabulary beyond the classroom. I could see myself using this site and offering bonus points for any words that are used in assignments that were learned through this site.

Merriam-Webster Games

Did you know the Merriam-Webster site has games on it? I didn’t realize this until recently! Search engines like Google and other elements of technology have eliminated the use of a dictionary in some ways. For instance, I have not touched and opened a dictionary in years. I don’t even own one! Recently, I was searching their site and stumbled on a few of their games. Even for my age, I found them challenging!

Rhymes

This Rhymes website allows the user to search for words and it gives them a brief definition as well as other words that rhyme with it. The words that rhyme with the original one are grouped together based on how many syllables they have, which is pretty cool in my opinion. It’s pretty fun to mess around with it, especially when it has countless words from A-Z and their rhymes.This site can be a great resource to writers who are composing a work such as a poem or song. Rhyme is an important part of our culture and language. Just look at the beloved Dr. Seuss! This site can also expand users’ vocabulary because there are many rhymes that come up that are not commonly used in our day-to-day lives.

E-Learning for Kids

E-Learning for Kids is a great website that offers games and lessons on a variety of topics and course levels. These options are free, which proves to be useful considering a lot of sites charge for subscriptions to use their features. This website can be resourceful for science and math teachers as well as health teachers, which is pretty interesting. The user can even learn about the environment or the category of “life skills.” We could all us some more knowledge on those topics. I like that there is a wide variety of choices for students, so the potential here is grand. You have the option to search for specific lesson topics as well as loading the games sorted by popularity.