Yahoo! Kids

This week I decided to explore Yahoo Kids and found that it offers so much that could be so incredibly useful in many different subject areas. There are 3 main tabs (Kids Home, Study and World Factbook) all of which contain other subtags.

World Factbook is really neat and definitely easily capable of being integrated into the classroom. The world factbook contains information on all of the countries incuding flags and maps. When you enter this page all of the countries are shown alphabetically...there is a linked alphabet at the top of the page so if you want to find out more about Haiti, all you have to do is click the H and then find it! There are all sorts of useful tools here...some more include a conversion calculator and currency used around the world.
Under this tab students have access to a reference tab, which contains a dictionary & encyclopedia! This could be extremely useful in writing. Many times students want to use a certain word, but they don't know the meaning so are unable to use it in the appropriate context.

Another really neat tab under World Factbook is ASK EARL! this is a space where students can enter any question they may have and get an answer! They can also view other questions that have been asked and the answers that Earl provided. Students are full of questions and a lot of times are embarrassed to ask it in front of the class in fear of being made fun of, even though others may have the same question, so this tool is useful for answering the many questions that kids may have!

There is also an animal page that includes clips from Planet Earth, for example. When you enter the animal page there are tabs for amphibians, birds, fish, mammals and reptiles...when you click on them there is a short paragraph explaining these animals and a list of all the different animals of that kind including so much information! There is also a similar page for science, including supernovas, NASA, solar system and space station tabs...you can watch videos here too!

Other fun things include, games, music (with music videos & music artists listed alphabetically) movie trailors and clips, jokes, sports info, ecards for different occasions, horoscopes ...some of this oculd be used during free time or when students finish a test or something else early. Something else I thought was pretty neat was the ability for kids to invent the toy of their dreams and enter in a contest for a chance to have their dream toy become a reality...

This site has much, much more and it is so interactive!! I think it is great and kids would definitely think so too!