26 Letters, 44 Speech Sounds, & 70 Common Spellings for those Sounds

Guest Blog by Margo Smith

Phonics is the system of relationships between letters and sounds in a language and will help your child learn to read and spell. Think of the written language as a code. If your child knows the sounds of letters and letter combinations, this will help your child decode words as s/he reads. This will also help your child know which letters to use as s/he writes words. Did you know that the  26 letters of the alphabet give us 44 English speech sounds and about 70 common spellings for these speech sounds? Our little ones have a lot to learn!

Start exposing your child to phonics at an early age.  Zoodles is a free educational resource with hundreds of fun Early Reading/Phonics Games and Decoding/Word Recognition Games for children ages 2 to 8.  Our unique child interface adapts to each child’s age and cognitive abilities, so Zoodles will grow right along with your child. For additional resources on Phonics Techniques, please review the below list of  free blogs provided by Guest Blogger, Margo Smith.

Your Friends at Zoodles

1. Phonics resources help parents and teachers assist children to learn and love to read by the use of phonics. Make the most of all the beneficial data on this site to find the best books to read to your child to promote a love of learning and start them on the road to a lifelong love of reading. This site offers free teacher and parent resources.  You can also be inspired by the real life success stories found here to help you be motivated as you help your child learn to love books.
2. Phonics and Teaching Decoding Skills focusing on the age range of kindergartners through third graders, this blog advocates that students in this age range who are taught explicit phonetic strategies for decoding and encoding words have a stronger basis for later literacy learning. They strongly feel that during these years children benefit the most from having precise phonetic strategies modeled for them. Such a strategy helps children to decipher word meaning and provides them with a secure basis for later literacy as they grow older and gain more reading skills.
3. How to Help Your Struggling Reader is a very suitable site that points you to an article on how to intervene if your child is having difficulty reading, with realistic tips of parents of children who struggle with reading.
4. Home School Blogger is a teaching blog that gives you a review of different phonics teaching methods available so that you can make a more educated decision when choosing a phonics program. Be sure to take a look over all the pertinent information you’ll find on this blog when deciding which program will best suit your needs.
5. Phonics Reading provides help for anyone taking on the challenge of learning English as their second language. This style is an exemplary phonics based classification for demonstrating the English language. It has been in use for more than 30 years in the U.K. This procedure was implemented to help teachers explain the nuances of written English, well known for its rules and their exceptions, in a child-centered manner.
6. Teaching Phonics targets the particular needs of parents choosing to home school their children.  Specific advice is provided for all homeschoolers.
7. Learning to Read with Phonics examines the usefulness of phonics when learning to read. This site offers other articles on this topic. Be sure your children and loved ones have all the help they need in the area of reading.
8. Building Blocks of Reading stresses phonemic awareness, known to be at the root of spoken English,  this site will definitely assist you as you work to help your child recognize words.  Find answers to any phonics question you may have.
9. Phonics Kids provides you with helpful overviews of the usefulness of phonics. Get to know about various downloadable programs for your use.
10. English Pronunciation Site offers videos detailing examples of English words and phrases. You can chose to maintain your skills by following the blog or subscribe for apps free of charge to keep up the pace with these valuable complete video segments. Be certain your English passes with flying colors by making use of this helpful site.

Author Byline

Margo Smith graduated with a B.S. degree from BYU. She enjoys writing about a wide array of topics from Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) to online classes to reading and phonics. She draws from her own education, her years in school and an author’s view on life when compiling articles.

Guest blog by Margo Smith

1. American Library Association (ALA) affords you all the very best picture books for over 70 years. Now that’s a lot of books! The Caldecott Medal (the prize for exceptional illustrations for children’s books) was originally bestowed in 1938. Obtain all the winners here and begin building a library of incomparable art work in book form.

2. Reading Rockets Introduce yourself to recent Newberry and Caldecott medalists and over a dozen more award winning categories for children’s literature. Parents’ Choice Awards can be found here as well. Keep your children reading continually all summer long with this helpful list.

3. About.com has a compilation of noteworthy works in a state by state list. They also provide a gathered list of awards won by authors from Canada and the United Kingdom. You will find enough quality works here to delve into for quite some time.

4. Childrens Picture Books Picking just the right book for your child’s needs has never been so easy as it is with this site. Find assorted do’s and don’ts to enable you to make the most of your reading sessions with your child. And don’t forget to make reading fun! No matter whether you are a teacher or a parent, you will find applicable resources here to increase a child’s ability to learn by drawing on books of interest to the child.

5. Rif points you to a variety of significant blogs where you can become acquainted with outstanding childrens’ literature to trigger your child’s appetite for the written word. Remember, if you want to get your child to more fully participate reading, engage them in great writing games such as Sagwa’s Storymaker.

6. Kane Miller The superlative caliber of reading material reported here will furnish reading material for years to come. Discover just how many books you and your child can learn to love from this inclusive list!

7. Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh will assist you by making books easier to find by their carefully sorted categories. Selecting the best book, from A to Z has never been as easy as this. Locate book reviews here to acquaint yourself with the literature available.  One more distinguishing feature of this website is its list of any and all authors from Pittsburgh.

8. Top 10 Picture Books for Preschoolers is a fun site to use to find recommended picture books for toddlers. It will give you a traditional go-to reference to assist you in starting your valuable reading collection for your child.

9. University of Connecticut will assist you in finding that book where you can recall the author, but not the book title. It delivers a continuously revised and complete selection of authors of great children’s books. This amazing site will also direct you to other spectacular places to find children’s books.

10. Semicolon affords you an introduction to a series of books and gives ideas on how to use books in any unit being covered for children. Enjoy books this season and become familiar with the vast helps available to broaden your range of authors, books or subjects you choose to read to your child. Make sure the door to the world of reading is opened wide to your child!

Author Byline

Margo Smith currently lives and works along the Wasatch Front. She earned her B.S. degree from BYU. She reaches into her experiences as a modern day children’s governess, her venture to New England, her years in the corporate world and an author’s perspective on life when writing articles about a plethora of topics from organic food to online classes to worthwhile children’s literature.

Guest blog written by Kyle Simpson

Have you ever felt frustrated by the fact that your child seems to be trying to communicate with you but you have no idea what it is they want?  Chances are that they’re equally upset…you can tell because it usually leads to wailing.  Many people have made the claim that babies can communicate prior to formulating words, through the pitch or duration of their cries or in the way they move their bodies.  But until recently, nobody realized that you could teach them a better way to communicate before they ever say “mama”.

As early as six months of age, your child can begin learning American Sign Language (ASL) as a way to effectively communicate wants and needs.  You can begin by teaching them simple signs like hungry (hand rests on throat, then slides down to stomach), thirsty (index finger points to chin, then slides down throat), diaper (put hands on hips, fold ring and pinky fingers closed, and spread and bring together index and middle finger and thumb several times),  pacifier (make a closed fist with your index finger pointing out, then touch your thumbnail to your lips),  and sleep (place open palm on face with fingers touching forehead, then draw fingers down to chin, simultaneously drawing them together to close the hand).  Modified baby sign language may differ in some respects from ASL due to the fact that your little ones are still honing their motor skills (and certain movements or combinations may be too complex for their unwieldy digits).  But babies will certainly be able to manipulate their hands before they learn to verbalize their thoughts and feelings, so sign language seems like a natural method of communication.

Although many parents look at this as a positive step towards understanding the needs of their child earlier than expected, some people have concerns.  Many wonder if it actually works.  While there will certainly be variations amongst children as to how quickly they adopt signs and their willingness to use them, most babies should be able to use sign language before they learn to speak verbally because of the way their minds and bodies develop.  Another fear that most parents face is speech delay.  If babies can simply use sign language to get what they want, will they even try to learn to talk?  The truth is, unless your child has some sort of disorder that precludes them from learning to speak (in which case teaching them sign language may be necessary anyway), they will develop just like every other child, precisely when they are ready.

So if you’re tired of spending sleepless nights listening to your baby cry and wishing you could do something to calm them, consider sign language as a viable option.  Many of the signs are easy to learn and teach and they can be modified for your child’s skill level (as long as you understand them, that’s all that matters).  You may be surprised by many of the things they can learn to say (such as please,  thank you, and I love you).  They will quickly go from simple desires like eat to more complex requests like banana, and they can even express emotional states like happy or scared.

As your child gets older, use a child-safe web browser like Zoodles to play fun, educational games and videos that teach children how to sign while learning the letters of the alphabet, as well as the signs for numbers and colors.  The thing about baby sign language is, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by implementing an additional means of communicating with your young child.  And everyone will be happier when baby gets what s/he wants!

Author Byline

Kyle Simpson

Kyle Simpson writes for Medical Coding Certification where you can find more information about a career and training in the medical field.

Guest blog by Bethany North of The Coffee Bump.

Autism is a developmental disability that affects 1 in every 110  births in the United States and almost 1 in 70 boys according to a recent study released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This lifelong disorder is characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behavior.

For any families that may have a child with autism, success and development can be achieved through choosing the right interactive games. This is the perfect opportunity to play with your child while also encouraging his or her development so that the barriers of autism will no longer have to be as present or restricting as your child grows.

1. Logic and Reasoning Games : Autistic children often experience the difficulty of becoming overwhelmed in social environments. However, you can help your autistic child easily learn with a logic game so that they become comfortable making decisions in a group setting. Word Vine is a fun developmental choice while also encouraging vocabulary and reading. For an autistic child, this will help to relate words and categories to encourage basic understanding. This also helps with problem-solving and deductive reasoning so that your autistic child can feel more comfortable in public environments, whether it be in conversation, playing, or meeting new people.
2. Attention and Listening Games: One symptom of autism is a difficult time concentrating or interacting. However, autistic children can often be reached through music, which is why Music – Mozart is the ideal game choice to provide visual and auditory stimulation. Your child will be able to learn about the historical Mozart, who was also rumored to be autistic, while hearing music and other sounds to solidify the learning process. Music is something that will help to keep the attention of an autistic child better than many styles of learning.
3. Abstract Thinking Games: Create Animation is an ideal game for an autistic child since it uses animation and motion to create images. Autistic children are often simulated by sight, making this the perfect opportunity to develop your child’s creative side. Your child will be able to manipulate digital images, which is something that will help them to feel in control as they learn to draw and create through this interactive game.
4. Matching Games: Animal Bingo is the perfect game for an autistic child of any age because it is simple, entertaining, and nonthreatening. Matching is one of the basic building blocks of helping your autistic child to relate to their environment, and they can learn to recognize different objects by matching two pictures together. This style of animal bingo will also help your child to connect with the sounds that an animal makes, completing the learning correlation of basic animal groups.

The point is that your choice of games and playtime activities will make a serious difference in the development of your autistic child. With the right activities, this is an opportunity to not only help your child learn but to grow dramatically by encouraging their confidence as a child with autism!

Author Byline

Bethany North

Bethany North is a full-time freelance writer who writes on a variety of topics, and she spends her time running her coffee and espresso specialty website. For a great selection of coffee makers Bunn, check out Bethany North’s website, The Coffee Bump.

Guest blog by Stephanie Suesan Smith, Ph.D.

You can use your garden to grow minds as well as food.  The very things that are necessary to make a garden grow food, flowers, and hay can also be used to educate children in science and math, reading, following directions, nutrition, and cooking.  Even something as mundane as pulling weeds can involve lessons in taxonomy and composting.

Taxonomy lessons

For example, your child can sort the weeds into piles of similar plants.  A simple guide to weeds is not very expensive and usually has big pictures for easy identification.  Using the shapes of the leaves, color of the flowers, and type of stems, the child can work to identify the type of weed.  This can lead into a discussion about the life cycle of a plant and why some are useful in the garden and others are not.  The same plants that are pests in the garden might be grown in a pasture.

Composting

After the weeds are identified, you and your child can work on a simple compost pile.  If you have hoofed animals, you have a source of manure.  If not, kitchen scraps that are not from meat or fat can be used.  Layers of weeds and manure or scraps can be made, or laid on an existing compost pile.  The child can have a small one that he or she can turn and monitor until it becomes rich compost.  This compost can then be returned to the garden so the cycle can start again.

Soil test

Check with your local Extension Office for the best soil test kits (they are inexpensive and sometimes even free!).  A soil test can be used for several lessons.  Start with elements and which ones are important in growing plants. Move on to how those elements get into soil, and how soil is formed.  A hands on lesson can involve the gathering of the soil needed for the test.  Shovel a little dirt from five or six sites and allow the child to mix it with his or her hands.  Then let them pack the soil into the sample bag.

Plant circulation systems

While you are waiting for the results, which will take about two weeks, you can cover photosynthesis and how plants take up water and nutrients from the soil.  Roots need food, so the plant’s circulatory system, a simple one, can come next.  Finally, you can discuss why plants are green and go over chlorophyll.

Soil test results

When the soil test results come back, it is time for a little math.  Usually, for lawns, the results are expressed in pounds of element per 1,000 square feet.  Fertilizer usually comes in 40 pound sacks that only have a percentage of the element in them, with the rest being carrier.  You can cover fractions and multiplication while figuring out how much of the bag to spread to meet the recommendations.  You can go to the Tulsa Master Gardeners website and find calculators to make this easier for you and smaller children.

If these topics have wet your interest, there are lots more where they came from.  In fact, there are two years of curriculum in science, math, literature, and various other topics available from the United States for the cost of the books.  Children who complete the curriculum may be certified as Junior Master Gardeners. It is possible to teach much more than where food comes from if even a small spot is under cultivation.

Author Byline

Stephanie Suesan Smith, Ph.D.  is a master gardener, photographer, and writer in Texas.  You can see her photographs and read her work at http://blog.stephaniesuesansmith.com.

Inspired by the feedback we received after National Nutrition Month, we decided to keep the themed content going through April, National Poetry Month!  This month we added a bunch of lyrical goodies.  Here were a few of our favorite games!

Poetry Idea Engine

Your child develops writing and reading skills as they learn about the structure of different poems, and can even use the Poetry Idea Engine to build their own!

Magnetic Poetry for Kids

Your child develops poetry writing skills with a fun virtual set of Magnetic Poetry.

Highlights Poetry Player

Your child develops storytelling and listening skills as they interact with the Highlights Poetry Player and have wonderful poems read aloud to them.

Enjoy!  And be sure to let us know of any gems we might have missed

Did you know that March was National Nutrition Month?  Thanks to recent efforts by the First Lady, health and nutrition have become major talking points in schools and homes around the country.  As one of the biggest advocates for improved fitness and nutrition education, Michelle Obama has inspired a wave of national health campaigns, including Let’s Move, Team Nutrition by the USDA, and Apps for Healthy Kids.

Apps for Healthy Kids is a fantastic competition that encourages content developers to make quality health games for kids.  We say, it’s about time!  The deadline to enter is June 30, and you can read more about the guidelines here.  If you do end up submitting something, be sure to let us know so we can feature your game!

Zoodles wanted to take part in the movement too, so throughout the month, we’ve been roaming the interwebs hunting for the best health games out there.  Everything good that we found was then served up to your unwitting children!  Hopefully they’ve been enjoying the *fruits* of our labor, and maybe even shared some of the things they’ve learned!  (For instance, did you know that lime jello doesn’t actually contain lime?  Of course you did.  But did your kids?  Hmm? Hmm?)

Well if you want a taste of what your kids have been playing, check out some of our favorite dishes:

If you thought this was cool, stay tuned for what happens in April. It’s National Poetry Month!

We get a lot of requests for spelling games.  And we know a lot about spelling games.  So why not write a post about spelling games?

Without further ado, Zoodles’ favorite spelling sites!

Spelling City

Spelling City* describes itself as “a new and innovative interactive educational site used to help children of all ages improve their spelling skills and expand their vocabulary.” The power of Spelling City* lies behind its ability to take custom spelling lists from parents and teachers, and turn them into fun, interactive games that help students learn those words.

Between the Lions

Between the Lions* is a PBS kids show that encourages kids to “get wild about reading.” Partially funded by the U.S. Department of Education, the show follows a family of lions – Theo, Cleo, Lionel and Leona – as they run a magical library where words take on a life of their own.

Word World

WordWorld* calls itself “the first preschool series where words are truly the stars of the show!” Using a map navigation format, your child can visit different characters in their environments and practice developing literary skills one at a time, rather than all at once.

Read Write Think

Started in 2002, ReadWriteThink.org* was created through a partnership between the International Reading Association, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the Verizon Foundation. Their goal is to provide parents and educators with free games, tools, and activities that will not only enhance kids’ reading ability, but their love for books and written expression.

Starfall

Starfall* is an independent site dedicated to helping children read, and have fun while doing it. The site hosts hundreds of early reading games and activities that engage kids while helping develop key literacy skills. These skills include letter recognition, phonics, spelling, and reading comprehension.

*This superific spelling site can of course be found within the Zoodles browser.  Get it now!

Contributed by Mike Portuesi Zoodles Engineering Team

When I’m not building new product features here at Zoodles, I’m very involved with Astronomy as a hobby. It gives me the opportunity to engage the public, especially young people, and share my excitement with astronomy and science in general. One of the joys of my work as a citizen science educator includes judging duties at the San Francisco Middle School Science Fair.

This year’s fair included 210 entries, pooled from the winning projects at twenty-nine schools across San Francisco. Around 30 volunteer judges with career experience in science and technical fields break into teams of three to four people to judge entries across three grade levels (6th, 7th, and 8th) as well as three categories (Biological Sciences, Behavioral and Health Sciences, and Physical Sciences).  I was the team lead judging 7th grade Physical Sciences, which included 22 entries.

Every year, I’m impressed by the thought and creativity that go into the projects, and this year was no exception.  Some of the more notable entries I encountered include:

Clouds in a Jar - inspired by the notion of catching and bottling a bit of ‘magic’, the student tried generating clouds in a jar with a crafty process involving water, a match and a rubber glove.

Can my Laptop Get Better Reception? – in this case, the student, wanting better wireless network connectivity for his computer, built radio antennas from cookie sheets, wire strainers and Pringles cans, and judged their effectiveness.

Singing Wine Glasses – The student investigated how liquids alter the sound produced when you run a finger over the rim of a wine glass.  The student experimented with not only the amount of liquid, but the viscosity, including such odd ingredients as almond butter!

Our team rated each project in three areas:

Methodology – Did the student come up with appropriate “controls”, or standards of comparison for the experiment? Was the experimental procedure sound?  I look for experiments where the student investigates the “whys”, or the science principles behind the experiment, rather than just demonstrates an effect or makes simple measurements (as in one project that simply timed the speed of popular web browsers).

Creativity – Is this an original, offbeat idea, or did the student pull the project from a book like “101 Science Fair Projects”? The most creative projects, like “Clouds in a Jar”, were motivated by a student’s real-life observation, which piqued their curiosity and spurred them to learn more through discovery.

Communication – How well did the student present his or her hypothesis, procedure, experimental data and conclusions?  Are the charts and graphs clear?  As judges, we value clarity and completeness over slick presentations produced with fancy graphics software.

Science Fair Do’s and Don’ts

A science fair project is a perfect way you and your child can have a rewarding, enriching experience together, and maybe produce one of tomorrow’s generation of scientists and engineers.

Here’s some ways you and your child can work together to produce a winning entry:

• Gently urge your child to come up with their own idea from real life that will motivate them and make them excited. These projects get the most time with, and discussion amongst, the judges.
• Photos are a great way not only to spice up the look of the project, but also to give the judges a real flavor for what the student really did.
• Let the child lead, and drive the direction of the project. You can assist the child with trickier bits, and suggest resources for more information, but don’t give them answers outright or do their work for them. Trust me: the judges can tell.
• Make sure your child provides proper credit where credit is due, if he/she includes materials from elsewhere or gets help with various aspects of the project. Judges always react positively to honesty, but will mark down projects where they suspect another’s work used without attribution.
• It’s okay to include background research in your final presentation, such as a report.  Even quoting Wikipedia works for me, if I have a feeling the child actually read and learned from it, rather than just hit copy/paste.  But make sure the background information is not the centerpiece of the offering. Judges want to see more than a book report, they want to see true creative, experimental effort on the child’s part.

One of the best ways to instill  a love of learning in kids is to find the teaching moments in everyday life, not just in school.  Well why not try the Olympics?

Recently we caught wind of an amazing partnership between NBC Learn and the National Science Foundation to create a project called Science of the Olympic Winter Games. Through the partnership, NBC Learn and the NSF have produced 15 short, engaging videos where Olympic athletes – many of whom are starring in the 2010 Winter Games – explain the mechanics behind their sport.

In one video, figure skater Rachel Flatt practices her routines in front of a phantom camera that captures her motion at rates of up to 1500 frames per second.  Sports science professor Deborah King then breaks down each of Rachel’s moves – from her quadruple toe loops to her basic spins – explaining concepts like angular momentum, vertical velocity, and other laws of motion.  Deborah even uses the spinning chair in her office to demonstrate the concepts herself!

The dynamic videos, which you can watch at NBC Learn, use the thrill and competition of the Winter Olympics to teach physical concepts like the air lift in ski jumps, the forces involved in a hockey slapshot, and the careful design behind ice skates, snowboards, safety gear, and even the suits athletes wear.

Pair these videos with their accompanying lesson plans at Lessonopoly.org, and you’ve got a slew of amazing science lessons in your back pocket.  Elizabeth Rhodes, the developer of the curriculum, said her hope was that kids would watch the Olympics and realize,

“Science isn’t something that’s in a book; it’s out there on the ice, it’s there with the skiers, it’s in the hockey and curling.”

When the Olympics are over, the learning doesn’t have to stop there.  Thousands more math and science lessons can be found at Lessonopoly.org, an ambitious project supported by the Silicon Valley Education Foundation that lets teachers share their materials and make them freely available online.

Read more about this partnership in the San Jose Mercury News article, “Students learn the science of Olympics.”

Are you a teacher who’s tried to use Zoodles?  Whether your school has SmartBoards and computer labs, or nothing at all, Zoodles is interested in hearing about your experiences using Zoodles in the classroom.

Teachers today have interesting ways of using Zoodles – whether it’s playing games as a class on the Promethean board, or setting up multiple student accounts in the lab – one per grade – we’ve been fascinated by all the ways that teachers have adapted Zoodles to meet their needs.

With that said, we’d really love to make Zoodles something that adapts to you, rather than the other way around.  So if you or anyone you know is a teacher who’s interested in giving Zoodles feedback, send us an email at feedback [AT] zoodles DOT com, and we’ll work with you to set up a 20 – 30 minute call.  In exchange for your time and good will, we’d be happy to give your school a year of Zoodles Premium in return.

Thanks so much, and we hope to be talking with you soon!

Contributed by Debbie H. Zoodles Education Team

In the process of working for Zoodles in the past ten months, I’ve encountered a wide array of different games for children. Every so often, games will pop off the page and become part of your daily conversation. Most recently, I have been really excited and consumed by the American Girls games. They are designed with a function that meets the needs of learners: they teach facts about the United States and world cultures. In addition, the design meets the needs of children in ways that are fun — I find the games engaging at my age, and I have no doubt that I would have also enjoyed them as a child playing on Zoodles.

The foundation of the games are the different American Girls, each of whom hosts games that uniquely suit her personality, background and culture. By creating three-dimensional representations of different types of girls, Zoodles players will be able to identify with the different American Girls characters. American Girls doesn’t reinvent the wheel- they redesign it in a way that is purposeful and unique.

In “Kit’s Railway Adventure,” girls are able to see the United States from the perspective of early settlers. Through a series of visits across the country, Zoodles players are exposed to early colonial history.

In “Samantha’s Scavenger Hunt,” your child learns about United States history and culture by going on a scavenger hunt with Samantha in 1904, New York. Concepts of early times are taught in fun ways- only second to visiting Jamestown and Williamsberg!

It’s also encouraging to see that the American Girls site also acknowledges immigration and girls from all over the world. For example, in “Rebecca’s World Word Search” children play their favorite word search games, but are exposed to new, sophisticated words about Russian culture.

Likewise, in “Rebecca’s Russian Doll Mix-up,” children can play their favorite matching game but learn about a new culture at the same time.

In “Josefina’s Santa Fe Market Adventure,” Zoodles players learn about economics and the roles of buyers and sellers, as well as basic Spanish language vocabulary by going on an adventure looking for goods at the Market.

If your child ends up on the American Girls site, you will be in good hands. We look forward to hearing what your child thinks of the new games on Zoodles!

With the end of fall comes parent teacher conferences, and many parents have just experienced, or are nervously anticipating, one of the few chances they have to sit down with their child’s teacher and hear how their child is doing in school.

In her article “Preparing for the Parent Teacher Conference,”  long time teacher Diane Milne mentions a number of helpful ways to ease your nerves and communicate or understand everything you’ve been wanting to know about your child in half an hour.  We’ve boiled her thoughts down into 8 basic tips:

1. Write your questions down beforehand, in prioritized order.
2. Touch not only on your child’s academic performance at school, but their social well being.
3. Ask how you can help your child do better in school.
4. Be honest when the teacher asks you questions in return.
5. Even when you disagree, keep an even temper and do not accuse or insult the teacher.
6. Work towards a solution that involves both of you.
7. Be willing to share what is going on in your child’s home life that may affect his time at school.
8. End on a note that makes the teacher feel supported and appreciated.

Supporting your child’s education extends beyond his or her teacher – there are also a number of ways to support your child by supporting their school, their local community, and other parents.  Read what the PTA (Parent Teacher Association) suggests as 100 Ways to Help Your Child and School Succeed.

Still left in the dark?

Of course, no matter how effective your parent teacher conference is, half an hour with the person who spends 30 hours a week with your child will never feel like enough.  No matter how well intending, busy parents plus busy teachers make for a *very busy* combination.   The result?  You start to feel left in the dark.  Increasingly disconnected from what your child can or can’t do, what they like, or what they’re good at.  You start to battle this constant worry that you’re not doing enough, this guilt that you’re not there every time your child learns something new.

It was this feeling of helplessness, and our desire to empower parents to be part of their child’s development, that drove us to create many of the Parental Features on Zoodles.

Our hope is that the weekly email updates, the vibrant graphs and pictures, and all the powerful controls we afford you, will help you feel more like a participant in your child’s learning journey.  Whether in school or at play, your child is growing every day, and we don’t want any parent to feel like they might be missing out.

Scholastic is a household name in education, and we’re happy to announce that Zoodles now features some great games from their site!  Scholastic has done a fantastic job creating content that is fun and educational, basing their games on popular books and characters that your children know and love.  Nothing more satisfying than using the appeal of Harry Potter and Captain Underpants to indulge the literary senses of kids around the world!  Here are the top 5 Scholastic picks from our always amazing Education Team:

Virtual Forest Challenge

Your child learns ways to recycle and the importance of helping the environment by clicking on different places in the community and answering questions in the form of a quiz.

Write a Dreadful Act

Your child learns about grammar and parts of speech by filling in a Mad-libs type form and creating their own story.

Masterpiece Match

Your child learns about different artists by matching each artist’s description to his/her painting.

Dinosaur Cove

Your child explores and engages with the virtual dinosaur environment by making decisions about which rocks to turn over in search of dragonflies, fossils, and other objects.

Balloon Bust

Your child develops fine motor skills and a basic understanding of motion while timing darts to pop balloons.

I recently had a chance to go back to kindergarten.  The school that Abbie, my 5 year old daughter, attends affords parents a number of opportunities to volunteer, and so last week I volunteered to help out in the classroom.  I found the experience incredibly rewarding on a number of levels.

First, as a parent I was able to experience what Abbie does in school so it helps me to better connect with her around classroom experiences.  Since I now have a better understanding of her school day I am able to ask direct questions about her day rather than “how was school?”.  This certainly helps to get the conversation over dinner moving in a  good direction.

Second, Abbie was thrilled to have me in the class.  She was clearly proud that I was the first Dad to help out in class and that both her parents had been in her class to help out.  Nothing like scoring some points with your little one

Finally, I was able to observe ~20 kindergarten students develop important language & literacy skills.  One of the great challenges for teachers (especially kindergarten teachers) is the variability in skill level of students.  Some students will come into kindergarten reading, others might still be struggling to recognize letters.  I witnessed this variability in the classroom and unfortunately one of the students had already developed a belief that “I am not very good at letters.”  He said this as he watched his classmates finish an exercise with ease while he struggled a bit.  This  is a shame and potentially a damaging point of view for this child to have.

One of the great things about having children play educational games is that they are able to progress at their own rate without being self conscious about how they are performing with respect to other children.  Numerous studies have shown that the ability to “self pace” in educational games is one of the reasons they are so effective at helping people learn.  In addition to self pacing, many educational games are able to adapt to a child’s abilities, and therefore it helps provide children with the appropriate balance of challenging work and the opportunity to build self confidence in their abilities.

Hopefully more parents will see these benefits and decide to use a service like Zoodles to have their children play safe, fun and educational games.

Do you remember those long hours you spent in 3rd grade tracing the loops of your p’s and q’s? The slow cramp that developed in your hand as you clenched your #2 pencil?

Well we’re happy to say those days are gone.  A recent article by the Associated Press pays tribute to the waning use of cursive in schools.  “Cursive writing may be a fading skill, but so what?” the article is titled.  Even at Zoodles we’ve been forced to consider the value of learning cursive – we keep track of games that teach Penmanship, but we’ve yet to encounter any!  Meanwhile, the number of Zoodles games teaching Typing and Computer Literacy continues to increase.  Check out a few below!

Despite our company “meh” on the death of cursive, we still thought of some neat activities you can use to help your child start practicing their handwriting, with or without the loops.

Wipe Clean Activity Books

We heard this one straight from the moms!  Roger Priddy’s developed cardboard books that little kids can write on using dry erase markers!  It’s the perfect activity for tracing letters and learning to love books – just make sure your little ones know which books to write on!

Writing on Foggy Windows

Whether it’s on the mirror in your bathroom or the window by their carseat, nothing’s more fun than tracing letters on foggy surfaces!  Take advantage of these magical moments by encouraging your child to write their name or draw some animals.  Both improve fine motor skills!

Put Old Checkbooks to Use!

Nothing talks louder than money!  Let your children practice their handwriting while filling out old or fake checks to themselves.  Some parents even use “checks” from “The Family Bank” as rewards for good behavior!  Whether or not the activity’s tied to rewards, most kids will just have fun playing grown-up.  Writing checks not only gets in some good practice writing numbers and letters, but it even sneaks in some *cursive* when they get started on their signature!     If you prefer not to use old checks, here’s a link to some printable check templates for kids.

It’s our job to find the best educational content on the web.  Period.  For a lot of parents it can be a struggle to sift through everything that’s out there and come back with fun, engaging games that – to top it all off – are at their child’s grade level.  Since we’ve already been doing that work, we thought we’d share some of the best stuff we’ve found.  While Zoodles features hundreds of math games from across the Internet, we’ve highlighted four of the best websites for teaching math.  Our hope is not only to clue you in on what kinds of games your child’s been playing on Zoodles, but to give you a chance to explore them on your own.  Each of these sites have tremendously beneficial sections that for security or technical reasons can’t be featured within the Zoodles browser.  Read about them below and see why they’re worth checking out yourself!

1) FactMonster

The best thing about FactMonster is that it creates animated storylines and characters that give context around each of the math concepts being taught. For budding mathematicians just learning to count, Big Count Bayou features a fox, a moose, and some frogs who recruit your child’s help in counting, adding, and grouping animals in the bayou. For higher grade levels, Cowboy Math teaches kids how to crack codes on vaults using complex addition and multiplication. Fraction Cafe asks kids to help build pizzas for Frenchy using different amounts of toppings. Baseball Geometry motivates kids to listen to the Coach as he draws up a game plan involving angles, and then to answer some geometry questions to earn at-bats! Each of the animated storylines have distinct sections that teach progressively harder math concepts.

Why you should check it out:
Because the games are designed by the popular curriculum publisher Pearson Digital Learning, the math concepts are also paired with printable flashcards and activities for parents to supplement the activities with.

2) Arcademic Skill Builders

Arcademic Skill Builders focuses less on teaching math concepts and more on improving the speed and ease of doing mental math. What’s great about Arcademic Skill Builders is that they situate this practice in highly engaging arcade-like games that involve racing or some other form of competition. Each of the games can also be tailored specifically to your child’s level, as you can set the range of numbers to be used in the problems.

Why you should check it out:
They have the unique quality of embedding math problems into online Multi-Player games, which further engages kids who are motivated by competition. While Zoodles does allow kids to play the single-player games, we have blocked access to the multi-player games for safety purposes. If you don’t mind having your child interact with others online, the multi-player games are definitely worth checking out!

3) Funschool

Funschool is an amazing website if only for the high quality of animation used in their games. While Funschool also features games in other subjects, their math games are extremely popular with Zoodles users. Among the most popular are games you might recognize: Addition Attack, Fishin Mission, and Cannon Math!

Why you should check it out:
Of the 34 math games that Funschool offers, Zoodles only includes 7 in the Zoodles browser because of technical incompatibilities.

4) School Time Games

Last but not least is School Time Games. What makes School Time Games unique from the other sites is that its games focus more on the abstract concepts involved in mathematical thinking, rather than the procedural concepts more commonly taught in school. Its games – listed both under Mathematics and Puzzles – hone skills like spatial reasoning, logical thinking, strategy, and memory. The graphics aren’t as great as some of the other sites, but the games can keep you going for hours!

Why you should check it out:
Like the others, School Time Games focuses not just on fun games, but on fun educational games, and brands itself as “wholesome learning fun for kids.” What we’ve found is that many of its games are wholesome learning fun for adults too!

Zoodles thinks so!

And according to new research released by Haier et al at Blue Planet Software, we’re not far from the truth.  A recent MSNBC article reports the findings as evidence that playing certain video games – in this case, Tetris – can actually enhance parts of the brain related to critical thinking and reasoning.  More research is being done on what kinds of games can improve cognitive areas related to memory and spatial reasoning.

We at Zoodles strongly believe that games have the ability to improve mental acuity, and not just in areas like memory and spatial reasoning.  During our many usability studies, we’ve seen incredibly rapid learning happen right before our eyes!  When kids are young, their brains are developing at such rapid rates that we can’t stress enough how important it is to continue stimulating them!  The important thing that many parents miss is that this kind of mental toning occurs best in a relaxed, engaging environment, where games form the perfect backdrop!

Games enable children to be challenged while also engaged, and to learn new things without even realizing it!  In the face of overly-difficult material, games have the ability to buffer frustration and increase motivation with a constant stream of clever game mechanics like new levels and rewards.  We believe the Zoodles browser provides this kind of learning environment for every child.

If you’re a parent and you have some fun brain-enhancing stories about your kids learning on Zoodles, we’d love to hear them!

And you know, stimulating brain games aren’t just for kids, they’re for adults too!  While many of the eight-year-old games on Zoodles are actually still ridiculously fun for us big kids at the office, we thought parents might like a trip to Lumos Labs for some “scientifically designed Brain Games” of their own.  Enjoy!

If you’re interested in learning more about the different parts of the brain, check out this neat interactive applet put together by MSNBC, New Roadmap to the Mind.

Sometimes getting your kids to read can feel a lot like pulling teeth.  After a long day of school, they might try to convince you that “learning time” is over.  So how do we make “learning time” fun again?  How do we make learning so fun that kids don’t even realize they’re learning, and become eager to learn all the time?

Here at Zoodles we realized that we have a TON of information about how to make this possible.  After all, we have a huge number of kids playing in Zoodles every day, and they’re all learning without even knowing it!  We decided to take a deep dive into our data and see what reading games Zoodles kids have been playing on, and which of them have emerged as the tried-and-true Top 5 Most Fun.  For this study, we focused on kids ages 5 – 6, since the early reading experience (in school and at home) is so critical to a child’s academic success and can even predict reading achievement through 6th grade.  The “funness” of a game was determined by how long kids generally spent playing the game.

Let us know if your kids play these, or other, favorites!

1) Save a Baby Dinosaur!

Your child develops the basics in reading sight words while helping the Wonder Pets save a baby triceratops.

Educational value: Book and Print Basics, Early Reading / Phonics, Sight Words, Reading Comprehension, Elements of a Story

2) What’s In the Bag?

Your child develops logic, matching, and vocabulary skills by listening to a series of words and then choosing the object that those words describe.

Educational Value: Vocabulary and Concept Development, Word Meanings

3) ABC Match

Your child develops early reading and memory skills by matching pictures with the first letter of their name.

Educational Value: Early Reading / Phonics, Matching Letters to Sounds, Decoding and Word Recognition, Syllables / Word Parts

4) Lumpy and Roo, and a Mystery Too!

Your child develops reading skills as well as investigation and matching skills by reading along and solving the mystery.

Educational Value: Reading Comprehension, Elements of a Story

5) Word World

Your child develops spelling skills while using letters to build words.

Educational Value: Early Reading / Phonics, Matching letters to sounds, Spelling, Vowels and Consonants

All the Zoodles-approved games listed here are accessible from a 5- or 6-year-old’s Zoodles Toybox!

A recent article in the New York Times points to the transition schools will soon be making from textbooks and worksheets to digital books and interfaces.  Despite the generally optimistic outlook schools might have towards a digital future, many parents are hesitant to feel the same.  There’s concern that something indescribable will be missing from their child’s education with the dearth of the textbook.  Here at Zoodles we thought we’d take a step back and look at what the Digital Era could mean for you as a parent, and how to come to terms with its transition into schools.  If you have any thoughts of your own on the matter, we would love to hear them!

1. Moving to free, open-source digital textbooks alleviates a significant amount of the financial burden on state education systems, particularly if students already have access to some electronic form of distribution.  It can be extremely costly to keep traditional textbooks updated, and in a rapidly changing world, they’re quick to become outdated.  The transition helps your child get only the latest information in schools, and it also saves their backs from such heavy loads!
2. Teachers are no longer forced to create lesson plans in subjects beyond their expertise or duplicate work that’s already been done by others.  Instead, they can combine their efforts and form a pool of only the best educational content online.  Saving teachers from having to sift through thousands of websites and activities on their own gives them more time to learn about your child.
3. Kids are wired differently these days. With growing research on all the ways kids use digital media, it’s clear that kids are developing new (and necessary) skills for a changing world.  This generation of toddlers and teenagers are growing up setting the DVR to record their favorite shows, sending emails rather than letters, and tapping into the Internet every day knowing that they have an infinite base of knowledge at their fingertips.  Even from the usability testing that we do here at Zoodles, we’ve had some superhuman three year olds show us how to use the mouse, the keyboard, and scrollbar to play – and even cheat – at complex computer games!
4. While the transition to digital in schools may be scary, there’s also a great opportunity to let the change carry over into your home.  With the Internet, you and your child gain access to worlds of amazing educational content, right from the comfort of your own home.

Thus, as a parent, you face the same responsibility that many teachers face every day – filtering thousands of pages of content down to only the best content for your kids.  Inspired by the open-source model described in the Times article, we decided to track down the best up-and-coming websites for finding open-source textbooks and curricula.

The first is Curriki, a non-profit organization started by Sun Microsystems with the intent of “creating a community that supports the development and free distribution of world-class educational materials to anyone who needs them.”

The second is CK-12, a non-profit organization with the mission of “reducing the cost of textbook materials for the K-12 market, using an open-content, web-based collaborative model termed the “FlexBook.”  While the content on CK-12 is currently very focused on high school, the platform enables parents and teachers to share content for all grades.

Third is Scholastic’s TeacherShare, a new project by Scholastic that was founded with the mission of “making high quality educational content and tools freely available on the web.”

Finally, there’s Zoodles.  Like the others, Zoodles was founded to help you as a parent traverse the often-intimidating world of the Internet, and easily put only the latest and greatest educational content in front of your child.  Unlike the others, however, we focus our help on parents with younger children.  These are the parents who face the unique challenge of introducing their children to computers and the Internet for the first time, who spend late nights looking for activities that match their child’s rapidly changing abilities, and who worry that along the way the wrong website  will slip through.  With Zoodles, we hope that parents everywhere can feel equipped to face the digital future, whether it happens in schools or at home.