Archive for category: On the Internet

“Mr. Morton is the subject of the sentence and what the predicate says – he does!”

Thanks to Tina, via her FB page, for this.

Your kid will love this.

You draw a stick figure, and the website brings it to life.

There is a literacy component, because the site takes the stickman through a plotline. You’re given instructions like, “draw a key in my hand” before he can open a locked box.

Kids have to read and understand the instructions, and then figure out how to fulfill them.

(So like life.)

There’s plenty of action to keep kids interested in the story. I won’t spoil it for you, but think dragon, fire, flood… cartoony, though, not scary.

And throughout it all is a very quirky sense of silliness. For instance, at some point the site itself catches on fire and detritus drops on the dragon’s head. Stuff that kids love.

After you’ve finished the scenario – a couple of times, likely – take a look at the gallery. People have done some pretty incredible “stickmen,” like Steve Jobs, Gandolf, anime and other really inventive characters.

Visit www.drawastickman.com.

This is the video that’s recently gone viral. If you (and your kid) haven’t seen it, you must – it’s lovely. One-minute and 52 seconds of delightful, stop-motion, book-adoration.

Visited the bookstore “Type” in Toronto this morning and got the back-story: Apparently a couple of filmmakers (Sean Ohlenkamp for one) have made these kinds of videos before on a smaller scale. They wanted a larger venue, so they approached the owners of Type, who were happy to accommodate. Type let them take over the store for a number of nights from 9 p.m. until the next morning, when all the books – of course – had to be back on the shelves, in order.

They had about 20 volunteers to help them reshelve each night. (The books didn’t go back by themselves, unfortunately.) It took over a year to edit.

The video came out a couple of days ago and it’s really taken off. Gotten coverage throughout North America. Yay for Type – and books! (And my friend Val, who originally sent me the link to the video!)

Terrific Hallowe’en is an easy, fun and speedy online game.

The goal is to find the differences between the two, similar-looking pictures.

You click on each thing that’s different. It might be a missing leaf on a tree, a missing house in the background, or a different-coloured tie.

When you spot the five differences, you get a new pair of images. There are three levels: Easy, Medium and Hard (which you can’t unlock until after you’ve finished Medium).

The game is timed, so you can’t just sit there staring. However, if you do take too long it flashes you a hint – well, it shows you a difference. Not really a hint.

It’s a good way for kids to really look at an image, and think about “same” and “different.” It’s also good for hand-eye co-ordination, since you have to click right on the difference.

Small kids can play it with an adult, by just pointing to the screen with their finger. And the Hard level is perfect for older kids, who won’t be bored.

Here is a great video that teaches what Silent E does. (Spoiler alert: For one thing, it makes a hug huge!)

Thanks to thekidshouldseethis.com, who brought this to my attention via a tweet.
Their website is fantastic – it’s a collection of videos that kids just gotta see.

And if you’re in the mood for something slightly more modern…

This one’s for kids who are already good spellers and who think spelling is fun. (To me it’s a no-brainer, but I have to remember that not everyone reads the dictionary for fun.)

Anyway, that kid will appreciate this great online spelling bee from Oxford. It’s fast and it’s fun – and it’s challenging.

Go to the Oxford Spelling Bee site.

Choose British English or US English. Then choose your level, from Tricky to Fiendish, and then click Start.

Warning – Fiendish will require you to spell words like gymkhana and belligerent, one of which I got wrong (Does the word not look better to you with one l? Look: beligerent. Oh. OK, that looks wrong.)

The website reads the word in a lovely British accent, so make sure your computer sound is turned well up. You can hear the word again if you want before you try to spell it. If you get it wrong, you get an X. If you get it right, you get a checkmark. Each category goes up to 15, and at the end you get your score.

I love that they start with “Tricky” as the lowest level which implies that if you get one wrong in that category, well, it was tricky. (It’s not you, it’s me, Oxford is saying.)

You can work your way through the levels, and you can do a level again to try to get a better score. When you do that, the words change so you can keep playing over and over again.

Now I’m feeling a bit belligerent about my score so I think I’ll go work out in my local gymkhana. Wait – with my horse. (I just looked it up.)

Do you have a kid you’re trying to encourage to write more?

Is your kid discouraged because she’s worried that her writing isn’t good enough?

Here’s some great advice from a young author, Maureen Johnson, who is currently working on her 10th novel for teens.

She will tell your kid (in her own inimitable way) that in order to write well, first you need to suck. (3:56 but it goes fast.)

Here’s a link to Maureen’s website.

You’ve gotta love the spirit behind The Kid Should See This.

You’re trolling the Internet (as you do) and you come across a crazy video showing lightning strikes on the CN Tower, and you think “I’ve gotta show this to my kid!”

That’s exactly what TKSST is. A collection of fascinating, insane, edutaining, funny videos that your kid has just gotta see.

What’s on TKSST right now? Let’s see:

• a bug walking across food colouring, showing how its feet slurry the water. (cool);
• luminescent underwater creatures (way-cool);
• an animated, artistic work by a Scottish-Canadian filmmaker (interesting for a certain kind of kid);
• Dizzy Gillespie performing St. Louis Blues on the Muppet Show (groovy);
• a comparison of how big all the planets are (science-y fun, especially when the other planets come out to dwarf our Earth in size);
• a guy flying over the Grand Canyon in a jet-propelled, wearable wing (nature-cool);
• a TED lecture about a robot that flies like a bird (way-cool).

The videos range from less than a minute to five or six minutes. But of course, you can fast-forward and skip to the best parts. The site is co-curated by Rion Nakaya and her three-year-old, Dante.

TKSST parses all the white-noise from the Internet down to just the best stuff that’s going to feed your child’s curiosity in a good way. Gotta love that.

Thanks, Val, for pointing us to this great website. Via swiss-miss.com (where I nabbed this screenshot from since I still don’t know how to do good ones myself).

We’ve all been missing Harry and the Gang, of course, which is why we were so excited to see the new website, Pottermore.

Getting Kids Reading has qualified to be an early, beta-tester of the new Harry Potter site.
That means we’ll be able to bring you an insider’s view of all of the magical outpourings of J. K. Rowling’s imagination, a month or so before the site is open to everyone in October.

(There are one million other beta-testers, incidentally, so we’re not exactly letting our special status go to our heads.)

They chose the beta-testers through a special contest. For one week, pottermore.com asked a question a day to elicit a clue which we then used to “find” a magical quill.

Test your little Potter fan and see how many he or she would have gotten correct!
Here are the clues they asked:

Day 1 Clue
How many breeds of owl are featured on the Eeylops Owl Emporium sign? Answer: 5

Day 2 Clue
What is the number of the chapter in which Professor McGonagall cancels the Quidditch match between Gryffindor and Hufflepuff? Answer: 14

Day 3 Clue
In the Gryffindor versus Slytherin Quidditch match, in Harry’s third year, how many points is Gryffindor leading by before Harry catches the golden snitch? Answer: 60

Day 4 Clue
How many students take part in the Triwizard Tournament during Harry’s fourth year? Answer: 4

Day 5 Clue
What is the house number of the Headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix in Grimmauld Place? Answer: 12

Day 6 Clue
How many chapters are there in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince? 
 Answer: 30

Day 7 Clue
How many deathly hallows are there? Answer: 3

The image of the magical quills came from the “Pottermore Insider’s Blog,” which magically disappeared after I clicked on it. OK, maybe I’m not so much “magical” as I am “technically incompetent” – but my point is, I’d love to know who the artist is. These are beautiful. And, clearly, magical.

OK, this is a great tip but it might be a bit… er… nerdy. But then, so am I. And so is my kid, who wears it like a badge of honour.

You’ve seen these QR codes, right? They’re on ads, posters, marketing material. Maybe you never knew what they were.

They’re like bar codes, but readable by anyone with a cellphone. You take an app like RedLaser (iPhone or Android) and scan the QR code, which reveals a hidden message, website, phone number, URL, etc.

So I was thinking it would make an excellent scavenger hunt to get kids reading.

You create some goofy, fun, positive or even utterly meaningless messages and print them out. Then you hide them around the house and give your kid your phone. Hilarity ensues. Well, maybe not hilarity – but certainly reading.

One scavenger hunt game could include messages like, “Look under the couch” and then the QR code hidden under the couch would read, “Look in your left shoe by the door,” and so on until the kid finds a new book on his pillow or something.

Or you could print one up and stick it in your kid’s lunchbox (his friend has a phone, you know he does). Now your kids kind of cool and you’re the cool mom who know about technology.

If you’ve never tried reading a QR code before, download the app and try this one I just made up:

You can make up your own QR codes at Kaywa. Or even better, have your kid make some up.

The idea for this post came from this smart and funny blog I’ve been following for years, Ironic Sans (if you know your typography, the title is funny).