Need a few websites to fill in free minutes? Here are Holiday websites that will keep students busy while teaching them:
Updated 4/18/18
This is an exciting list–great simulations I’ve found around the internet. Some of the entries have more than one.
A note: some must be downloaded and a few purchased, so the link might take you to a website that provides access rather than play:
Posted by Jacqui on April 16, 2018
April 22, 2018 is Earth Day. Celebrate it with your students by letting them visit these websites:
If you’re looking for apps, try these:
Weekend Website #101: Electrocity
1. Dance Mat Typing
6. Ghost Typing
7. Power Typing
10. Typing Bubbles
11. Space Invaders
14. Cup Stacking
More Websites for keyboard practice:
17 St. Patrick’s Day Sites For the Classroom
by Jacqui
Getting ready for St. Patrick's Day? Try these fun websites:
6. Puzzle–St. Pat’s drag-and-drop puzzle
7. Puzzle–St. Pat’s slide puzzle
9. St. Patrick’s Day history–video
11. Tic tac toe
12. Webquest for St. Patrick’s Day I
13. Webquest II
14. Wordsearch
Posted by Jacqui on March 29, 2018
Many Christians celebrate Jesus Christ’s resurrection on Easter Sunday. The date depends on the ecclesiastical approximation of the March equinox. This year, it’s April 1, 2018.
Here are some websites your students will love:
Here are two sites that work well with iPads:
Grade 2 and up
Free
ClassTools is well known for its easy-to-use templates themed to popular activities (such as Facebook). Many are intuitive to use, require little direction from teachers, and can be completed in under five minutes, making them the go-to resource for projects and lesson plans. No sign-up, log-in, or password is required. Games include arcade-style games, Pac-Man, Breaking News generator, crosswords, and more. Once created, games can be shared using the ClassTools’ link.
Note: Once published, the games are public so make sure students keep all information generic and vanilla.
High School+
Free/fee
GameMaker Studio 2 is one of the top tools available for students with a serious interest in game development. It uses a familiar drag-and-drop interface but also has scripting available for pros. Because of its robustness, the learning curve can be steep though committed students will have no problem. It runs on Windows and Mac as well as Ubuntu, Linux, Android, iOS, UWP, HTML5, XBox One, and PlayStation 4.
GameMaker Studio 2 is best suited to teaching for a full unit or semester rather than a quick in-and-out as might be used for Hour of Code.
High School+
Free/fee
GameSalad is a leading game creation tool for the K-12 ecosystem. Its drag and drop interface requires no knowledge of programming and is familiar from many other coding webtools and programs. One of its goals is to make learning computer science and programming easy. That being said, it is best suited for students who have experience with basic game creators such as Scratch or Hopscotch. Most students will be able to create their first game within a few weeks.
GameSalad is one of several on this list that focus on classroom use. It offers a web-based state standards-aligned curriculum with everything educators need to teach computer science fundamentals. Units are modular. Each unit covers one or more topics and each features a specific game genre or mechanic, giving maximum flexibility to design a program that meets the needs of students.
4th-9th grade
Free/fee
Gamestar Mechanic teaches game design through the use of web-based game-based quests and courses. Before students begin the process of creating a game, they practice gaming skills and take design courses from professionals.
Gamestar offers an Educational Package affordably priced with everything needed to teach game design to students including a teacher dashboard for tracking individual and class progress.
Ages 8-16
Free
With MIT’s web-based Scratch program, students create games and animations that are easily shared with others. It uses the familiar drag-and-drop interface with lots of free backgrounds, characters, and more to build exactly the game students want. For reluctant creators, they can select one of the over 39 million projects included in the gallery and remix it to the level of their ability. Scratch is available on Windows and Macs. Teachers will be interested in the education-focused Scratch website from Harvard called ScratchEd.
Note: For students younger than 2nd grade, Scratch Jr. is an excellent alternative.
Age 6 and up
Fee
Stencyl is downloadable software that uses an intuitive drag-and-drop block-snapping interface to choose game elements. While coding is not required, Stencyl does offer an advanced edition for Power coders who wish to write their own code. Once a game is completed, it can be published to iOS, Windows, Mac, Linux, and Flash games without a code.
Stencyl provides an Education Kit — including a curriculum — for a full coding class.
Age 7 and up
Fee (subscription) for Premium content
Using award-winning TinyTap, students can play, create, and share interactive games and lessons on iPads, iPhones, and Android. No coding is required. Creators can upload their personal photos and designs or use TinyTap templates and graphics. The app can either be downloaded to an iPad or Android tablet or used on a computer desktop. For those interested, there are excellent how-to videos available on YouTube.
***
Students will work more rigorously and learner higher-order thinking skills faster doing something they love. Creating their own game that can then be shared with others is exactly that.
— published first on TeachHUB
Zapzapmath–Gamify any Math Curriculum
5 Resources to Gamify Student Writing
Hour of Code Bundle of Lesson Plans
Posted by Jacqui on March 27, 2019
Many Christians celebrate Jesus Christ’s resurrection on Easter Sunday. To non-Christians (or non-traditional Christians), that event signifies a rebirth of spring that is filled with joy and gifts — and chocolate! Overall, it is America’s most-popular holiday with Christmas a close second. The date depends on the ecclesiastical approximation of the March equinox. This year, it’s April 1, 2018.
Here’s a good mixture of games, lesson plans, stories, and songs that can be blended into many academic subjects:
Preschool-2
This website includes a colorful collection of Easter (and Spring) games and information that is visual and enticing to youngers. Games are Easter Math, Easter Egg Hunt, Easter Egg Dress-up, Easter Word hunt, complete-the-sentence, and more. Also, viewers will find websites about the history of Easter around the world.
Preschool-Kindergarten
Like all of ABCYa’s games and activities, Easter Egg Hunt is a colorful and intuitive educational game for young children. It is easy-to-understand, playful, with favorite Easter symbols and energetic music that will engage children. The five Easter-themed games are easy-to-understand (no directions required) with a countdown clock to motivate activity. Nicely, it also aligns gameplay with the national standards met.
K-5, ESL
In this Easter egg hunt, students work in groups to find paper eggs hidden around the room or school. The website contains a lesson plan for teachers with objectives, key concepts, materials required, and assessment suggestions.
K-1
Youngers color an Easter bunny picture with an electronic brush and choice of nine colors. It’s easy to do even without the provided instructions. Completed pictures can be saved as a screenshot and pushed out to creators. The site also provides Easter-themed facts, jokes, crafts, and games.
Preschool-2
This site provides a collection of Easter-themed coloring templates that can be printed or imported into a drawing program. Here, you’ll find a color-me Easter angel, Easter egg, a lamb or bunny, and several others aligned with the Christian celebration.
Preschool-1
This site provides three Easter games that require critical thinking and problem-solving from youngsters. It also provides a walkthrough of the Christian Stations of the Cross — a great addition for homeschoolers. It does necessitate a quick reading of instructions so is best played the first time with an adult available but once played, students will understand how to maneuver through the varied stages.
K-2
This robust collection from Primary Games, a well-known provider of gamified educational activities, includes over twenty easy-to-understand Easter-themed games. Also available are coloring pages, word searches, a Boggle quiz, Easter math, puzzles, dot-to-dots, Hangman, crossword puzzles, and many more to align learning with this popular holiday.
K-5
From teAchnology, this site offers a wide variety of lesson plans aligned with Easter to support core learning. Options available are Easter Egg Word Families, Easter Sudoku, Jelly Bean Math, and more.
Preschool-2nd
This is a nice collection of both religious and non-religious Easter activities. The non-religious ones offer six poems and two songs. Each poem is augmented with a reading-based craft. In the religious collection, there are five poems and eleven songs, often aligned with popular tunes students will know such as ABC, Mary had a Little Lamb, and Pop Goes the Weasel.
Preschool-5th
This is a darling two-minute video that features puppies and chickens decked out for Easter, frolicking through their own Easter egg hunt.
K-3
From Digipuzzle, this site offers a wide variety of Easter-themed puzzles, crosswords, word searches, hangman, memory games, multiplication puzzles, and coloring pages. Also included are Easter Math Pacman, a Boggle Quiz, a block puzzle, Sudoku, and too many more to mention. They’re intuitive making this a great site for fill-in time or class warm-ups.
3rd-5th
This is a science experiment themed to Easter where students determine the density of an egg or one of ten other experiments. It provides Objectives, Keywords, Materials required, a thorough lesson plan, and Assessments. This is a great way to tie the holiday into math and science.
Preschool
This is a 2.5-minute video of the Easter Bunny Song. It is colorful, engaging, and easy enough to learn, students will quickly sing along.
Preschool-2nd
In this ten-minute video, students enjoy the reading of Jan Brett’s The Easter Egg complete with music, pictures, engaging audio, and original pages from Jan’s popular book.
Kindergarten-Middle School
This collection of Easter-themed videos includes the history of Easter and Easter eggs, what you probably don’t know about Easter (from the History Channel), an ebook, several how-tos (for cooking and crafts), an Easter sermon, and more.
Preschool-2nd
As only Starfall can do, this Easter word hunt can be read or listened to as audio. Directions are easy-to-understand with hints if readers get stuck. Words are selected with clicks and completed sentences can be listened to by initiating the audio icon.
Preschool-Kindergarten
This is a video of the popular Easter song for kids.
Middle School, High School
This is a three-minute overview of Easter published by the History Channel. It provides background on the holiday, the origin of the word “Easter”, how it was mandated as a Sunday holiday, and insights into traditions (such as the Easter bunny, baskets, eggs, egg rolling, and chocolate).
Preschool-Kindergarten
Mercer Mayer’s popular It’s Easter Little Critter comes alive in this author-narrated video story. With the assistance of his puppet friend, Little Critter, Mayer reads the story while sharing pictures from his book mixed with commentary from himself and his puppets, This YouTube video has entranced hundreds of thousands of youngers, sharing the excitement and pageantry of the Easter holiday.
\