Places to find books online

Here is a great list of places to find free books online. The list gives 25 places online from the Project Gutenberg mega-site to Lookybook for online childrens books. Bookmark the site for future reference! You never know when you are going to need The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for a school project.

Free Typing Software

There are several good, free options for teaching your kids to type. My kids like the one from BBC School the best. Play around with them and see which one clicks for your guys.

Dance Mat Typing from BBC Schools is an online, fun typing program. It is free and doesn't require you to sign up.

Tux Typing is a free, open source software that you can download for Mac, Windows, or Linux systems.

Typing Tutor is a little more sophisticated than the previous typing programs, and would be great for an older child learning to type. It is also free, but it does require you to sign up so that it can keep track of progress.

Typing is a very important skill for kids to learn these days! Make it fun and they will enjoy learning how to type.

For more free software recommendations for homeschoolers, please visit Homeschool 2.0.

Awesome science curriculum

I'm going to be leading a science class for middle schoolers in our homeschool co-op next year. After look at all the usual homeschool options - A Beka, Bob Jones, Aplogia - I've decided to go with an online curriculum called JASON. It is extremely interesting with online videos, interactives, text, and classroom management. JASON.org is supported by Robert Ballard and National Geographic. The online curriculum is FREE. I think the kids are really going to enjoy it. I've learned a lot already just going through the first "mission".

Search Engine for Kids -- RedZee

I've been having fun tonight playing with a kids' search engine called RedZee. It is filtered and only has sites that are ok for kids to view. But the part that I like is being able to flip through an image of each website similar to the way you flip through album art on an iPod. What a cool way to know where you are heading on the web before you go there.

CurrClick

Homeschool EStore has changed its name to CurrClick! It has a nice new look to the site. Sign up for their online newsletter and get some really good free downloads. This is one of my favorite places for a quick options when we need to add a new unit study or lapbook to our curriculum.

Easily create timelines online

http://www.circavie.com/ - CircaVie is a site that lets you create and share timelines for free. They are marketed towards creating personal event timelines, but the site would be great for creating interactive timelines to go along with history or a unit study! We are going to try this one out next week.

Digital Scrapbooking / Lapbooking

I've found neat new site called Scrapblog.com. The site lets you combine photos, video, and audio along with their templates to create digital scrapbooks. As a mom, I thought this was a great way to share photos with grandparents and other relatives.

Scrapblog would be a great way to create a digital lapbook of whatever unit study you are working on. Imagine how fun it would be to very easily create a digital scrapbook of the American Revolution - or wherever you are studying for geography! Then you can share it with friends and relatives.