Great Kids Site

My daughter is in second grade this year. The time sure does fly by! And among our many activities throughout a regular day of dance classes, girl scouts, and school functions, we as parents must find the time to help out our kids with homework too. The expectations of our youth are a lot higher than they used to be. I know when I was in kindergarten the big things were coloring in the lines and the letter people beginning with Miss A'choo.
Not sure how many remember the letter people but we had big inflatable ones in my classroom! Now children have to be able to read a list of sixty words among many other expectations. The increase of educational expectations isn't a bad thing but requires a lot more hands on work with your child. This can be trying, especially at this age, when tempers flare if fatigued or frustrated. Adjusting students to a full day of school and homework as well leads to a multitude of excuses as to why they can't focus on homework and should just be left alone to watch Sponge Bob Squarepants instead. One of my favorite of my daughter's excuses is her brain is too tired. It is something you can see though and therefore makes it harder to argue with them. I notice Elise gets cranky and stops really trying, just throwing out random guesses. Once she gets to that point I can't do anything to get her focus back. This year, her teacher introduced a new method of practice that she has done really well with. It allows her to be able to practice her spelling words without me standing right over her. If you have anywhere near my schedule then you too are looking for just a few minutes here and there too.

Spelling City is a fantastic free site for spelling words practice. Teachers can take advantage of the site and post their spelling lists on the site allowing for you to search by teacher name or school. But not to worry if your child's class does not have time to use this site. You can also type in your own list to play the many games with. They offer a membership with some added features but you truly get a great list of activities for free. Hangman, missing letter, scrambled word, and many more! Plus they have a few printables to help with sentence and paragraph structure or just basic handwriting practice. This has been a major help with my daughter's grades this year. She doesn't see it as homework, it's playing a game. Plus I can give her my computer while I cook dinner, and I'm multi-tasking! Ta-Da! If you have an elementary student this is a great site to practice with.