To enjoy a digital summer, remember to PACK wisely. PACK stands for:
Play
Adventure
Create
Knowledge
Kids, be sure to ask your parents' permission before you go online and invite them to accompany you on your web vacation!
Link Check
The links on this page were accurate as of 4/24/08. But, you know links can go bad faster than Memaws egg salad, so please email me if you find a "404" (outdated link) :)
PACKs for Young Vacationers, Grades K-2
- Alfy Goes Camping
- A Virtual Camping Excursion
- Walking with Red Dog
- A Walk around the farm
- Enchanted Learning
- So many great activities, pictures to color, information, pictures...everything!
- Draw with Uncle Fred
- Online drawing screens with instructions...if only I had this resource when I was young, Snoopy would be wearing a boa!
- Jan Brett's Website
- The incredibly gifted children's author opens her online studio to learners of all ages. Find movies, coloring pages, easy crafts and stories to read.
- Lil Fingers
- Letter practice, online stories, coloring pages, learning games.
- Type Me
- Combines letter recognition while building typing skill.
- OOPS Kids Activity Matrix
- A matrix without the black, trench coats! Lots of fun activities to improve reading, math, art, writing, and listening skills.
- Coloring and Drawing @ Black Do
- Letters, Shapes, Animals, even online Graffiti Wall~~it is waiting for young artists at Black Dog
- Little Animals Activity Centre
- For ages 4-8 years.
- Travel Bingo
- Print the Bingo Game Sheets. Slide the Bingo Game Sheets and a crayon into a plastic ziplock bag. Tape the Bingo Sheet in the bag to hold it in place OR punch holes in the Bingo sheets and put them in a notebook.
PACKs for Growing Vacationers, Grades 3-5
- Leon's Math DoJo
- Found in the Math section of the iKnowThat website, but stick and click around to see ALL the learning games. (Requires the free Shockwave download)
- National Register of Historic Places
- Growing vacationers don't need a driver's license to visit here!
- National Parks Conservation Association
- Choose a park destination to research and take virtual tours. You may even upload and share photos from your own actual trips to different parks.
- Telling Tales Story Starters
- Combining creativity and writing to encourage aspiring authors.
- Fifty States
- Look up the fascinating facts about your home state or the state you wish was home.
- National Geographic Map Machine
- For Young Cartographers
- What I Did For My Summer Vacation
- A webquest from The Montana Historical Society.
PACKs for Pre-Teen Vacationers, Grades 6-8
- Sudoku Duck
- It was just a matter of megabytes until Suduko appreared online.
- Suduko Game (dot) com
- Sign up for the free daily emailed puzzle
- Online Roller Coaster
- Roller Coasters without a long wait in line!
- I Know That!
- Lots of great choices here! No need to sign up.
- Your Sky
- Use the Virtual Telescope and longitude and latitude coordinates to create a place in the stars.
- Virtual Microscope
- See the world as a master scientist.
- Virtual Electron Microscope
- Up to 4000 times magnification! Man, that IS small!
- Skateboard Science
- Don't know your Caballerial from your Goofyfoot? Kickflip over to this site!
PACKs for High School Vacationers
- The College Board
- Online SAT practice
- Studyhall (dot) com
- Actual SAT questions from previous tests
- Test your knowledge, then Fling-the-Teacher
- Review your knowledge of percents, decimals, and fractions...can you sail the teacher into the sky?
- ECampus Tours
- Virtually stroll through the student union; the campus library, and even, gulp, the university cafeteria!
- The Kodak Gallery
- Offers free storage and sharing for photos plus easy uploading. Turn photos into stickers, mugs, calendars, and much more. Prices are reasonable, quality is superior, and summer shipping is almost as fast as a shutter click.
- Happy News
- Smile for awhile with all the news that's "fun" to print.
- "Summer Jobs for Kids"
- Innovative first-time jobs
- Next Stop Your Career
- There is a world beyond the classroom...
- College and Career Quest
- An online scavenger hunt.
- Typing Master (dot) com
- Online typing tests for speed and accuracy practice. Click on the "Test Your Speed" link on the right.
PACKs for Teachers
- Idea Campions
- Channel random thoughts into innovative possibilities...love the daily quotes and "Free the Genie"
- EveryRule
- Play any game and possess the rules instantly.
- Creative Think
- Click on "Give Me Another Whack" for 1-minute concepts in creativity.
- Weird USA
- A collection of unusual stories from around the U.S.
- Around the World in 80 Clicks
- For armchair travelers.
- Squidoo
- A place where "everyone is an expert at something."
- The OOPS Blog Site
- From us, your friends at OOPS: Our Overnight Planning System. See "10 Tech Tricks You Are Already Doing" and "10 More To Try" Parts 1 & 2.
- Kid's Turn Central's Summer Fun
- Great Ideas!
- Reading & Math Packets
- Packets in Reading and Math for Grades K-8.
- The Writing Fix
- Daily journal prompts
- "What Did You Do Over Summer Vacation?"
- Have an activity waiting for you when you return to school.
- GeoCaching
- A high-tech virtual and actual treasure hunt!
Take your dog and hike through forests or parks seeing one of more than 140,000 treasure boxes hidden by fellow geocachers. Zero in on the coordinates with a GPS. Once you have found the cache, choose a trasure from inside, and replace it with a small item of your own!
PACKs for Parents
- Classroom Connect's Online Calendar
- One of the first web activity calendars, still going strong.
- MiniUnits
- Topics such as gardening, community, fine arts, sports, and more!
- 25 Activities to Keep Kids' Brains Active in the Hot Summer Sun
- From Education World
- Summertime Funtime Activities
- From KidsSource
- BlackDog's Summer Daily Calendar
- Not all these activities need internet, but all promise fun!
- Knowledge Essentials
- The Cognitive Learning Calculator helps predict a child's learning comprehension. Other helpful links include the Reading Level Calculator, Developmental Age Finder, and Learning Style Finder.
- Around the World in 80 Books
- A great resource for young readers or those of us who never were able to read these books when we were young.
- 10 Weeks of Summer Reading Adventures for You and Your Kids
- From the folks at Reading Rockets.
Great Links for All Ages
- Our Overnight Planning System
- Resources for kids and those interested in the life-long learning potential of everyone!
See the virtual fieldtrip link! - Answers (dot) com
- A downloadable search engine that interacts with your Word Processing and research documents. (Students, check with your parents before downloading anything.)
- RefDesk
- A comprehensive website that has information, newsfeeds, quotes, pictures, games, and so much more. This site is webmastered by Matt Drudge's dad (from the Drudgereport). You could spend an entire summer at this site (but go out and catch some sun too!)
- Summer Reading Book Lists
- Grades K-8
- Seasonal Kids' Activities
- Not just for summer...
Kids Crafts, Activities, Projects for Year Round Fun
Weather Widget
Check the weather for your summer day
Find A Tree and A Pen ...
Take Time for Journaling
From spiral notebooks to blogs and diaries, writing ideas, thoughts, reactions, promises, feelings, goals, and aspirations is an investment in the best expert on you....YOU! The only rules in journaling are: always supply a date for your entry and always allow yourself the freedom to write without input from your inner-bully-critic.Here are a few prompts to get you started:
What is your first summer memory? How old were you? Where were you? What happened?
What qualities do you like about yourself?
What qualities most annoy you?
During the last month of school, ask students to create stories initially in English. During the summer months, enlist the help of various people (parents, siblings, neighbors) who know another language to translate these stories into their native language.
For A Daily Prompt Generator Click Here
Great Books to Read on Amazon
The Secret Life of Bees
Amazon Price: $11.20 (as of 07/26/2008)
Life of Pi
Amazon Price: $10.20 (as of 07/26/2008)
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Book 1)
Amazon Price: $8.95 (as of 07/26/2008)
Hawk: Occupation: Skateboarder
Amazon Price: $15.00 (as of 07/26/2008)
Holes
Amazon Price: $6.99 (as of 07/26/2008)
The Man Who Walked Through Time: The Story of the First Trip Afoot Through the Grand Canyon
Amazon Price: $10.17 (as of 07/26/2008)
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Amazon Price: (as of 07/26/2008)
Word of the Day
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byFavorite Songs of Summer
What are your favorite songs about summer? Add them here! List the song and the artist
