Brainpop is launching Brainpop Jr., geared for K-3. Right now it is free but will later be subscription. H.o.p. and I realized it was there today and he’s been tooling around it this evening and is so far enjoying it. Agh, it will be a separate subscription service from their regular Brainpop. More bucks. Maybe. One of the things I like about it is that it has a feature where you can type online thoughts on a subject and print them out.
I joined Enchanted Learning again today (had let my subscription lapse last spring and summer) because it is an excellent source for print-outs. Like the jelly fish and geography print-outs I used today. (Yeah, I know we’re all over the place with science. So sue me.)
What hasn’t been developed is a good Tracker Log/Blog specifically for homeschooling resources online, which you can easily use for storing website urls both by date and by subject, and making notes on them, which would be integrated with your offline resources. For instance today, studying Cnidarians, we began with the R.E.A.L. Science book, but I’m seriously not crazy about R.E.A.L. Science at all. Many are. I’m not. I thought the illustrations were awful (I always think their illustrations are pretty much useless) and the Usborne Nature encyclopedia wasn’t doing it for us. I took then to the internet and immediately came up with some wonderful photographs and some aquarium sites that gave what I considered much more useful information on Cnidarians and their life cycle and far better, comprehensible illustrations. We visited at least 12 separate sites. On top of which we were using online dictionary resources for pronunciation. We visited also Enchanted Learning where I made a print-out. H.o.p. was captivated by the Portugese Man o’ War and did several drawings of it. Then H.o.p. wanted to go visit Brainpop and listen to their Flash on jellyfish but was distracted by the new Brainpop Jr. and thus ended our lesson on Cnidarians. Anyway, a number of different resources used and no easy way to log them all together in a system where you can revisit and easily find a website that was particularly beneficial in the past. A tracker utility like that would be great.
I have Homeschool Tracker and have tried it without a lot of success. They now have a Plus Edition (pay for) which I just purchased hoping that they may eventually integrate utilities I may find useful and may write and suggest to them friendlier options for those using also online resources. I’m going to be kicking myself next week, perhaps, and wondering why I bought the Plus edition when I found the Basic problematic, but I read they’re had some good upgrades and just maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised. Now that I’ve purchased it I’m wondering whether to do the Express download or what. Hmm. Looks like I removed my Basic Homeschool Tracker last year (I must have really hated it) so I get to do the full install. It’s taking over 2 minutes…
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