The worldwide web offers a range of engaging educational websites to help children strengthen and consolidate their literacy, numeracy and other knowledge.
Parents can work with their children to extend their children's understanding of concepts or simply spend time completing fun, interactive activities with their children.
Apart from the resources available through the departmental web learning environment, the Learning Place, below are a list of independent websites you may wish to explore to consolidate your child's learning. (We acknowledge the websites have been copied from the Education Queensland website as a helpful resource to parents.)
Websites to assist your child with literacy
Area: English - reading
Age group: lower primary
Synopsis: A free website to teach lower primary students to read with phonics. Exciting phonics games and online interactive books.
Area: English - reading
Age group: lower primary
Synopsis: ABC Reading Eggs makes learning to read interesting and engaging for kids, with great online reading games and activities. Children love the games, songs, golden eggs and other rewards which, along with feeling proud of their reading, really motivate children to keep exploring and learning. Registration is required however there is a free trial period.
Area: English - reading and writing
Age group: Prep-12
Synopsis: Engaging ways to introduce children to reading or to encourage them to write. Provides age-appropriate book suggestions and rainy day activities. The site is fun, educational, and easy to use outside of school. Published by the International Reading Association.
Area: English - writing
Age group: primary
Synopsis: An interactive writing help site with downloads for off-line use. Writing Fun explains the types of text commonly written in schools with printable organisers and examples showing text structures, grammatical features and publishing ideas. Writing text types covered includes: reports, procedures, explanations, expositions (persuasion, point of view), discussions, narratives, recounts, descriptions, poetry, responses (inc. reviews), letters, invitations, news articles and emails.
Area: English - Spelling
Age group: All ages
Synopsis: This site allows you to enter your child's spelling words to help them enjoy their spelling homework and achieve a perfect score in spelling test. With spelling and word games to play online, SpellingCity.com makes practicing for spelling tests fun and exciting for kids. Children can practice their weekly spelling and take their spelling tests online. They can also play spelling and vocabulary games.
Area: English - general
Age group: primary
Synopsis: Provides worksheets for students to practice class concepts at home. Includes: alphabet, compound words, adjectives, adverbs, and phonics.
Area: English
Age group: Years P-12
Synopsis: The site contains articles and bibliographies of books for children, including fairytales, lists of books at class/grade level, fiction genres, picture books and poetry. Detailed reviews are provided for recommended books.
Area: English
Age group: Years P-12
Synopsis: This database enables the generation of simply-annotated reading lists of award-winning books. Users can request lists by age, genre, historical period, year of publication, multicultural emphasis, language or gender. Brief reviews are provided.
Area: English
Age group: Years P-5
Synopsis: The Caldecott Medal is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children. Winning books are reviewed.
Area: English
Age group: Years P-12
Synopsis: The Newbery Medal is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children. Winner's books are reviewed.
Mathematics
Area: MATHS - generalAge group: lower and middle primary
Synopsis: This website provides games and activities in: numbers, shape, space and measures and handling data.
Area: Maths - general
Age group: Prep-9
Synopsis: An action-packed site for primary and middle school students. Children can have fun while practicing maths skills by playing interactive games, solving word problems and logic puzzles and viewing maths videos.
Area: Mathematics - general
Age group: Prep-12
Synopsis: Mathletics offers a fun way for students to learn and practice their maths skills. Children can register from home or use their skill log on, if their school is registered. Mathletics also offers a link to Rainforest Maths which is another site offering fun activities to consolidate maths concepts.
Area: Maths - general
Age group: lower and middle primary
Synopsis: In this fun, interactive game, children can adopt a monster within Monstro City, and look after him by solving puzzles and completing games to earn Rox. Rox are used to buy food, items for their monster and decorations for their home.
Area: Maths - general
Age group: primary
Synopsis: Arcademic offers free educational maths and language arts games to engage, motivate, and help teach students. Children can play free multi-player and single-player games covering: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, integers and fractions and ratios.
Area: Maths - general
Age group: primary
Synopsis: XP Math is a good place to find maths games, maths videos, maths worksheets, and maths e-books. The games section of XP Math offers games for basic arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and probability. Create an account on XP Math and you can keep track of your scores.
Area: Maths - general
Age group: primary
Synopsis: Provides worksheets to give students opportunities to practice class concepts at home. Includes areas such as: place value, fractions, counting money, symmetry and word problems.
Science
Area: Science
Age group: Years 4-8
Synopsis: This self-funding branch of the Queensland Museum offers interactive science and technology programs for children 'of all ages'. The website provides an overview of the activities that participants (there are no 'visitors' at the Sciencentre - everyone is a 'participant') can enjoy. Divided into Body Zone, Earth Space and Action Stations, the Sciencentre provides activities for people to explore anatomy, forces, electricity, air and other aspects of scientific enquiry. Information is provided on the activities available, but no online activities are presented.
Area: Science
Age group: Years 3-12
Synopsis: This Museum houses the Maritime Archaeology section of the Queensland Museum and has links to the field excavation site of the Royal Navy warship, 'Pandora', which was sent to the South Pacific to capture the men who had 'pirated' the Bounty.
Area: Science
Age group: Years 5-12
Synopsis: This collaboration between the Museum and seconded Education Queensland teachers has produced exciting innovative and interactive resources on topics such as dinosaurs, biodiversity, sustainable living, backyards and the Great Barrier Reef.
Area: Science
Age group: Years 8-12
Synopsis: This is a gateway to the Museums vast wealth of natural history resources, providing information, videos and activities based on its collections of specimens and research. Topics range from evolution and geology to biodiversity and Antarctica.
Area: Science
Age group: Years 9-12
Synopsis: The CSIRO home page links to material regarding many issues confronting the Australian environment. For example, it features National Challenges links to 'Indigenous knowledge and science', 'Murray-Darling basin research', 'Solar power; a future energy source' and 'Understanding climate change' (February 2011). Media releases often relate to issues confronting the Australian environment.
SOSE
Area: SOSE
Age group: Years P-8
Synopsis: Free fact and activity sheets are available on a range of topics connected with railways.
Area: SOSE
Age group: Years P-12
Synopsis: This is an excellent resource, with a 'leftist' alternative bias, that has information on many of today s issues such as climate change, economic development and globalisation and animal rights. It is an excellent site for research in the subject areas of SOSE, Geography, History, and Economics. Many of the articles could also be used in English as exemplars of persuasive texts and would also be useful for cross-curricula links and links to sustainability (both features of the National Curriculum for English).
Area: SOSE
Age group: Years 6-12
Synopsis: This resource provides country profiles that cover background information on topics such as government, economy, geography, people, climate and environmental and transnational issues. Country profiles may be accessed using the array of flags of the world. Useful appendices include a guide to abbreviations and common terms (political and economic), a guide to international environment agreements and a cross-referenced list of geographic names. There is also a quick reference guide to different fields of information such as age statistics by country. There is a "Kids' page which links to activities, interactive games and a section for parents and teachers with lesson plans for teacher use.
Area: SOSE
Age group: Years 6-12
Synopsis: The site provides detailed and current information on specific aspects of UN operations: Peace and Security; International Law; Humanitarian Affairs; Human Rights; and Economic and Social Development.
Area: SOSE
Age group: Years P-10
Synopsis: This Museum, physically based in Toowoomba, focuses on historical and cultural aspects of Queensland and Australia.
Area: SOSE
Age group: Years 9-12
Synopsis: The CSIRO home page links to material regarding many issues confronting the Australian environment. For example, it features National Challenges links to 'Indigenous knowledge and science', 'Murray-Darling basin research', 'Solar power; a future energy source' and 'Understanding climate change' (February 2011). Media releases often relate to issues confronting the Australian environment.
General
Area: multiple areas
Age group: lower primary
Synopsis: The ABC for Kids website primarily appeals to pre-school children. It provides a gateway to online content relating to ABC for Kids TV programming, as well as providing other games and activities that will appeal to this age group.
Area: Maths, Science and Humanities
Age group: middle, upper primary and secondary
Synopsis: The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit site with the mission of providing a world-class education to anyone, anywhere. Browse 1800+ videos which present You Tube video clips to explain topics and concepts.
Area: general knowledge
Age group: upper primary and secondary
Synopsis: HowStuffWorks, a wholly owned subsidiary of Discovery Communications, is the award-winning source of credible, unbiased, and easy-to-understand explanations of how the world actually works. Founded by North Carolina State University Professor Marshall Brain in 1998, the site is now an online resource for millions of people of all ages. Helpful graphics and informative videos walk you through topics clearly, simply and objectively.
Area: English and Maths
Age group: primary
Synopsis: Puzzlemaker is a puzzle generation tool useful for creating and printing customized word search, criss-cross, math puzzles, and more " using your own word lists.
Area: Spelling, sorting and memory
Age group: Primary
Synopsis: Provides users with puzzle games including spelling, sorting and memory.
Area: Maths and English
Age group: primary
Synopsis: Provides a selection of interactive, fun games covering maths and English.
Area: General
Age group: Primary
Synopsis: Resources to help students in maths, science, English, SOSE, and others.