...kitchen makeover...

We started Social Studies today and are focusing on communities for the next couple of weeks. The grade ones are doing our own community, and today we had a visit from a couple of police officers who told us different things about our community and how to stay safe in it. Me, I was thrilled with the presentation and the general thrilliness of men in uniform. The kids just wanted to sit in the squad car. They had the chance to prepare a question each for the police officers on cue cards: nearly every one was a variation of how/why/how often do you catch bad guys.

The grade twos are doing communities around the world, and let me tell you finding websites with useful info at their reading level is a job of work. There is one amazing site called "link to learning" which has curriculum-centred online resources for kids on a number of topics, but that is really the only one. Even using kids-only search engines like Yahooliganas or KidsClick, it is difficult to find appropriate and useful sites. Most of the information out there is for junior-high plus. We had three well-educated, bright educators researching this for over an hour, and only came up with a handful of links. We're not doing social studies until next Monday so that gives me one week to find some more resources - if ANYONE knows of any great sites (remember these are 5-8 year old kids) that they know of, let me know. There really needs to be an online EASY junior encyclopedia - again, the junior encyclopedias that are readily accessible are mostly for junior high and high school kids. Much too difficult and dense for kids this young. It's too overwhelming. We were basically confined today to using non-fiction picture books which, unfortunately, were mostly outdated and in bad shape. Blah. Teaching blues... I want more money and a couple unimpeded hours in a kids bookstore.

Oh! I could also use a copy each of different junior encyclopedia software - are any of them at a younger level? Anyone know? I have WorldBook and Encarta, but both are pretty text-heavy.

Addendum: I might have to move my country again. And by country I mean... server. I started counting 6 degrees of separation and didn't like where it led me.