"'Education is the Science of Relations'; that is, that a child has natural relations with a vast number of things and thoughts: so we train him upon physical exercises, nature lore, handicrafts, science and art, and upon many living books, for we know that our business is not to teach him all about anything, but to help him to make valid as many as may be of––
'Those first-born affinities,
That fit our new existence to existing things.'"

Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education
with a quote from The Prelude by William Wordsworth

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Bookmarking Learning Sites for the Kids

I bookmark a lot of really great web sites to enhance our homeschooling. The problem is that the kids share a computer while I use my laptop, so when I find a great site on my laptop, I bookmark it in Delicious and then I forget about it. When one has computer time, I am getting another set up for something and teaching the third so I don't have time right then to hunt for sites.

I have come up with a solution using Google Bookmarks. The kids' browser's homepage is set to iGoogle, a customizable page. In iGoogle I've put the Google Bookmarks gadget in the upper left side so the kids can easily see it. I have bookmarks labeled by subject, so they can just change the drop-down list to get a set of links for a specific subject.

You can also set the browser homepage to Google Bookmarks. Sort the list by label to see them grouped by subject.

Now I can say, "For the next 20 minutes pick a Language Arts link to play." The kids are now actually using the many links I have found to help reinforce what they have learned without me having to hunt for them!

BTW, at the bottom of the Google Bookmarks page is a button you can drag to your toolbar that lets you bookmark a website you are viewing. Now that makes it really easy!

3 comments:

amy in peru said...

this is AWESOME!

Thanks for this link, it will be VERY helpful!

Amy in Peru

http://fisheracademy.blogspot.com

Jenny said...

Thanks for the tip!

hider101 said...

Wow, that sounds really neat, but I am so confused! I am little slow when it comes to anything computer-related! But I am going to try to figure it out!