One enchanted evening...
Enchanted Learning may be an American site, but it will probably remind you of Blue Peter without the presenters getting in the way of the fun.
It’s part of Enchanted Learning Software and is sponsored by Disney, but there’s no pressure to buy products and you can enjoy what the software company has to offer for the cost of being on the Internet.
Busy bee. There are lots of things for young school-age children to do here and some lovely games for pre-schoolers. You don’t have to get in a mess making things from eggshells, yoghurt cartons and bits of string if you don’t want to. That’s just one area of the site. There are plenty of other activities for children to enjoy – stuff that’s great varied, fun and fantastically educational.
Word power. I loved the dictionaries. Top of the tree is the Little Explorer’s Dictionary. Very simple to access – click on a letter of the alphabet and you get smart definitions with illustrations. (Children’s dictionaries often go wrong because they don’t stick to just saying what a word means.)
You’ll also find topic-related dictionaries covering exhaustive subjects, such as Plants and Science, and several language dictionaries. They are a great liberator, especially for children who are too young or intimidated to physically handle chunky dictionaries dictionaries themselves.
Content rich. Topics listed down the right-hand side of the home page are all covered with real zest. Under A, for example, you’ll find Antarctica, Apes, Astronomy. It’s eclectic and beautifully illustrated with up-to-date material. Antarctica is shown from a satellite you can zoom in on. Maps, pictures of animals, snow science, survival guides, all in easy-to-understand and illustrated formats.
And silly jokes, of course, like: What’s a penguin’s favourite salad? Iceberg lettuce. The list goes down to Whales, and below that is a range of areas called Zooms, including one that is Zoom Schools, which is for elementary American school but contains lots of lovely ideas for home learning.
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