Do You Watch PBS Kids?

It’s time for the Wednesday Website suggestion!! For two years, I was the Technology Specialist at a school in Georgia. During that time, I amassed a large collection of websites that I use with my students. If you want to search through some of them, you can check out my IKeepBookmarks site. Or, you can check back here each week for the Wednesday Website suggestion.

Today, I was creating a list of suggestions for a parent who wanted to work with her children at home. As I bounced around different links I had bookmarked, I realized that many of these games and videos came back to one common site, so I eventually just decided to recommend the whole site to her, because there was so much she could use there with her children. So, what site got this glowing recommendation from me? www.pbskids.org is the site, and it’s also this week’s Wednesday Website suggestion.

This site has games, activities and videos (short clips and full length videos) for each of it’s regular shows. (Unfortunately, the video clips do not work outside of the US, which is something I was disappointed to find out when I moved to Morocco – my kids and I miss those videos!) If you aren’t familiar with the shows on PBS Kids, you will find shows like: Clifford, Curious George, Sid the Science Kid, Between the Lions, Cyberchase, Fetch with Ruff Ruffman and Martha Speaks. While some shows are better for small children, many of these shows cover concepts that are the appropriate level for older students as well. For example, many Cyberchase activities work on problem solving within math concepts like area and perimeter, multiplication, and numerical patterns. Martha Speaks works on great vocabulary and Fetch with Ruff Ruffman covers lots of science and social studies topics.

As a parent of small children, I spend a lot of time watching these shows. However, whether you watch these shows or not, they cover great concepts that you can use in your classroom. The games connected with each show allow kids to be interactive with the characters, while still working educational topics.

Do you have a favorite PBS Kids show?