Good sites for school-age kids

September 29, 2016 4:03 PM

I'm a tech advisor at a small school district. Teachers have a bad habit of sending kids to craptastic "learning" game sites or, worse still, any site they like for "free-choice time." Help me compile great sites that are not necessarily "educational" but good for the soul.

Some examples:

Google Street View Tours
Optical Illusions and Visual Puzzles, with the science behind them
Fantastic Contraption, a set of graded engineering puzzles

See how those are not cute sites "for kids" but just stimulating resources to explore and learn from? More more more like those, please and thank you.

posted by argybarg to Education (14 answers total)

Best answer: Chrome music lab! It was linked here on Metafiler. I'm on my phone or I'd add a link.
posted by prewar lemonade at 4:17 PM on September 29, 2016

Best answer: Similar to Google Street View Tours but gamified - GeoGuessr
posted by vegartanipla at 4:42 PM on September 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

Best answer: thekidshouldseethis.com

educational and fun stuff
posted by ReluctantViking at 4:54 PM on September 29, 2016 [7 favorites]

Response by poster: These are all good so far, but ReluctantViking, that is mind-blowing. Perfect.
posted by argybarg at 4:59 PM on September 29, 2016

Best answer: ARKive.org - a wonderful site for kids who love animals
posted by belladonna at 5:14 PM on September 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: http://www.ala.org/aasl/standards/best/websites
posted by aetg at 5:32 PM on September 29, 2016

Best answer: All of Math Playground is great, but you might be particularly interested in the logic games section. Lots of things similar to Fantastic Contraption.

Also check out Mr. Nussbaum.
posted by the thought-fox at 5:36 PM on September 29, 2016

Check he website for the large library in your city/metro area - may have some great digital resources (or check out the various resources and digital collections at nypl.org for that matter)
posted by nuclear_soup at 5:39 PM on September 29, 2016

There was some good stuff listed in this recent thread:

Recommend sciency videos for 8 year old
posted by SuperSquirrel at 7:08 PM on September 29, 2016

Best answer: Maybe some kids would like http://euclidthegame.com/Level1/? It's the construction-by-straightedge-and-compass one.
posted by batter_my_heart at 10:09 PM on September 29, 2016

Information is Beautiful and many other data visualization sites could be good.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 1:11 AM on September 30, 2016

Best answer: Since you are compiling websites for kids, might I suggest Symbaloo as an organizer?

They are the BEST for elementary age kids because studies show that young children don't understand hierarchical structures and therefore do better 'sering everything at once.'

Symbaloo is also easy to embed into websites, so ease of use is standard and although you can pay for it, I never have and I use it for four different schools in our district.
posted by aetg at 4:21 AM on September 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

Digital Public Library of America Exhibitions, for the older kids.
posted by lillygog at 3:03 PM on September 30, 2016

Periodicvideos.com
posted by chr1sb0y at 2:56 AM on October 2, 2016