-Talk to your friends.  By now you should have had the chance to meet with your teachers and friends online with an online video tool like zoom, skype, or teams.  Your job for this week is to get a grown up to help you talk to your friends with an online tool like the ones I mentioned already or with face time or video chat.  Keeping in contact with people, especially now that people need to be apart is important to help us feel like we aren’t alone.

-Have fun with some animals.  One of the links on our favorites page is Switchzoo.  This is a web page on the computer as well as an app that can be downloaded and played on a phone or tablet.  There are many different animal games here to play, but make sure you start with the animal switcheroo.  As you make new animals, be sure to pay attention to what it says about each animal part you are adding.

-Go Noodle. Take a body and brain break with a couple of Go Noodle videos.  They are lots of fun to do and help you get some exercise.

-Learn something new and write about it.  One of our favorites links is for National Geographic Kids. Your mission for today is to learn about something new and share it with someone else.  The first step is to open this link: https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/explore/science/facts-about-coronavirus/ You can read the article on your own if you can, or with an adult or big brother or sister if the words are too difficult.  You job is to find 3 facts about Covid19 that you didn’t know before.  You can write them down or tell it to someone face to face.  My question to you is, why is it called Covid19?

-Explore this great website.  Now that you have used this website to learn something, take some time today to explore the other things it has to offer.  Hint: there are some great games, videos, fun facts and other new things to learn. 

-Keep track of the things you are doing.  For week one, I suggested starting an online journal to record facts and feelings about the coronavirus outbreak.  I did the same thing but I wanted to have a way to share those things with you, so I decided this week to have you start a screen capture folder of the things you are working on.  I used a Google Chrome extension called One Click Full Page ScreenShot that can be found here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/one-click-full-page-scree/dchfhilphcokdhfmikknmgdbmklbnnle?hl=en-US It let’s me take a screen shot of my page and save it to my computer.  I created a folder in my documents to save my downloaded screenshots.  I am putting a couple of examples in my Padlet today to show you what I mean.  Save your screen shots so we can compare when we get back to school again, hopefully soon!

-Make a game, learn some code, have fun.  If you have not looked at Gamestar Mechanic before, or it has been a while since you did, now is a good time to get reacquainted.  Learn about how games are made and get some practice making your own.  You may need to create a new login for yourself, but it’s pretty simple to do.  

-Go outside and get some fresh air.  Screen time is fine, but give your eyes a break. Go for a walk, sit and think, talk to some friends at a safe distance. Just be careful and safe and don’t forget hand sanitizer.  

So, the activities I am putting here for my very young students will need to be closely monitored by a grown up to make sure they are not too difficult or too easy.  

Website suggestions

It is important to focus at this point on your child learning how to “find things” on their own without needing to rely on someone else to “do it” for them.  They are learning to navigate correctly as well as find out what to do when things don’t work right.  

When students are comfortable with navigating sites on their own, they can begin working on activities from the Kinder/First list like simple drawing programs and searching on brainpopjr. for videos and games.