Blog Post #14

What is ABCya.com and how can it help in the classroom?

I'm not gonna lie this had to be the hardest post that Dr. Strange asked us to do. In this post we had to make up our own instructions and answer them. It took me awhile but I finally found something that we have not discussed.

I found an online site that has a ton of educational games that can help kids learn while having fun. ABCya.com is the leader in free educational kids computer games and activities for elementary students to learn on the web. All children's educational computer activities were created or approved by certified school teachers. All educational games are free and are modeled from primary grade lessons and enhanced to provide an interactive way for children to learn. Grade level lessons incorporate areas such as math and language arts while introducing basic computer skills. Many of the kindergarten and first grade activities are equipped with sound to enhance understanding. This site was created eight years ago by an elementary teacher that just started his first year in the public school system. He talks about when he first started he thought that when he turned on his computer that he would find a desktop that had tons of games to enhance the education in the classroom. He was surprised that there were no sites for them to play games. So, he went to the principle first and quickly found out that the school didn't have the funds to use the sites that had fees so he went on a quest to make his own free educational game site. He went to many teachers and asked for their lesson plans and other resources and that's how ABCya came to be made. It now has been online for eight years now and growing increasingly popular with all schools.

I think that this site can be beneficial to my future classroom in so many different ways. First, I can use it as a center for my kids to play. I can let them play a game that goes along with what I taught that week or day. Second, It can be used as remediation for kids whether it be for them to refresh their memory or it can be used for extra help. Third, I can have the kids work in groups on some of the activities and let them write a collaborative blog post on what they learned. There are so many different ways to use this site. I also thought that it was interesting that no matter what grade or subject you needed, this site had games for them all. I want kids to have fun while learning in my classroom so if I have to take the extra mile to find neat ways for them to learn I will.