Our Courts

A few days ago, I read an interview somewhere...I can't seem to figure out where...with Sandra Day O'Connor, who was talking about her retirement project, the website, ourcourts.org. The site, which has been running for a couple of years, aims to remedy what O'Connor sees as a deficiency in civic education by presenting material on civics and law for middle school students and teachers.

I will confess, we have not yet read much of the really informative stuff on the site. But we have played and learned from some of the games on the site, which are designed to be used in conjunction with classroom materials -- lesson plans are also offered on the site. The games seem perfectly suited to his level as a gifted 3rd grader, but are also kind of fun for me to play. My last civics lesson was in high school government class my senior year. I spent most of the class trying to stay awake and listening to the kid next to me tell stories about working in his family's funeral home. The one useful thing I learned in that class was how to file my taxes. I do thank my government teacher every year for that. But there's plenty for me to learn.

AJ hasn't shown any special curiosity about the law and courts, so I wasn't sure how he'd take to this. But he likes computer games and I thought the cartoon characters and basic animation would attract him. I also knew that he'd talked about Brown v. The Board of Education in school as part of a Martin Luther King Day unit. I noticed that one of the games, "Argument Wars," included that case as one of the options.

Tonight I tried out the Brown v. BOE version of "Argument WArs" on AJ and not only did he have fun, but the game really got him thinking about different ways to interpret text. We had a discussion about how "separate but equal" could have been considered constitutional. He had to put together evidence to make his case for Brown. He did an excellent job and he learned about the case, about legal procedures, about the interpretation of law, and about making an argument. When he'd finished the game, which took about 10-15 minutes to play, he wanted to try again with another case right away. Unfortunately for him, it was bedtime. But we'll be revisiting it soon.

There are two other games on the site, which AJ has yet to explore. "Do I Have A Right?" allows you to set up your own law firm -- staff it with people with a variety of specialties, match client cases with lawyers with the correct specialties, take care of waiting clients, etc. It's maybe not quite as specifically informative as "Argument Wars," but it still requires some critical thinking, particularly in the area of client-attorney matching. The clients come in with stories like, "I organized a protest in a public park because I think kids should have the right to get their drivers licenses when they are 12. Do I have a right?" You have to decide whether the client has a case. If you think so, then you need to match him/her with an attorney who specializes in the proper area of the law (all the lawyers I used were focused on a particular Bill of Rights amendment). Out of this part of the game, you learn what the various amendments are and you have to figure out how to categorize the cases. But you also have to figure out how to run the law firm as a business. You need to diversify your staff, to win enough cases to allow you to hire more lawyers. You also have to provide your lawyers with a good working environment, or they don't win as many cases. And you need to provide a pleasant waiting area for your clients, or else they storm out with the word RAGE steaming over their heads. My favorite part of this game, though, is the fact that all attorney-client conversation is characterized as "yadda yadda yadda." Every lawyer I've mentioned this to has said, "Yeah, that sounds about right."

The third game, "Supreme Decision" takes you inside the workings of the Supreme Court. A judge escorts you through an initial hearing and afterwards tells you that the other 8 judges have split their decision and that she needs you to cast the deciding vote. You then have to eavesdrop on the other judges who have broken into four pairs, each discussing another aspect of the case. You have to demonstrate that you understand the issues each pair is discussing and that you know which side is supporting which party to the suit. Then you get to vote for which argument you think is the more compelling.

AJ and I agreed that all three games are more interesting, more fun and more educational than most "educational" games out there. The only drawback we can see is that it appears that game options might be too repetitive for replay to be much fun -- once you've visited all the cases on "Argument Wars," for instance, there might not be enough to interest you to come back for more. But these games are well suited as curriculum enhancement, which is what they were designed for. And if it gets my 9-year-old thinking in some new directions, it's definitely worth a visit.

Looking at Art Online

Like many school districts around the country, our district is making drastic cuts next year. Among the many devastating losses is the art program and the wonderful teachers who run it. Consequently we've been spending some extra time thinking about how to do more art at home.

Art was a big part of our daily lives when AJ was younger and was home more of the time. But since going to school full time, AJ's home art projects have tended toward the unsupervised. His school teachers do a great job at not only teaching concepts and techniques involved in making art, but in connecting those same concepts to the work of well-known artists. We're going to need to bring more of that back into the home next year.

Lucky for us, the fantastic Art Institute of Chicago is only a train ride away, and we go there as often as we can swing it. There are a number of other museums and galleries still to be explored as well. But what about the days when we can't get away?

There are a number of great art resources on the web that have brought virtual museums to life.

The Louvre offers a virtual tour of its galleries online. We also like the Louvre ap for the iTouch/iPhone. While it only has a few paintings, it does a great job of representing them. And the ap is free.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC has some great art games for children that grownups will probably enjoy as well.

And the Art Institute of Chicago has a page of online resources that include education tools for both adults and children.


AJ's art teacher also makes use of digital art programs at school and AJ loves to play with them at home.

The art teacher's favorite is Art Rage, which retails, in its full version, for $80. Not a small software investment. But the teacher says that it does the best job of mimicking the techniques of real life materials. For example, when you paint, your brush will start to run out of paint after a while, allowing you to contour your work as you would with actual paint.

But there are free programs as well. AJ and his friends love Tux Paint, a program designed specifically for children that builds in silly sound effects to go along with their artwork.

For 3-d, Google Sketchup is fantastic. It's a complex program that can be used for some pretty serious adult projects, but after a tutorial, it's simple enough that children can use it too. AJ is designing his own town and loves the ability to look on all sides of his buildings, even from underneath.

Do you have favorite online resources for art? Tell us about them!

Free Webinars from the National Association for Gifted Children

AJ's Challenge teacher alerted us to a series of webinars for parents and teachers of gifted children. Participation is free through the end of 2009, but registration is required. NAGC webinars take place on Wednesdays. You can find information here. The next one, tomorrow night at 7 p.m. eastern, is currently full, but take a look at the full schedule. The next webinar targeted at parents will take place on October 21; registration opens October 9. You can also access archives of past webinars from the link above.

Website roundup.

I wanted to the list of recommended websites in the sidebar. I've tried to keep the list relatively small. These are all sites we refer to regularly for either resources on advocacy and education or for playtime. Even among the fairly short list, there are some particular favorites.

• Hoagie's Gifted doesn't look fancy, but it's the single best place to go for all things gifted. In addition to producing its own content, it does a great job of rounding up content from elsewhere, so if you only have time to go to one place, this is the place. The downside is that the cluttered site design is somethings hard to navigate. But the search tools work well.

•The elusive Green-Eyed Siren reminded me recently about the wonderful site Brainpop. The subscription price is not cheap, but the content is well worth it. And if the subscription is more than you can bear, there is plenty of free content to keep you busy for a while. This is one of AJ's all time favorites.

•AJ and I recently paid a visit to Free Rice, a vocabulary quiz site so named because it donates rice 10 grains of rice to the UN's World Food Program for every right answer, has ramped up its content. Since last we visited, it has added vocabulary in French, German, Italian and Spanish as well as quizzes in English Grammar, math facts, geography, chemistry and art. AJ likes the reinforcement of the advancing levels and the piles of rice. It's his new favorite way to practice his times tables.

•Laura Vanderkam at the blog, Gifted Exchange, posted a link today for a website full of interesting "virtual field trip" videos by and for kids. The videos are sorted by category and cover a wide variety of topics. Most interesting to AJ, there is a section of tutorials on how to make your own videos and podcasts so that you can participate in the project.. Check out Meet Me at the Corner. You can read more about the project and the people behind it here. I'll be adding this site to the list of recommendations in the sidebar shortly.

Do you have favorite sites you'd like to tell us about? Write us a review or just post the link in the comments.

Is there more content you'd like to see on this site? Would you like to write for us (there is no money involved, but we'd love to hear from others? Leave a note in the comments or contact Harriet at harri3tspyATgmailDOTcom.

Fun with Math and Science

AJ had a great time at Camp Gifted. We were really impressed by the end-of-session documents that were sent home. AJ's projects and lab notebook were fantastic, of course. So was the DVD that the physics teacher made of the kids' egg drop and Rube Goldberg projects. But we also really appreciated that each teacher sent home a summary of the course and list of websites and books and things to do if we wanted to do more of the kinds of things they did in class. I thought some of these references would be appreciated by readers here. The two science classes were targeted toward gifted children entering 2-3 grades. The math class had a broader age range of 2-6th grades.

PHYSICS

Websites
• http://www.invention-engine.com
• Search youtube for "Rube Goldberg" (this one is AJ's and my favorite)
• http://www.funology.com/laboratory/lab_physics.htm

Books
• Arlene Erlbach, The Kids' Invention Book
• Laura S. Jeffrey, American Inventors of the 20th Century

Places to Visit
• Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago
• American Science and Surplus, 5316 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago, IL 60630 (773-763-0313)

MATH

Math just sent home one recommendation, which is for kids' sudoku puzzles:

http://www.printactivities.com/Kid_Sudoku_Puzzles/Free_Printable_Sudoku.htm

I would add to that the essential, websudoku.com.

CHEMISTRY

Experiment books
• Tamara Perchyonok, Chemistry and Fun for Kids of All Ages
• Robert W. Wood, 39 Easy Chemistry Experiments (Science for KIds)
• Judi Hechtman and Karen P. Hall, Explore and Discover Kid Chemistry
• Janice VanCleave, Janice VanCleave's Chemistry for Every Kid: 101 Easy Experiments that Really Work

Websites

• PBS Kids Kitchen Chemistry
• Bill Nye Home Demos
• Build your own Volcano at Discovery Kids
• Experiencing Chemistry at OMSI: How to Make Flubber
• Chem4Kids Website
• ChemShorts for Kids: Links to a variety of experiments

Numerology

AJ walks into my room every morning at 7 a.m. on the dot. The first thing he asks for is his good morning hug. The second thing he asks for is a glass of juice. The third thing he asks for are math problems. AJ’s brain seems to be at its most mathematically oriented first thing in the morning. Unfortunately, I need truckloads of coffee before I can think about numbers. What’s a mother to do?

While we play a lot of more active math games at other times of day – things like multiplying window panes while I wipe off fingerprints or doubling and halving cookie recipes – in the morning we’ve been turning to the internet to assist us. Here are some of the websites we’ve found particularly helpful. Our criteria for what makes a good math website is somewhat flexible, but generally 1. It has to be fun; 2. There has to be some kind of reward (fake applause, points, cheering) for doing well and 3. The website is set up in such a way that it allows AJ a certain amount of autonomy. This last criterion is key, not so much because we’re not around to help – I’m generally just a few feet away, if that – but because AJ needs to feel like he’s in control of the technology in order to feel like he’s in control of the math.

To give you some idea of the level of the websites we’ve been looking at, AJ’s currently pretty solid on addition and subtraction, including borrowing. He does okay with multiplication, but still has to count it out sometimes. We’re working on fractions and division and also on how to convert word problems into equations. He’s also getting interested in geometry, God help me. Mostly the latter interest seems to lie in a more artistic direction – he likes drawing cubes. Many of these sites offer a variety of math games and quizzes at a variety of levels. My brief reviews, however, are based solely on my experience with AJ’s level.


1. Math is fun!. This website is pretty low-res as sites go and its name always serves to remind me of the Barbie flap from a few years back (“Math is hard!”). But the basics are there. AJ likes “Who wants to be a mathionaire” game especially. There are other, glossier versions of the mathionaire (or mathonaire) game elsewhere, but most are higher level math – more complicated equations, algebra, etc.)

2. Math Arcade at Funbrain. This site is a little confusing to navigate, requiring more intervention from me than is ideal, but AJ likes it because the progress is marked through a board game. What AJ doesn’t like, however, is that you are expected to go through the game in order. He doesn’t like going in order – whether on websites, or in workbooks. He likes to find the most interesting-looking things first. He is coming around to working in sequence in his workbooks as he learns that jumping ahead often means you’ve missed something important. But on websites he still expects free play. Still, the games are good and the graphics are more sophisticated than mathisfun.

3. Cool Math 4 Kids Arithmattack at Cool Math 4 kids offers a range of customization – choose your operation, the largest number, and the level of difficulty. You then solve as many problems as you can in two minutes. There are other games too, but we have yet to explore them. This requires a little adult supervision to get it set up, but once he gets going, AJ can manage this site on his own.

4. Maths Year 2000 This site is relatively new to us and many of the games require a knowledge of more complex math than AJ can handle at the moment, but the Maths Activity Pack and Maths Circus are both entertaining and have more compelling graphics than the typical online math games.

We have discovered some of these sites through other sites with good lists of educational websites for kids.

Internet 4 Classrooms is a well-organized list of sites organized by topic and grade level aimed at teachers looking for ways to supplement classroom learning with computers.

This site is run by the Mifflin County School District in Lewiston Pennsylvania. If you click on the “Curriculum” button at the top of the page, you can access site lists for other subjects as well.

Any of these sites should have enough math activities to keep your child busy through at least one cup of coffee. Maybe even two.