Wonders of the Internet

Ah, the beauty of the Internet! There's so much information, tools, tips and more to help you with whatever ails you. Please let me share my excitement about my recent find.

I am constantly looking for help teaching my son math. Math is not one of my strong points and I really don't know how to explain certain concepts. I know the rules on how to do certain problems, but explaining why is beyond my abilities. Quite frankly, when I was a kid, I didn't care why. I just memorized the steps, did it and forgot it. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would ever need to know.

So now I need to know and I don't really. That's why I find myself searching the Internet wildly for something that will help me explain. There are lots of math sites out there, but I had never really found one that was fun and engaging and really taught the lesson. Until yesterday, that is.

I found a site called Math Playground. It has lots of tools and games that help kids master math in a way that is fun. There's a tool that helps kids model their word problems so they can work through them more easily. For my son, who learns best when things are presented more visually, that tool is a life saver. (Or a mom saver.) It gives him a word problem and breaks it down into steps. It basically helps him organize the problem in a way that makes it easier for him to solve it.

The games are pretty fun too. I tested a few of them myself. And I let my son play, too. He generally goes for the logic puzzles, but I had him try a few of the other games too. The only downfall to the games that I saw was that they focused mainly on multiplication, division, fractions, decimals and percentages. That's great for me and my son, but for parents of younger kids who are studying placement values, addition and subtraction, that's not so great. The word problems section and the math videos section covers addition and subtraction, but that's it.

All in all, though, it's a really cool site. Now I need to find the same kind of site for history, science, art and all the other subjects. I'm sure I'll be telling you about those soon! If you know of any, please share.