What a fun online activity for kids (and adults!) from the New York Zoos & Aquarium.
Apparently I’m a Hiss-Bird! 
Found this site on the ALSC blog post The Latest Additions to Great Web Sites for Kids. Lots of other fun things listed there.
Games
Build Your Wild Self
Free Rice – Feed the World, Exercise Your Brain
I’d forgotten about the Free Rice website until a friend mentioned it on Facebook today. For every right answer to their online quizzes, they donate free rice to the UN World Food Program. And now they have quizzes not only for vocabulary, but also math, foreign languages, geography, art and even chemistry.
I though I’d put my summertime procrastinating mood to some good use and have been refreshing my math skills and German vocabulary. I would have loved these when I was a kid (ok, I was a geeky kid!). Maybe your kids will too? Ok, it’s back to work for me. Or maybe it’s time to see if I know anything about chemistry?
Free audiobook short stories, kids songs and Kahuna Reef video game!
Thanks to Rachel Singer Gordon’s Mashup Mom, I scored some fun freebies today. And you can too!
From Freebies on Friday, 4/24/09
- Free Big Kahuna Reef game download from Amazon.com
- Get the Walking Oliver Sampler — 5 free kids songs — from Amazon.com.
From Thematic Thursday, 4/23/09 — Boooooooks
- Get 9 free short story audiobook MP3s from Barnes & Noble.
And while you’re there, check out the tons of other great bargains and coupons. Thanks Rachel!
Fun Moo Stuff
Moo makes wonderful business cards, postcards, sticker books and more. Their products are fun to create and fun to use. Reading back through their blog today I ran across some fun things to create for kids – or for them to create themselves.
First this fun memory matching game created with family photos and Moo business cards.
And these great sticker books made from the graphics used in Facebook’s Packrat game.
There are lots more fun ideas on the Moo blog. Got some ideas of your own?
Librarians’s Guide to Gaming Toolkit
Check out this new resource from ALA’: The Librarian’s Guide to Gaming: An Online Toolkit for Building Gaming @ Your Library
Libraries of all types promote the development of these literacy skills in numerous ways: information literacy classes in colleges and universities, gaming programs to promote problem solving and the development of higher order thinking skills, and services that improve technical and literary fluency. Regardless of the type of service libraries may provide, they are all important in strengthening these multiple literacies. Gaming in its various forms presents an additional service that supports and strengthens these literacies.
Includes talking points, resources, tools, tips, best practices and more.
Board Gaming and the AASL Standards
Beth Gallaway, aka Information Goddess, shared her recent presentation on Board Gaming and the AASL Standards on SlideShare. See her blog post for links to her handouts for these sessions. Sounds like it was a fun session.
Beth is also teaching an online course in February: Get Your Game On, Online! That sounds like fun too!
