Free Web arcade games

freewebarcade.com is one of those sites where you would not like the children to have free reign in school time, but there are a few games that are worthwhile letting the children play.

Magic Pen is a physics-based drawing game. Guide the red ball or square to the flags by drawing shapes.

Airtyper great practice for those children who are starting to get quite good at touch typing and need a challenge.

Domino is just like the classics domino game. Click on a piece and it will slot itself into the right place. If there are not pieces to play with then you have to draw one from the deck. Pink pieces cannot be played.

5 differences is a spot the difference game, there are a series of animated pictures and you have to click on the differences.

Add like Mad you can choose an addition, multiplication or subtraction version of this game. Click on the squares to add the numbers so that they equal the value under the word 'Number'. If you add the numbers fast enough you will get bonus points. If you click on numbers that don't add up to the target number you will have to start over.

Tangram Create the tangram picture using the pieces available

White Jigsaw is an interesting twist on doing jigsaws, it is completely white. Great for developing those visual spatial skills.

If you are going to use these games with children, be aware that they can access other games, there may need to be some rules put in place as to 'this is the game we play in this time'. Hyperlink these games in PowerPoint so that the children are clear about what games they are supposed to be playing.

ToonDoo and creating comics on line

Since posting on this blog about Kerpoof, I have been directed to another comic making interactive online site. This one is called ToonDoo. You can make 1-3 page comics using numerous backgrounds and graphics. You can change the body position of the figures and facial expressions. There are lots of props and drawing tools to create your own backgrounds. You can save the comics and publish for everyone to see or you can publish privately. If you publish for anybody to see then anybody can comment. That was the only problem with this programme were the comments as they could be inappropriate for children. Some of the cartoons made by other people were a little dodgy as well.
The actual editing page is fine but the main home page changes all the time so you are never sure what is going to pop up. But it is still a worthwhile site to use with careful monitoring. Particularly for younger children I would set up the editing page for them, then there is no need for them to see the home page.
There is no download feature which is a shame as it would be great to download the comic and print it whole screen. But there are always ways around this, you can print out the page when it is in View mode, cut out the comic and glue on to other paper. Or you can take a screen capture (Windows: press the Print Screen button on your keyboard, open Paint, Press Ctrl V and then use the square selector tool to crop the area you need. Copy paste that piece into the Wordprocessor of your choice) Mac Users press Shift, Ctrl, Option and 4, click and drag around the comic, paste into your wordprocessor page.
Again this is another great interactive writing motivating tool.

Motivating Writing

Kerpoof is a great piece of software that you can use to motivate










children's writing. It is free, colourful and interactive.
Make a Picture - choose a background and make a picture using the graphics provided, use the text button to add text to the page. Print the page out as full A4 or as a card. You can also choose to print it out in full colour or as a colouring book page.

Make a Movie option allows you to create a movie with moving objects. There are 7 different story lines to pick from, several scene pages and a limited amount of graphics for each page. Choose from the animation list to animate the objects. Text can be added to the scene as well. It can be saved to an account at Kerpoof or printed.

Make a drawing has drawing tools where you can create a picture and print it out.

Make a card has 8 preset cards including Birthday, Thank you etc. with a limited set of graphics to add.

The Make a Story is my favourite option with 19 different scenes, some graphics, text boxes and text speech bubbles. You can also add more scenes to the story.

This would be a great site for those children who don't have anything to write about as it provides the scenes and graphics, but they get to add the words. They can manipulate the graphics and can add their own drawings to it by using the pen tool. It prints out beautifully as well.

Interactive PowerPoints

What are 'Interactive PowerPoints?'

They are PowerPoint slides where students can click on text, graphics, photo or a button and it will hyperlink to another page, another file, another programme or to the internet.

Teachers can use this medium to create interactive activities for children targetted at their level.

This example uses WordArt. The WordArt is hyperlinked to the appropriate website. Children click on their choice of activity and the website loads up.

How to create a Hyperlink.

Open PowerPoint first, type in your title for your whole PowerPoint on this introduction slide(i.e. Reading Games). Insert a new slide and choose the 'Title only' slide, type in a title (i.e. could be the name of your reading group for that slide). Open your Browser (Internet Explorer, Safari or Firefox) Find the website that you are going to link to (i.e. Starfall or BBC), click on the address to highlight it, Mac people press Apple-C (or Ctrl C for Windows) to copy address, go back to PowerPoint, create a WordArt Heading (or insert a graphic), click on the WordArt button, type in the name of the activity, click OK. Go to Insert-Hyperlink, press Apple – V (or Ctrl V) and click OK.

Children need to be in Slideshow view to play game.

Hot Potatoes

I worked with several teachers today designing activities using 'Hot Potatoes' software. Hot Potatoes is free downloadable package. It is not fully functioning until you register the software and you will need to provide a school email address.

The main focus in this school is developing Cloze activities.

Click on JClose. Type in the text as it appears in the book. Highlight the focus word and click on Gap. Add a clue or leave it blank. When finished click on Save. To see the activity as a webpage click on the Export button . Save the file and then open it by clicking View the exercise in my browser

When the webpage opens you will need to teach the children to activate the page by clicking on
Select Add Blocked Content Click Yes.

Students click in the text boxes and type the answer. Click on the question marks for clues or click on the Hint button for the first letter of the answer. When they have finished all of the boxes the software will calculate the total of correct answers.