EnchantedLearning.com
A Technology Review by Doreen Anderson
EnchantedLearning.com
is an award-winning website that I feel is very useful for parents and teachers
of preschool through third grade children. It is also useful for beginner level
foreign language teachers and students of French, German, Italian, Japanese,
Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish. EnchantedLearning.com has been available online
since 1996. This site has won many awards, including "Best
of '98" by Education World
in its Top 20 Education Site Reviews. (Click here for more information regarding
honors
and awards won by EnchantedLearning.com.)
I have used Enchanted Learning for several years to find teaching ideas, graphics
and activities relating to a wide variety of topics and themes. I also use this
site for ideas and handouts to teach my second grade students beginning Spanish
and to assist my ELL students as they learn English. I have found the site to
be very thorough and it is continually expanding on what it has to offer. EnchantedLearning.com
has its own search engine, which makes it very easy to find the exact topic
or activity that is desired. This site also contains links to numerous other
educational websites, making it an excellent “jumping off” place for
searching the web.
EnchantedLearning.com has many ideas and instructions for writing activities. There are pages of writing prompts for student writing in a variety of modes. It also has ideas for essays, book reports, research report topics, biographies, poetry writing, and movie reviews. Instructions are given to students for writing essays and research reports, and rubrics are included to guide the student and aide the teacher in assessment. Suggestions are presented for student-made books and dioramas. Cloze activities are presented for a number of topics. For very early learners, the site contains favorite nursery rhymes, rebus writings, and picture dictionaries. English-Foreign Language dictionaries are also available for the different languages the site presents.
This site can be used for free, but it is asked that users help support the
site by paying a membership fee of $20.00 per year on an honor system. Schools
with up to 50 Internet-connected computers may buy a site license for $50.00,
schools with more than 50 Internet-connected computers pay $75.00. Site members
have access to a banner-ad-free version of the site with extra printing capabilities
(printer-friendly pages and the ability to enlarge images). There is also a
free newsletter that members can receive via e-mail each month. (Click here
for more information about rates.)
I have found this site very accurate, complete, and easy to navigate and use. I highly recommend EnchantedLearning.com to parents and teachers of primary age children and to teachers of beginner level foreign language learners.