Online Tutoring Activity this Summer

This Summer I plan to tutor my two Nieces, who are entering the 2nd and 4th grades. I done the following in preparation:

Set up with a free web conferencing sites, ooVoo and SightSpeed. I then put contact buttons on the About box of this blog.

Also found a white board, Twiddle This, to assist. I also put a contact button in the About box of this blog. I also installed Yahoo messenger to allow me calls on the cheap.

I then researched on the course of study for 2nd and 4th grade. I’m current going to use the About.com info found at the following links:

http://homeschooling.about.com/cs/learning/p/course2.htm

http://homeschooling.about.com/cs/learning/p/course4.htm

After much more research, I found that the following link was very useful in finding material to use:

http://www.internet4classrooms.com/grade_level_help.htm

I’ve been formulating in my mind lesson plans for the summer, and determined this; It has to be minimal and fun, or they won’t get anything out of it. Much of this work must be done off line, and learning on their own.

It is clear that to keep them interested, I can not just assign too much boring work, but get them to participate in what they are learning through activities. I tried to find useful videos to teach every standard, but this seem to be more difficult than I expected. I went to Google and searched and searched. I also went to YouTube and still not much luck. So I’ve taken a good good look at what is out there and will be only using the ones which are must helpful.

I’ve found some of the most useful videos for learning at:

http://videos.howstuffworks.com/

again About.com was very useful with the following link:

http://websearch.about.com/od/imagesearch/a/education_video.htm

I really like the Annenberg Media videos.

Now since my Nieces are already planning big careers where a good vocabulary is very important, I plan to work on getting them to look up words with both merriam-webster.com and answers.com. I plan to send them a word of the day in email to align with the sight words they need for their grade levels. I’ve had my brother add on the merriam-webster add on for the google tool bar.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/downloads/index.htm?downloads_google

I plan to concentrate every week on current events, so their vocabulary builds faster. I will use the Time for Kids web site to assist me with this.

I also plan to use Fact Monster and Yahoo! Kids as well.

I don’t expect to spend more than an hour a day four or five times a week working on this with the girls. But I do expect so send many hours putting together the email lesson plans.

I do hope that by the end of this summer that they will have a good jump on the rest of their class mates.