Recommended Site:
Houghton Mifflin’s Kids’ Place
These pages were developed by the Houghton Mifflin publishing company to supplement their textbooks. But you don’t have to buy a thing to hone your language arts skills on this website!
When you get to the site, select your grade range: K-6 or 7-8. A new page opens with a variety of interactive language arts activities to choose including:
- Tricky Usage — Try your hand at one tricky grammar question, and see the
correct answer right away. View a breakdown of others’ responses. :) - Wacky Web Tales — Fill in the blanks with verbs, adjectives, etc., then
see the often hilarious story that results! - Power Proofreading — The newspaper office has suffered a power outage. Can
you help fix all of the errors in tomorrow’s edition? (Each section of this
game focuses on a different proofreading skill.) - Bright Ideas for Writing — Look at the picture, read the question, and
you’ll surely be inspired to write something. - Grammar Blast — Choose your grade level and answer ten multiple-choice
grammar questions. Have a blast! :) - Evaluation Station — Follow these steps to evaluate and improve what you
have written. - Net’s Best for Research — An annotated list of helpful websites for
student research projects. - Writer’s Showcase — The stories and essays in this section were written by
elementary and middle school students!
(Note: Click on the Dalmatian if you wish to see the K-5 page in Spanish.)
BUT that’s not all! If you click on the words “Kids’ Place” near the bottom
of the window a new page opens. Scroll to the menu at the bottom of that new
page, and you’ll see these items:
- Using the Web – This web tutorial makes you an expert cyber-researcher in
no time! - Current Events – Stay up-to-date with the kid-friendly links provided here
:) - Brain Teasers – Some simple but fun math puzzles.
- GAMES – Yes, even more games here!
On the GAMES page try:
- Fake Out – Try to select the correct definitions for this week’s words. The
fake definitions were submitted by other students last week. You can also
submit fake definitions for next week’s words, and in two weeks you can
check back to see how many people you fooled! :) - Spelling Match – Match the words with the letters that they are missing,
and watch the cat deep-sea diver open the treasure chest! What could be
inside? - Web Word Find – Interactive hidden word puzzles.
- GeoNet – This is a multiple-choice social studies quiz. Look at the map,
graph, or other visual aid, then guess an answer. If you get it wrong, don’t
worry. You get three tries for each question before the beaver tells you the
correct answer. Keep track of your score on the cool GeoTrekker!
There’s a lot here to enjoy. Have fun!