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We have included these links to websites that our teachers, parents and children may find useful. Please remember that websites come and go and change in the process. We hope you find some that appeal to you.
General Links
SUSTRANS Safer Routes
Our aim is to create a Safe Route to School for every child in the UK.
Creative development
Birmingham Grid for Learning
A very well organised and imaginative site for each of the Areas of Learning (except for Physical Development).
Alphabuddies
An American site with lots of ideas and downloadable worksheets and templates. The alphabet section is particularly strong.
Under 5s
A host of really useful and usable resources including printable worksheets for early handwriting practice, lots of sheets on shape recognition and matching, colouring sheets and some great fun.
Early Birds Music
A lovely site making imaginative use of audio and video technology to bring a selection of original action songs to you.
Ranvilles Infant School
This inspirational site belongs to Ranvilles Infant School. It presents a pot pourri of the school's work in ICT, international schools links, puzzles, quizzes, book of the week etc.
Cbeebies
This BBC site is aimed at pre-school children and has a selection of activities featuring characters who appear on Cbeebies such as the Teletubbies, Spot, Postman Pat and Noddy. Activities include pictures to colour in, sending an email postcard, games to play and a gallery for sending in children's own contributions.
Bear Time
A delightful of sites for anyone with a soft spot for Teddy Bears.
Kids' Space
This is a very attractive site from Japan. It has all the visual appeal you need with the young, including cursor effects, cute bunnies nodding and the like.
Enchanted Learning
This is a delightful site, packed full of material "designed to capture the imagination while maximizing creativity, learning, and enjoyment".
Museum of Web Art
The Museum of Web Art is a great place to visit and as with many museums, the quality of your visit is its main concern. There are several galleries featuring things that move, stay still, work and change, although you do need the latest software to get the best out of the site.
Fun with Spot
See Spot the dog and his many friends in a variety of settings and play many games including matching pairs, dot-to-dot (numbers 1-10), a counting game, a 'build a scene' game and you can even send a Spot postcard to a friend.
Literacy
Poetry Society
Contains news of the latest competitions with tips for budding young poets, consciously aimed at destroying the stereotype that poetry is for 'sissies', as well as excellent links to other sites for teachers and pupils. Discussion and buying on line plus suggestions for inviting 'live' poets to schools are all actively encouraged. Simple and easy to navigate.
Spelling it Right
A spelling resource site created by retired teacher Roger Smith. Contains loads of worksheets on every type of spelling exercise, as well as spelling advice, information on spelling aids and games to play. The site is aimed at parents, children and adults that have difficulty spelling, and the worksheets would certainly make a great teacher's resource. The downside of this site is that it's not laid out very well, and this makes picking a worksheet difficult, particularly if you are a child.
Achuka
Achuka is a lively, independent children's UK book site, designed to tune kids of all ages into books. Zappy graphics, an extensive menu and fast navigation display the hottest releases with jacket displays and short punchy reviews of poetry, fiction and non-fiction plus tapes, television and film tie-ins. For the 'keeners' there are monthly special guest interviews and fact files with photos of writers such as Children's Laureate Anne Fine. For parents and teachers: recommendations of first readers for six to nine year olds, a notice board of events countrywide plus listed guides and review publications some with internet links. You also can buy online with Amazon.
Giggle Poetry
Poetry is an important part of literacy teaching. Visit this site for some helpful starting points for building on children's love of rhythm and rhyme. There are useful sections on how to write different types of poems, how to develop ideas and how to structure a poem using different formats. Users can enjoy reading and rating different poems, which is a good introduction to poetry criticism. The site comes from an American publisher so promotes books from its list, however there is plenty here to entertain and inspire poets of the future.
British Dyslexia Association
This excellent, very comprehensive web site is designed for parents, teachers and dyslexic adults. Using the latest research it is written in fluent jargon-free language, which is clearly indexed and cross-referenced for easy access.
Reading is Fundamental
From Reading is Fundamental, a UK non-profit making organisation promoting literacy by providing opportunities for children to choose and keep new books at no cost to them or to their families. Includes interviews with famous authors, competitions, on-line stories, tips on helping with reading, going to the library, choosing books for children and more.
Paul C. Literacy Resources
This is the literacy area of a teacher-generated site containing resources in most of the primary National Curriculum subjects. This part of the site offers plenty of free downloadable worksheets (PDF and HTML) for supporting teaching during the literacy hour.
Teaching Ideas
This site offers resources in most subject areas. English ideas are broken down into reading, writing and speaking and listening ideas for Key Stages 1 and 2. The activity is titled, with age range and description. Some of these are really imaginative (for example, a story for children to edit to make it less boring and repetitive and an idea for a poem to make teachers angry). The real strength of this website is that it has been built up on teacher contributions, and it is quick and easy to find what you want to do something fresh and different.
Words and Pictures
This is a useful area of the BBC Education site for supporting phonics work. There is a selection of games, worksheets and activities to support work on initial and final phonemes, medial vowels and on blending cvc words. The graphics are simple but attractive.
Ladybird
A colourful, easy to navigate site from the makers of Ladybird books. The Fun and Games section has activities to suit children from the ages of three to five, covering simple numbers, letters, phonics, colour matching and more. Bears and Balloons is particularly pleasing! The Topsy and Tim section includes an imaginative money game for older Foundation Stage children.
Little Animals Activity
This BBC Education site features the Little Animals Activity Centre, a group of six woodland creatures who invite you into interactive word, number, making etc type games. You'll need Flash and Shockwave to successfully animate and add music to the site.
Story Place
An enjoyable, very American, site called The Children's Digital Library. It provides book reviews, an on-line book and linked activities.
Physical development
Teach Circus
Although this circus skills site designed to develop "concentration, patience, timing, tracking skills, gross motor coordination, and fine motor coordination" is aimed at older children and adults, this page has some nice ideas. The Key Stage 2 lesson plan for scarf juggling should be well within the grasp of most foundation stage children.
PSHE
Perpetual School
The Americans can sometimes show us a thing or two when it comes to educational web sites. This one is very comprehensive in many preschool curriculum areas as well as in its PSED.
Bob the Builder
Aimed at the younger nursery child this site is visually very attractive, sounds good and offers a range of activities. There is also a recycling game which kicks off the idea of citizenship, and you have here some role models who are more everyday and less heroic than is typical.
Sesame Workshop
This is a Sesame Street site with games, interactive stories, an alphabet frieze to print out, 2D shape pictures to print, e-cards to send and lots more. It is aimed at young children to use with a parent.
Numeracy
Dept of Education and Skills
The maths activities that are downloadable from here most attractive, enjoyable and cover a broad range of EY/KS1 maths topics. What young child could resist the invitation to Drag and Drop Mooing Cows? Other highlights include Robo Count (ordering numbers to 20), Find the Missing Number, Money Talks and the Mouse 100 Square. The use of children's voices (with English accents!) is also a notable feature.
Barney
This website features Barney and friends and offers a range of activities. The most useful one is a series of dot-to-dot pictures that provides practice in ordering numbers up to 10. Other activities include spot-the-difference, catching raindrops and a colouring activity.
Thomas the Tank Engine
Every nursery/reception class will have a complement of Thomas the Tank Engine devotees. This site offers them and the others the chance to email the Fat Controller and get a personal reply. You can visit the engine shed, and from there the Depot to see all of Thomas' friends. In the waiting room you can play dot-to-dot (from 1 to 40) or drive Bertie the bus on his route.
Maths Year 2000
This is the heavily promoted, official DfES site for UK Maths Year 2000, now called 'Count On'. Admirably, it aims to "create a positive, can-do culture towards maths", and challenge the rather odd pride many of us take in being 'hopeless at maths'. The site includes games and puzzles.
Maths Sphere
A good site containing over 100 clear, well-illustrated, downloadable worksheets based on the Numeracy Strategy. These are a small sample of a further 1500 pages of material which can be bought on CD. Free modules include National Curriculum tests and fun items. There are also competitions and links to other sites, a mathematical dictionary, puzzles hints and tips.
BEAM
This Be-A-Maths-Teacher site offers lots of free resources as well as pay-for ones, supporting the Numeracy Strategy at nursery, primary, special and lower secondary levels. Beam also offer equipment (dice, posters geoboards, number lines etc), course consultation, INSET training, newsletters and links.
Science
Science Zone
A simple yet effective resource site created by teacher Mark Taylor. The Science Zone has interactive web pages on KS2 science topics such as Earth, Moon and Sun, Keeping Healthy, Materials and Life Cycles. These are not downloadable files (although a few of the pages print well), but are designed to be viewed on a computer screen. They are concise, well laid out and easy to read. Animations and interactive graphics are used to good effect, and show various scientific processes (for example, the moon orbiting the earth). A very useful site.
Virtual Schoolroom
This section of the Vegetarian Society's web site contains detailed lesson plans covering subjects such as food chains, health and nutrition as well as practical activities on producing food from sprouting beans and designing and creating salads. Each lesson plan provides detailed teacher's notes, activity sheets, suggestions for extension activities and links with National Curriculum guidelines. A really useful site that has been carefully designed, paying close attention to the needs of busy teachers.
British Nutrition Foundation
A wide-ranging site, providing excellent information about all aspects of nutrition. As well as offering general material which will be of great help to teachers preparing and planning lessons, the site also contains activity sheets which can be downloaded for recorded work. Older children could use the site unaided to gather information as it is clearly laid out and easy to navigate. Areas such as diet through life and nutrition and health are extremely interesting and full of information.
NASA Kids
Part of the official NASA site, this is loaded with information for Key Stage 2 pupils on all aspects of the Solar system and related topics. There are sections on space and beyond, rockets and aeroplanes and astronauts. Each section has a 'brain terrain' which leads straight to the relevant information. There are downloadable activities and a section for teachers. Younger children will need help with some of the rather detailed language.
Educate the Children
The science resource area of this excellent site is an invaluable tool for busy primary teachers. Complementing the QCA schemes of work for science, this section offers weekly lesson plans, worksheets, interactive resources and assessments. Users are able to download charts and frames to use alongside investigations. The site is clearly constructed enabling users to locate the relevant age group and scheme of work.
Astro Ranger
Prepare to be amazed! The effects created by Shockwave make this site a journey of discovery through space. Billing itself as "a site for the young astronomer" it successfully manages to offer information and fun. Key Stage 2 children will be able to learn about planets and space travel in a format that will greatly appeal. The layout is designed around the control panel of a spaceship, one click will reveal key facts, activities and games all accompanied by excellent sound effects and graphics.