Miss Humblebee’s Academy

Miss Humblebee’s Academy for Pre-Kindergartners, Preschoolers, and Kindergartners offers a safe online learning environment free from pop-ups, advertisements, and links. Designed for young children, the Academy features hundreds of lessons, mobile access, and progress reports. Using the program, students study topics in core subjects such as math, science, social studies, language, art, music, and literacy with Miss Humblebee and her four “amazing” friends”.

Family and educator memberships are available as a free one-week trial.  Songs and albums are priced at $.99, $8.49, and $8.99. Classroom licenses ($299) are available as are monthly memberships ($7.95 first child; $5.00 for each additional child) for families. You can preview Miss Humblebee’s delight songs without signing up.

Celebrate Writing with Writing

November is National Novel Writing Month, but the countdown has already started until NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) begins on November 1. The idea is to make it a goal for everyone to write a novel during the 11^th month. The adult (18 and up) program suggests the goal of 50,000 words, but for students 17 and under, teachers and students are encouraged to set reasonable goals related to age and ability.  The program includes guides and incentives for writers, resources, forms, and materials for teachers. After a novel is written, the text must be pasted into NaNoWriMo’s Word Count Validator by 11:59 p.m. (your local time) on November 30^th. In December, those who have met their goal of number of words collect their Novel certificate and take a look at “I Wrote a Novel! Now What?”

Write like crazy.

Understanding Developmental Delays

Nothing is more difficult than having to talk with parents about a child who is not succeeding in school. A book that might help you and your students’ parents know what to do is available from Brookes Publishing Company. The Common Sense Guide to Your Child’s Special Needs, by Louis Pelligrino, M.D., is written for parents, but should be useful for teachers as well. The book covers signs of a disability and steps to take. Information is offered on speech and language development; motor skills; learning and cognitive development; vision, hearing and sensory processing, and other issues. You can request an examination copy of the book.

For those working with children with special needs and/or students having difficulty in school, Brookes Publishing has a library of titles that may provide information on the type of problem a student is facing. Some categories available are autism, behavior, child development, medical disability, early childhood education, inclusion, intellectual disabilities, ADHD, screening and assessment, reading and literacy, math and science, and more.