2011 Gratitude #8

My gratitude today is for a website my mom told me about.   It has great eduational games.  Go to uen.org.  Click on the link on left side under K12 Education called K12 Student Center.  This will take you to a new page.  On the right are colored buttons.  The one I have been using is the K-2 interactives.  It takes you to games that are age and developmentally appropriate for children from Kindergarten to second grade.  Since I am trying to make sure that Emma is ready for Kindergarten I have been using these games to test Emma's abilities and understanding of what I have tried to teach her.  So far so good.  She has done so well.  The one thing we need to work on would be her skills at using the mouse on my computer.  That will come with time since I have until recently tried to keep all of my children away from my computer.
What I am most grateful for with this website is that it has been keeping Emma busy.  I felt terrible when I pulled her out of school to move.  She had been so excited about school for a long time.  Then of course we finally get her into a preschool a month and a half before moving.  Of course, I can't fix the problem of not having friends from school or in our neighborhood.  However, I wanted her to still feel like she is doing "school" work.  Right before we moved she spent a lot of time at her friend's house.  This friend felt bad that everyone else was going the preschool and she wasn't.  So her mom enrolled her in an online program.  Emma got to help her do her school work when she was over there.  So when Emma realized that she wouldn't be going to school anymore she told me that she could do home school like her friend.  I was grateful that she was looking for the bright side in this situation.  After a few days here she got a little impatient with me.  she wanted to know when she was going to get to use my computer to do home school.  Since Les and I got into a fair amount of debt while waiting for him to get a job, move out here, all of us moving out here (so NOT cheap), and several other things I couldn't bring myself to spare the money to pay for an online program.  So to keep her busy I have been letting her play games at pbs.org and nickjr.com.  While she did learn a little bit from pbs it was more about having fun than learning.  I tried to suppliment with a few other things.  We have a few books and I have introduced words to Emma in those books.  When we read them she has to say those words each time we find it in the story.  For instance we have the book Pinkalicious.  Each time the word Pink came up she would have to read it.  I change the word she has to say each time we read.  I also have a "book" of white boards.  Each page has something different for her to do such as write uppercase letter, write lowercase letters, and write the numbers 1-20.  I also do google searches for learning material that we can look at and go over.  The biggest problem with all of that has been Emma.  She likes doing it but what she really wants to do is get on my computer to play school games.  A few days ago I was telling my mom about this problem.  She told me about uen.org.  I love it!  Emma gets to play games and I get to have the knowledge that she is actually has to think things through as she plays. 
I am grateful for UEN.ORG!!