Games/Similations

Since I am just now figuring this out (not quite there yet but on my way......I've spent my whole Sat. getting this far) I'd like to share a few games that I've been playing. My favorite discovery is a puzzle game called Bloxorz. It is kind of a geometric game of sorts, and it involves tiles. You proceed through levels and the levels become more and more difficult. There is lots of problem solving, and it is very addictive. ...very fun. I also tried out the Jamestown similation posted on blackboard. It was pretty ecucational in the "survival" sense.........and I even emailed it to our fifth grade teachers to try in their social studies classes. I thought they would appreciate it. I also would like to share the games found on starfall.com. If you teach early reading skills, you have got to check out starfall. It is wonderful. It will let students form words with the same middle vowel sound......like pan, fan, ran, man......by moving the letters around ......and it provides good graphics. Then it continues to move through reading skills more and more difficult, like the vowel-consonant-e pattern. There are other activities to go along with it like electronic books that help sound out words, etc. There are lots and lots of good activites for early readers on this website.