I just love sending people to the National Film Board of Canada site – they are a national treasure and thankfully seem very keen to provide online access to their vast collection. (Their Christmas Advent Calendar app – a film a day – is always a big hit in our house.)

p.s. If you’ve never done a Lego kit with your child, it’s fun, satisfying, and (I found) strangely soothing as well. (Instructions are brilliantly simple – a cut above ikea!) Can a zen state be achieved through Lego? Discuss.

The Commonsense Media site covers a lot of ground, but I’ve just been checking out (and appreciating) its great listing of apps, complete with reviews, that is searchable by genre, age level, etc. Get the low-down on some of those ultra-popular games and find out if they are really age appropriate for your child…

Math Topics, Grade 1 to Adult – Here’s one that a friend recommended for math practice, with topics well organized, and linked so you can do them in a logical order. From the main page, click on Practice and you will see this chart of topics. (Site also has videos on many topics for adults as well. As the website says, its goal is to provide a “A free world-class education for anyone anywhere.”)

Preschool and up, all topics – I’ve never plugged this website on this blog (that I can remember), but it’s been my favourite of the many we’ve checked out since my daughter first went online. Poisson Rouge is a non-profit educational site that is beautifully intuitive to navigate, has alphabets and vocabulary in several languages, as well as all kinds of learning games and entertaining animations and puzzles. I always loved it because she didn’t have to know how to read to explore it, and there are tons of surprises and oddities woven into the site. The games are lovely and stress-free (no points to earn, no high scores, no obsessive replaying). PLUS the art, music, and sound effects are beautiful and well-done. There’s something interesting here for any age of child. Some website games really wind kids up – I find this site to be more hypnotically transfixing…

I’m not so familiar with these books, but I imagine them comparable to the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books in North America, which have also undergone extensive rewrites, redesigns and upgradings over the years.

It’s always interesting to see what adults think will appeal to ‘modern’ children…

In his concerts, he simplifies a classical song, breaking it up into phrases, so that even lay persons can pick up the melody and sing it.

I would love to go to a concert like that!

As a related tidbit, when my daughter was a mere baby I remember singing everything as I carried her around, ie. “Now we’re going downstairs” or “Oh the phone is ringing” etc. Now I’m thinking it was doing me as much good as it was entertaining her. (Or maybe I’m overestimating the entertainment properties of my voice…)