Topic Box

Topic Box is a wonderful website to help out primary teachers.  It offers countless links to free websites that teachers can use to teach their students on their interactive whiteboards.  It offers quick and easy access to any topic a teacher would need to teach on. It is excellent to have free links to Elementary schools resources right at your fingertips.  There are links to English, Mathematics, Science, Foundation Stage, Art and Design, Design and Technology, Geography, History, Music, French, Spanish, and Religious Education. I will highlight one of my favorite links under each subject for examples of the multiple available links on this website.
Under English, there is a spelling game that helps children understand how to make a word longer by adding "ed" or "ing".  This is a fishing game called adding ed to words where the children fish for the correct version of the word shown.
Under Mathematics, there is a game for children to understand odd or even numbers called blast the odd numbers.  There are ghosts with odd and even numbers on them, and they students need to "blast" the odd numbered ghosts.  This is a great game for a whiteboard or smart board.
 Under science you can chose either life science or physics.  Under life science, there is a link to "build a child's mouth." Children can learn where in the mouth different teeth are found and whether they are in the upper jaw or lower jaw.
Under Art and Design, I found a link to self portraits and there is something called Abstract Portraits. Here children who like art can create a Picasso head themselves!
Under Music, there is a note naming game where students can review which notes are where in the treble clef.
Topic Box is a wonderful resource for teachers as it helps them find games, activities, lessons, examples, and anything else they need for any subject very quickly!

Purple Mash

  Purple mash is a set of online tools for students to use, encompassing hundreds of different options for them to create and share with others. Actually quite a few of these are available for anyone to try out.  However, the rest will be available on subscription.  Purple Mash did have a website last year, but it has added so many features since then.  There are too many resources to talk about all of them, but I will highlight some of my favorites.

There is something called the purple mashcam, which allows you to take a picture of your face and insert it into a series of different pictures.  Then you can add your own text.  For example, you can put your face in an astronaut, a doctor, or a witch for Halloween, or so on. There are also many different drawing templates which allow students to create their own stories, characters, gingerbread men and much more. The texture pens are really fun as well.  All of these projects and resources can be saved to a student’s own online space and then shared with others.  Schools can manage their student’s logins and teachers can access the work of their students in their own online area.

There are also 3D modeling tools which let students design objects, such as cars and houses, and then print them out on net paper so they can be cut out and modeled in 3D.  This is very convenient for design and technology classes.  Students can also create a 3D maze game.  They have control over their monsters, rewards, and the look of the maze.  They can even write instructions in a text box to explain how the game works to others. 

 There are educational games as well, such as math games.  There are also grade levels you can choose and then appropriate games and activities are displayed for each age level. 

Purple mash is a fantastic product and can be used for multiple school subjects!