1. Share Your Passion: Talk to your child about interesting things you’ve learned. Explain in simple terms what happened and why you found it so interesting.
2. Surround Her with Books. Consistent access to books can increase a child’s motivation to raed.
3. Build on Your Child’s Natural Interests
4. Know When To Back Off. Those who have the most motivated children didn’t micromanage or pressure their kids. They let their children figure things out for themselves, while still showing their support.
5. Ask the Right Questions. If you want your child to stay excited about learning, it’s much better to engage him in an active inquiry than to ask him to spit out routine knowledge.
6. Avoid Rewards. Offering kids a prize for doing something can actually undermine their pleasure in the activity.
7. Focus on the Process, Not the Outcome.

Seterra is a challenging geography program with 70 different exercises. Learn about countries, capitals, flags and cities in Africa, Europe, South America, North America, Asia and Australia, using outline map exercises!

The Starfall learn-to-read website is offered free as a public service. We also provide writing journals and books at a very low cost that can be used with the website or separately. Teachers around the country are using Starfall materials as an inexpensive way to make the classroom more fun and to inspire a love of reading and writing.

Primarily designed for first grade, Starfall.com is also useful for pre-kindergarten, kindergarten and second grade. Starfall is perfect for Home Schooling.

The website has four basic levels for children of different age to learn reading and have fun.

1. Introduction to Letter Sounds
   
2. Early Beginning Reader
   
3. Intermediate Beginning Reader
   
4. Early Beginning Reader to Advanced

It also provides printed materials for parents and educators and links to many other useful stuff. Highly recommended!

This is a version of my Bomberman game project which started on July 2000. I don’t develop this project in order to bring new concepts of gameplay or to make the best Bomberman game ever but to increase my programming skills and have a game project I can show to be hired. Fury, the developer of the game.

Bomberman Game by Fury

Workrave: The tentative utility of this program is to ensure you to take the necessary breaks to avoid or help recover from RSI (repetitive strain injury). It will monitor your activity and frequently alert you to take micro-pauses, rest breaks and restricts you to your daily limit on computer usage. Micro-pause is a brief moment of relaxation and rest break is a longer break away from the computer.

You can make use of Workrave as a tool to manage your child’s time on using the computer.

I have been using Break Reminder which was a freeware when I installed it on my computers. However, it starts to demand payment recently.

The Animals, made up using tube lines, stations and junctions on the London Underground map were spotted by Paul Middlewick some 17 years ago.

The original Animal, the Elephant was discovered while Paul was staring at the tube map during his daily journey to work.

Since then, the Elephant has been joined by many other Animal friends. You can meet some of them on this site by clicking the ‘animals’ link.

Germ Zapper . Germs are hiding in a classroom, and it’s your job to find them!

Supermarket Toss. A child wants to buy the new Sara Lee soft and smooth bread at the grocery store. The problem is that his mother is shopping in another aisle. It’s your job to help the child.

Box Top Match. The object of this game is to match pairs of cards until all of the cards are gone.

I brought and read the Chinese translation version of this book when I was in Taiwan this July. After scanning the book around one hour in a bookshop, I found the ten principles of good parenting convincing, so I decided to buy it and read the whole book. Here are the 10 basic principles.

1. What you do matters.
2. You cannot be too loving.
3. Be involved in your child’s life.
4. Adapt your parenting to fit your child.
5. Establish and set rules.
6. Foster your child’s independence.
7. Be consistent.
8. Avoid harsh discipline.
9. Explain your rules and decisions.
10. Treat your child with respect.

1. What you do matters. “Tell yourself that every day. How you treat and respond to your child should come from a knowledgeable, deliberate sense of what you want to accomplish. Always ask yourself: What effect will my decision have on my child?”

2. You cannot be too loving. “When it comes to genuine expressions of warmth and affection, you cannot love your child too much. It is simply not possible to spoil a child with love. What we often think of as the product of spoiling a child is never the result of showing a child too much love. It is usually the consequence of giving a child things in place of love—things like leniency, lowered expectations or material possessions.”

3. Be involved in your child’s life. “Being an involved parent takes time and is hard work, and it often means rethinking and rearranging your priorities. It frequently means sacrificing what you want to do for what your child needs you to do. Be there mentally as well as physically.”

4. Adapt your parenting to fit your child. “Make sure your parenting keeps pace with your child’s development. You may wish you could slow down or freeze-frame your child’s life, but this is the last thing he wants. You may be fighting getting older, but all he wants is to grow up. The same drive for independence that is making your three-year-old say ‘no’ all the time is what’s motivating him to be toilet trained. The same intellectual growth spurt that is making your 13-year-old curious and inquisitive in the classroom also is making her argumentative at the dinner table.”

5. Establish and set rules.
“If you don’t manage your child’s behavior when he is young, he will have a hard time learning how to manage himself when he is older and you aren’t around. Any time of the day or night, you should always be able to answer these three questions: Where is my child? Who is with my child? What is my child doing? The rules your child has learned from you are going to shape the rules he applies to himself.”

6. Foster your child’s independence. “Setting limits helps your child develop a sense of self-control. Encouraging independence helps her develop a sense of self-direction. To be successful in life, she’s going to need both. Accepting that it is normal for children to push for autonomy is absolutely key to effective parenting. Many parents mistakenly equate their child’s independence with rebelliousness or disobedience. Children push for independence because it is part of human nature to want to feel in control rather than to feel controlled by someone else.”

7. Be consistent. “If your rules vary from day to day in an unpredictable fashion, or if you enforce them only intermittently, your child’s misbehavior is your fault, not his. Your most important disciplinary tool is consistency. Identify your non-negotiables. The more your authority is based on wisdom and not on power, the less your child will challenge it.”

8. Avoid harsh discipline. “Of all the forms of punishment that parents use, the one with the worst side effects is physical punishment. Children who are spanked, hit or slapped are more prone to fighting with other children. They are more likely to be bullies and more likely to use aggression to solve disputes with others.”

9. Explain your rules and decisions.
“Good parents have expectations they want their child to live up to. Generally, parents overexplain to young children and underexplain to adolescents. What is obvious to you may not be evident to a 12-year-old. He doesn’t have the priorities, judgment or experience that you have.”

10. Treat your child with respect. “The best way to get respectful treatment from your child is to treat him respectfully. You should give your child the same courtesies you would give to anyone else. Speak to him politely. Respect his opinion. Pay attention when he is speaking to you. Treat him kindly. Try to please him when you can. Children treat others the way their parents treat them. Your relationship with your child is the foundation for her relationships with others.”

Computer Tutor is a resource for people who don’t know how to use a keyboard, mouse or computer screen.

If you’re a friend, family member or tutor helping someone learn, all you need to do is choose your connection speed and start the resource. That’s it!

Computer Tutor presenter Amani is then on hand to take computer novices from start to finish step-by-step.

Update: My older son (now four year old) took around two hours to go through this tutorial.