Website of the Day: Kindersay

Kindersay is a interactive site that teaches basic English vocabulary through vibrant photographic images, text and an (adult) model speaking the word. This site is great for students working on cause and effect, emerging language and/or basic vocabulary. Currently the categories include: Adventure, Alphabet, Animals, Arts, City and People, Food, Home (large items), Home (small items), movement, numbers, outdoors, parts of the body, colors-time-shapes, tools, transport. (The sight says that "Baby Signs" is coming soon.) If you register for free, you can make customized activities for the category of "family" by uploading photos of the student's family. Also, with registration you can make new activities by combining words for other activities by clicking "add to favorites".

Don't let the name or the description on the website fool you, this website is age appropriate through out the pre-K-adult special needs population for most categories because there are no cutesy images or music and the model is an adult. Some categories (movement and body parts) use pictures of young children, so you may want to avoid these with older learners. Also some topics may not be age appropriate (adventure for example).

Additionally, much like Tumblebooks, the site can be made some what switch accessible by putting the mouse cursor over the "next" button and having the student press the switch (set to mouse click) to go to the next word.

The site can be slow on computers with high CPU use or a slow internet connection. Try shutting all other internet pages and applications to speed things up.

Enjoy.