Free Educational Websites For Preschool - School-House-Rock

It would be hard to argue the popularity of contemporary children's music today. As innovative as it seems, this is not the first time that the contemporary music of the day was used to educate children. In fact, School House Rock blazed this uncharted territory in the 70's.
For my next article in the series I am going old school. Writing about educational websites without including one that is a salute to School House Rock, would be just plain wrong. Especially when you consider how much kids learned from these short cartoons aired on Saturday mornings. School-house-rock.com is a free educational website tribute to these brilliant cartoon shorts. The site has four main sections representing four subjects covered by the Schoolhouse Rock videos:

• America Rock - In this section, you will find music and screen shots from the videos teaching about the founding and history of America as well as how the government works. My personal favorites are "The Preamble" and "I'm Just A Bill".There are also lyrics to the songs and educational product links.
• Grammar Rock - This section contains music, lyrics and screen shots from videos teaching the uses of Adjectives, Adverbs, Conjunctions, Interjections, Pronouns, Verbs, Nouns, Prepositions, Subjects and Predicates. Favorites here are "Conjunction Junction" and Verb: That's What's Happening".
• Multiplication Rock - Music in this section teach multiplying by zero, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, eleven and twelve. As with the other sections, there are some screen shots and lyrics.
• Science Rock - Here children find music, lyrics and screen shots teaching about the body, electricity, the solar system, different sources of energy and gravity.
• The site also features free software, a history of schoolhouse rock, news and a store.

A drawback for this site is that it does not feature the actual cartoons just the music. But you and the children should enjoy it anyway. I really do wish someone would bring these cartoons back. Even if they were updated. The fact that I can still recite the Preamble to the Constitution from memory is a testament to how well children learn when lessons are set to music and how long they can retain the information.