Have you ever needed to find information on the Internet to complete your homework assignment, but just ended up surfing from web site to web site -- never quite finding what you needed? The web is a great information tool but undirected searches can be frustrating and time-consuming (as if doing your homework wasn't hard enough already). The resources we include here (library databases and web sites) can save you time and energy and are terrific places to begin your search.

Homework Databases

Biography In Context
A fantastic, media-rich resource with biographical information on more than 525,000 people throughout history and across all disciplines and subject araeas. It's updated daily.

Culture Grams Kids Edition
Get a kid's-eye view of daily life in countries around the world.

Culture Grams States Edition
Explore all the U.S. states in colorful, kid-friendly reports.

U.S. History In Context
A comprehensive, contextual resource with the most extensive online collection of historical inormation available today. It provovides a complete overview of U.S. history that covers the most-studied events, issues, and current information combining documents from primary sources, periodicals and reference materials. 

Kids Edition of InfoTrac on the Web
A periodical database designed for kids with easy access to full-text magazines, newspapers and reference books for information on current events, the arts, science, popular culture, health, people, government, history, sports and more.

Opposing Viewpoints In Context
The premier online resource covering today's hottest social issues, from Offshore Drilling to Climate Change, Health Care to Immigration. Oppsosing Viewpoints in Context helps you research, analyze and organize a broad variety of data for conducting reasearch, completing writing assignments, preparing for debates, creating presentations and more.

JuniorQuest Magazines
Indexes articles from over 2,500 magazines, journals and reference books for young researchers.

Science In Context
From eath science and life science, to space, techonology, mathematics, science history and biography, this revoluionary, curriculum-oriented online experience is the place to go for information for assignments and projects with articules, topic overviews, and 170+ detailed experiments. 

Our favorite homework web sites

General  | Biographies | Government | History | Homeschooling resources | Indigeneous People | Math & Science | States & Countries| Tacoma School District

General

Navigator: A Selective Guide to the Internet
Navigator is the home page used by the newsroom of The New York Times for forays into the Web, and a terrific resource for older students. Its primary intent was to give reporters and editors new to the Web a solid starting point for a wide range of journalistic functions without forcing all of them to spend time wandering around blindly to find a useful set of links of their own. Its secondary purpose was to show people that there's a lot of fun and useful stuff going on out there. The list is by its nature highly selective and constantly changing.

The New York Times Student Connections provides information about current events, and special sections of the New York Times.

The Fact Monster from Information Please Almanac
FactMonster offers quick (but brief) answers to almost any question thanks to its powerful combination of atlas, almanac, dictionary and encyclopedia. Divided into 10 sections such as Science, Math and Cool Stuff, FactMonster is very kid-friendly (and fun).

About.com's Homework Help
Provides essays and links for homework help on a wide variety of subjects.

Discovery School 
This site, sponsored by the Discovery Channel, has over 700 links to sites that will help you with your homework.

Educational Hotlists
The Franklin Institute's Educational Hotlists are organized lists of resources on the Internet that science educators and science enthusiasts may find useful. The resources listed there have been screened for their educational appropriateness with the intention of  helping take some of the guesswork out of the web for you.  To make the list, a resource needs to stimulate creative thinking and learning about science.

Homework Spot
This site is a free homework information portal that features the very best K-12 homework-related sites.

infoplease 
Information Please has been providing authoritative answers to all kinds of factual questions since 1938-first as a popular radio quiz show, then starting in 1947 as an annual almanac, and since 1998 on the Internet.  This homework center provides more comprehensive reference information and subject help than their Factmonster site.

Internet Public Library kidSpace  and  TeenSpace
The Internet Public Library is a public service organization and a learning/teaching organization at the University of Michigan School of Information.  It provides a coherent, objective, comprehensive and easily accessible place for kids and teens to find the quality information resources they need.

KID INFO
KID INFO is a homework and research assistant that is organized according to the curriculum covered in typical elementary, middle, and secondary schools throughout the United States.  It is a starting point for students and parents who want to spend "quality" time on the web.  It ''cuts out the middleman'' whenever possible linking users directly to pages that offer valuable, curriculum-related topics as well as a wealth of internet resources.

Kids on the Web Homework Tools
Provides access to dictionaries and encyclopedias and links to other homework tools.

KidsClick!
KidsClick! was originally created by a group of librarians at the Ramapo Catskill Library System in New York State.  Although it does not act as an internet filter it was designed by public librarians to guide young internet users to valuable and age appropriate web sites.

KidsPost
Articles from the Washington Post about current events and entertainment.  Get "brain food" for homework help, and have fun with games, polls, online discussions, and more.

Kidzone
Gives interesting facts about a wide range of subjects, from geography and language arts to magic tricks and science experiments.

National Geographic for Kids
Get help on a variety of topics including animals, history, culture, geography, science, and nature. Includes photo galleries and descriptions of various places in the world. Also provides a dictionary and thesaurus.

NCES Students' Classroom
A National Center for Education Statistics site that provides fun quizzes and activities about things like famous mathematicians, graphs, words, and more. There's also a glossary and a tool to find schools all over the U.S.

refdesk for kids
Refdesk, the librarian's best friend, has a homework helper site too.

Smithsonian for Students
Find information and resources at the Smithsonian's Education site for your age and grade level.

ThinkQuest
A free educational resource featuring 5,500+ websites created by students from around the world as part of a competition.  The websites that are listed were selected for their creativity and educational value.  Topics must be within one of the official competition categories including arts and entertainment, government, history, social issues, science and sports.

Biography

Artchive
Mark Harden's Artchive is full of artist biographies as well as art information and images.

Authors and Illustrators
Provides links to websites so students can learn more about the authors and illustrators of books for kids.

Biographies
This website, maintained by the Multnomah County Library, provides links to many sites with biographical information.

Black History Month Biographies
A free resource of over 60 biographies from Gale Research for Black History Month.

Inventors Hall of Fame
Provides information by inventor, invention or by date.

Nobel Prize Winners
Provides information on Nobel prize winners as well as information about Alfred Nobel.

Government

Ben's Guide to U.S. Government for Kids
This website maintained by the Government Printing Office provides information by grade level on the U.S. government.

Federal Websites for Kids
Maintained by the Census Bureau, this page lists government websites especially for kids.

FirstGov for kids
Another U.S. government interagency Kids' Portal, this site was developed and is maintained by the Federal Citizen Information Center. It provides links to Federal government kids' sites along with some of the best kids' sites from other organizations and levels of government, all grouped by subject.

Rulers.org
Lists past and present kings, queens, presidents, prime ministers and other rulers for the countries of the world.

The United States House of Representatives
The official web site of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The United States Senate
The official web site of the U.S. Senate.

The United States Supreme Court
Good site for information about the Constitution and the Supreme Court of the United States.

Washington State Legislature Kid's Page
Good site for information about Washington State with links to other websites about our state.

The White House
Visit the President at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave in Washington, D.C.

History

Castles on the Web
Has links to everything medieval.

Homeschooling

Homeschooler network
A site for homeschooling families, HomeSchooler Network is packed with over 5,000 lessons, activities, and articles to help with homeschooling.

Indian Tribes and Other Indigenous People
American Indians of the Pacific Northwest
A collection of over 2,300 photographs and 7,700 pages of text relating to the American Indians of the Northwest Coast and Plateau.

NativeWeb
NativeWeb is an international educational organization dedicated to using the Internet to disseminate information from and about indigenous nations, peoples, and organizations around the world.  Provides more than 5500 links to sites dealing with native peoples.

Yahoo's Native American Tribes, Nations & Bands Index

Math and Science

Ask Dr. Math
Gives formulas and solves common math and geometry problems, by grade level.

Chemical Elements
An online, interactive periodic table of the elements.

Dinosaurs
A comprehensive look at dinosaurs designed for students of all ages.

Math.com
This site is dedicated to providing revolutionary ways for students, parents, teachers, and everyone to learn math.

NASA KIDS
This site provides information for kids about space and space flight.

The Planets
A NASA website that provides pictures and information about the planets of our solar system.

States & Countries 

50 states.com provides links to information about all the states and their capitals.

Flags of All Countries
Shows the flags of all counties as well as links to other information about the countries.

Offical Web Site of Every State
This website provides links to the official website of each state.

U.S. State Department Background Notes 
This site, maintained by the U.S. State Department, includes facts on the countries of the world.  Each country's land, people, history, government, political conditions, economy, and its relations with other countries and the United States are covered.

World FactBook
This site, maintained by the CIA, provides historical, economic, geographical and political information on the countries of the world.

Tacoma School District

Tacoma School District
The main web site of the Tacoma Public School system.