Resources
On the eve of school holidays and being restricted to home, the challenge for all parents is to keep their sanity by keeping the children occupied and motivated. Below is a list of websites that offer hours of learning activities for children both young and old. Hope this helps with your home time in the next few months. Stay safe everyone.
- Virtual Field Trips
- Visit museums. Google Arts and Culture partnered with over 2,500 museums and galleries around the world to offer virtual tours of their spaces. Some of the options include New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum
- The Louvre, based in Paris, is also offering its own virtual tour online for free
- The San Diego Zoo has a live webcam for animals
- Melbourne Zoo also has live webcams
- Explore the surface of Mars on the Curiosity Rover
- The British Museum- located in the heart of London allows virtual visitors to tour the Great Court and discover the ancient Rosetta Stone and Egyptian mummies
- Geography with National Geographic
- Children’s books read by famous- people
- Crafts and activities
- Fun games, recipes, crafts, activities
- Online history classes for all ages preteen through adults
- Educational games K-12
- 35,000 pages of online content on the different cultures and countries of the world
- Illustrated recipes designed to help kids age 2-12 cook. Recipes encourage culinary skills, literacy, maths and science
- Young Explorers is a magazine designed specifically for young children. Children can listen to the magazine being read to them as they follow along with the highlighted text
- Type in any city, state, or country to view an archive of historical photographs and other documents. It’s a unique way to help children learn about history
- Help children learn to appreciate the arts by providing them with the opportunity to play games, conduct investigations, and explore different forms of art
- Live video of the National Zoo and Smithsonian Learning Lab
- This NASA initiative covers a wide range of topics including weather, climate, atmosphere, water, energy, plants, and animals
- Think Design explores careers in fashion design, graphic design, interior design, book design, product design, film and theatre, architecture, animation, and environmental design
- Movement and mindfulness videos created by child development experts
- Kid-friendly workouts — choose from Strength for Kids, Agility for Kids, Flexibility and Balance for Kids, Warm-Up for Kids, Cooldown for Kids, Stand Up and Move for Kids, OR create your own custom kid workout
- Mo Willems, the author of ‘Don’t let the Pigeon Stay up Late’ is uploading daily drawing lessons
- Maths as a fun part of your daily family routine
- Music is for everyone
- Projects to keep kids reading, thinking, and growing
- Learn a language
- Yoga and mindfulness for kids
- All sorts of online classes for kids
- Short videos and texts that answer various burning questions for children. There are vocabulary challenges and comprehension questions
- Learn to code
- Listen to astronauts read stories from space
- Maths games galore
- Lots of science experiments that you can do at home
- Grammar- Work on the 8 parts of speech
- Google Earth. All sorts of incredible learning here
- Scratch teaches students all about coding
- A wonderful detailed way to get kids engaged in the world of art
- Tests kids’ geography skills. Using images from Google’s Street View, it puts players down in the middle of the street and asks them to figure out where they are
- Live PE lessons at 9am Monday to Friday on this YouTube channel for children of all ages.
- Short videos about numbers that help kids explore complex math topics and make math more fun
- Lets kids play instruments online. Instruments include the guitar, piano, pan flute, drums, and bongos
- A large selection of fun songs to help teach preschool students
- Coding for 4-10 year olds
- For budding Marine Biologists- take a deep dive into ocean life.
- Science podcasts to listen to with your kids
- Red Tent Art- step by step instructions on art projects including origami, 3D cards, clay pots, etc
- ABC- Educational resources
- Boost writing confidence with Storybird
- Kids numbers
- Maths Frame
- Make your own animated videos with Go Animate
- Prezi (make your presentations zoom)
- Create interactive avatars to showcase children’s learning – Voki
- Go Geocatching
- The Kid Should See This
- Electoral System of Australia
- Kids News
- Carson Ellis’ Art Club- Carson Ellis, author and illustrator will be posting art assignments on her Instagram page every weekday morning. If you want to share them, you can use the hashtag #quarantineartclub. She’ll also provide individual hashtags for each exercise so everyone can see each other’s work.
- Lady Gaga’s former backup dancer, Mark Kanemura, is hosting virtual dance sessions on his Instagram page
- And don’t forget to fly a kite! #24
- Scholastic has created a free learn-from-home site with 20+ days of learning and activities.
- Pretend to travel the world. Go on a virtual tour of these 12 famous museums.
- This is the awesome free curriculum that we use. Everything from preschool activities to 12th grade is here!
- List of thinking games by grade:
I received the list below from another Fathering Project Dads’s group. I haven’t used many of the websites listed so I can’t give a summary;
- BrainPop
- Curiosity Stream – paid plan
- Tynker – all about coding
- Outschool
- Udemy
- iReady
- Beast Academy (Math)
- Khan Academy
- Creative Bug – craft classes
- Discovery Education
YouTube Channels:
- Crash Course Kids
- Science Channel
- SciShow Kids
- National Geographic Kids
- Free School
- Geography Focus
- TheBrainScoop
- SciShow
- Kids Learning Tube
- Geeek Gurl Diaries
- Mike Likes Science
- Science Max
- SoulPancake
More awesome free learning websites that we like to use
- https://www.starfall.com/h/
- https://www.abcya.com/
- https://www.funbrain.com/
- https://www.splashlearn.com/
- https://www.storylineonline.net/
- https://pbskids.org/
- https://www.highlightskids.com/
- https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/
- https://www.coolmath4kids.com/
- http://www.mathgametime.com/
- https://www.uniteforliteracy.com/
- http://www.literactive.com/Home/index.asp
- http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/
- https://www.switchzoo.com/
- https://www.seussville.com/
- https://www.turtlediary.com/
- https://www.e-learningforkids.org/