Monthly Archives: March 2020
Free Educational Websites for Your Kids to Keep Learning During the Coronavirus Pandemic
Teenage Girl Using Laptop in Library — Image by © Royalty-Free/Corbis
A few days ago, I posted some suggestions for activities you can do with your children, given that schools across the United States and Europe are closed, and many communities have been given the mandate to “shelter at home” to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
This blog post provides a list of educational websites offering free content for children. The list is loosely divided into grade levels so you can scroll down to your child’s or children’s age level. Many articles have a list of websites, but no additional information as far as which ones work well, which ones have hidden fees, what ages they are best for, etc. So, in addition to links, you’ll find at least a short description for each of the sites.
I hope this article proves helpful as you navigate the world of homeschooling, at least for the short time, while we’re waiting and praying for the COVID-19 pandemic to blow over without too much long-term damage.
Our thoughts and prayers are with those who are on the front lines offering healthcare assistance, maintaining order, and serving the community during this time.
All School Ages
1. 123 Home School 4 Me
123homeschool4me.com has free printable worksheets for all ages. Their website states, “We have over 300,000+ FREE worksheets for toddler, preschool, and K-12. Our free educational printables cover alphabet letters, math, language arts, history, geography, and more.”
2. Google Arts and Culture Partners
I mentioned this in a previous post, but Google Arts and Culture has collections from hundreds of partners worldwide, including museums, national collections, and galleries. You can “visit” one museum each day and still not be done by the time the coronavirus pandemic passes. With Google’s street-view feature, your kids can tour New York’s Guggenheim Museum or Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum while waiting for the COVID-19 danger to pass.
3. Khan Academy
Khan Academy is pretty amazing. Each of my kids has a profile, which I encourage them to use during the summer when they’re not in school. They also have an app for younger children (ages 2 – 7) and recently published an article on how to use Khan Academy for remote learning, including a daily schedule with links to all kinds of resources.
An especially helpful aspect of Khan Academy is the fact that they have an almost endless supply of math material – for every grade and on into high school and beyond. For someone like me (not especially strong in the math arena), it’s great to have a resource to fall back on when I can’t explain a math concept to my teenager.
Preschool – 2nd Grade
4. Starfall
Starfall.com has a lot of fun, education material that you can access without an account. Most of their free, interactive material is geared for the kindergarten level. If you choose to get an account, it’s $30 for a year of full access.
This was one of the main educational websites I used with my kids when they were in the early-learning stage. It has activities that teach phonics.
5. Education.com
Education.com offers printable worksheets, lesson plans, guided lessons, and online games. You can create a free account as a parent, and your child will be able to access a few things before a window pops up that says you’ve reached your basic membership limit for the month. However, the pricing for this website is quite economical; it costs $3.49 a month for access to worksheets, $5.00 a month for printables and digital, and $6.00 a month for full access to all the material.
2nd – 5th Grade
6. Typing Club
Typing Club is the new Mavis Beacon. This website doesn’t require you to create an account, although if you do so, you can track your stats and progress. It teaches touch typing for free. Your child can also take a placement test to gauge how much they know and determine where they belong in learning to touch type.
While touch typing might not seem as important as in eras past, there is still a lot to be said for kids learning to become familiar with the letters and numbers on a keyboard. And it is a lot easier to learn with a website and app than with an old typewriter and sheets of paper.
7. Scholastic Learn at Home
Scholastic Learn at Home provides “day-by-day projects to keep kids reading, thinking, and growing” during the coronavirus pandemic. You can choose a grade level and access the material for your kids/students. You’ll find links to all kinds of interesting information for a variety of ages. This single website can keep your kids occupied and learning for a good, long while.
4th – 6th Grade
8. TED-Ed
TED-Ed offers hundreds of educational videos, most around 5 minutes in length. Each video also has a “think” section that asks a series of multiple-choice questions, a “dig deeper” section that has links to other sources, and a “discuss” section where folks can join the conversation.
Video categories include Health, Literature and Language, The Arts, Thinking and Learning, Social Studies, Science and Technology, and much more. This website is ideal for children who enjoy learning random facts and information about a lot of different things. You don’t need to create an account to access the videos and material.
Junior High / High School
9. Coursera
Coursera collaborates with nearly 200 universities and companies to provide lessons in skills, including business analytics and graphic design. They offer career preparation and students can even earn a degree or certificate from various universities. You can create an account and access the courses for free, but if you want grades or certificates, this requires payment.
10. EdX
EdX is a pretty awesome online learning medium. You can choose from over 2,500 verified online courses on topics such as Computer Science, Language, Data Science, Engineering, History, Literature, Physics, Math, and Humanities. You’ll need to create an account to access the courses, but they are all free and many of them are self-paced. You can also earn verified certificates in the courses, which usually cost $60.00 to $90.00 per course.
11. DuoLingo
DuoLingo is a language-learning website (also a free app) that offers free lessons in numerous languages, including Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Arabic, Welsh, Hindi, Latin, and many more. Users can also simultaneously learn more than one language. Last year, my daughter was learning Spanish while I took lessons in Hindi and tried my hand at Irish Gaelic.
Closing Thoughts
I plan to be updating this blog post regularly as I and my kids try out other online educational resources during our time learning from home due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Hope these are helpful, and feel free to leave a comment if you’ve found a great website you’d like to share, or if you have tried out any of the above websites and enjoyed using them with your kids (or didn’t).
Be blessed and stay safe and healthy as a family.
Activities To Do with Kids Stuck at Home during Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19)
Many communities have chosen to take proactive measures to flatten the curve of the coronavirus pandemic, and hundreds of schools across the nation will be closed for the next few weeks. The question many parents have now is, “What are we supposed to do with our kids during the coronavirus pandemic?”
Here are a few practical suggestions of things you can do with your children as your family practices social isolation to keep yourself and others safe from COVID-19.
1. Go On a Few Virtual Museum Tours
Hundreds of museums worldwide are offering virtual tours, which you can access through Google Arts and Culture. These include art museums, national galleries, and photo images. Their virtual tours are ideal for kids stuck at home and bored due to the COVID-19 precautions.
If your child has an interest in art, they can check out amazing art forms from other cultures, such as Chinese Shadow Puppetry or explore historical art forms including modern art, cubism, post-impressionism, canvas painting, etc.
If they like exploring historical sites, they can “virtually visit” a number of places in India and learn lots about culture and history, or take a virtual visit to the ruins of Pompeii.
2. Plant a Vegetable Garden
It’s nearly spring, and growing things are starting to, well, spring up. Why not make the most of it? Whether you have a lot of space in your yard or a few sunny windowsills, you can grow something with your kids.
A few easy plants to start with include green beans and peas, zucchini, carrots and potatoes, and tomatoes. Some need more space, more or less sunshine, and varying amounts of water, so do your homework before getting started. You can even find apps for vegetable gardening to help make it easier.
If you don’t have a lot of space, perhaps start with an herb garden. Hopefully, by the time the coronavirus pandemic blows over, you’ll find your family has taken positive steps toward being self-sustaining as a household.
3. Get into Coloring (Again)
The popularity of adult coloring books is on the rise, as they are known to offer stress-relieving benefits. The same goes for children. In other words, this is an activity you can do together with your children.
A few great adult coloring books include Be Blessed! Adult Coloring Book
4. Take on a Home Improvement Project
Remember that bedroom you’ve been wanting to paint forever or the bookshelves you need to organize? Now might be a good time. Of course, the ages of your children will have a bearing on what project you choose to tackle.
If nothing else, as long as you are all healthy, you can probably pull off a decent spring cleaning together.
5. Educate Your Family about the Coronavirus
Students Working in a Computer Lab — Image by © Royalty-Free/Corbis
This might be stating the obvious, but take the time to learn the facts about COVID-19 and the coronavirus. This means check out official websites that provide accurate information. Yes, you can laugh about and share memes, but don’t depend on them for your understanding of the novel coronavirus.
Nations and states within nations, for the most part, have websites that offer up-to-date information about the effects of the virus in that area. Stay informed by tracking the latest COVID-19 updates in your city and state.
A website that offers frequent overall updates on the coronavirus is Pharmaceutical Technology’s page on the coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak.
The Kids’ Health website also provides a good amount of information on their page, “Understanding Coronavirus,” including an article specifically for kids: “Coronavirus: What Kids Can Do.”
6. Keep Your Children Learning
Thankfully, it looks like plenty of free educational resources are popping up all over the place. For instance, Scholastic has released a Learn at Home resource on its website, with daily projects geared for different grade levels.
The editors of Scholastic Magazine make this statement:
Even when schools are closed, you can keep the learning going with these special cross-curricular journeys. Every day includes four separate learning experiences, each built around a thrilling, meaningful story or video. Kids can do them on their own, with their families, or with their teachers. Just find your grade level and let the learning begin!
Closing Thoughts
I hope these few ideas help you to transform these uncertain days into a positive time for your children. If your kids are anything like mine, they’re probably looking at things they’ll be missing. They might be feeling disoriented and disappointed. It’s our responsibility to guide them through this time.
Hopefully, looking back on the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, your kids won’t just remember it as the time that people bought out all the toilet paper and hand sanitizer, but as the time their family grew closer together and learned plenty in spite of schools being closed and events getting canceled.
Be blessed and stay safe as a family.
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