Goodmorning my loves! As we start a new week at home, I wanted to share how G and I have been juggling being teachers to Ale while still managing to do housework and maintain a regular work schedule. These past few weeks in quarantine, we’ve been working tirelessly to keep Ale occupied and have even been replicating some of the activities she was doing in the classroom at home. Luckily, there are so many amazing free online resources and educational classes that are available for kids of all ages. From printable worksheets, to virtual museum tours, and kid-friendly cooking sessions, here are some of my favorite free resources that I’ve discovered, used, and loved, over the last few weeks in quarantine.
Take a Virtual Field Trip
If you are in need of a quick and engaging activity to keep the kids occupied, take a virtual field trip! There are over 2,500 museums are the world that have made their museum collections available for free online. Google Arts & Culture has a huge assortment of museum collections so you and your kids can take virtual tours of world-famous museums and exhibits all around the world, for free!
The American Museum of Natural History also has some great online resources including games and activities, online curriculum collections, and virtual tours on the museum’s Youtube channel. All of these programs are for kids of all ages too!
General Curriculum Courses (Science, Math, Social Studies)
Khan Academy
Ages: 2-7 years old
Khan Academy is a free online platform where students can do free lessons in math, science, and humanities. It’s available to view on your mobile phone or iPad.
Ology Science
Ages: All ages
If you’re looking for a good science program, the Ology science website offers tons of games and activities for kids of all ages including important science topics like astronomy, marine biology, archaeology, etc. Another great resource for science is the California Science centre which is livestreaming a “Stuck at Home Science” video series every weekday at 10 a.m. PDT.
Scholastic
Ages: Pre-K to 9th Grade
Scholastic recently launched their “Learn at Home” platform which offers daily courses for students from Pre-K to 9th grade. These daily courses include everything from writing, research projects, geography lessons and virtual field trips so your kids can feel like they’re back in school!
National Geographic Kids
Ages: 7 to 14
National Geographic Kids is a great online hub for your kids to explore nature, animals, history, and geography. This is more of an informative platform and doesn’t include any worksheets or curriculum, so kids can really just sit down and interact with all the programs which include educational games, kid-friendly information and video footage, and at-home experiments. The site also now hosts a virtual Explorer Classroom every weekday at 2:00 pm (EDT) on topics like wildlife, ocean conservation, space, and much more!
ST Math
Ages: Pre-K to 6th Grade
ST Math is an award-winning, patented math program that has recently made their services free through June 30th to all those affected by COVID-19. This program teaches kids the foundational concepts of math visually to allow them to really build up their conceptual understand and recognize patterns before they start tackling real math problems. Best of all, it’s super easy to use and is supported by your home computer, tablet, or phone.
Reading Activities
The Library has an online collection of everything from ebooks, magazines, and downloadable audiobooks. All you need to do is sign up for a temporary digital library card and then you can start viewing these collections from the comfort of your home!
JumpStart also has a huge variety of age-specific and grade-based reading activities for kids. You can either view these online or print them if you have access to a printer at home.
Storyline Online is published by SAF-AFTRA and has over 50 popular children’s picture books that come along with activities.
ABCya provides fun and colorful reading games with lively music and narrators to keep kids learning and engaged at the same time. The preschool games focus on the alphabet while higher grade levels are introduced to topics like nouns, verbs, past tense, adverbs, etc.
Fun Activities
PBS Kids has curated an amazing platform of free online resources to make the most out of this quarantine for your kids. You can find everything from educational games, videos, and quests featuring your kids’ favorite PBS television shows and characters. They also help parents stay on track by sending out a daily newsletter that offers new and suggested activities and tips for teaching and playing with your kids at home. I’ve listed their apps that you can download to your phone or tablet below:
The PBS KIDS Video app is available for mobile, tablet, and can connect to your TV for on-demand videos and live streaming. It’s free with no subscription required! Download the app here.
The PBS KIDS Games app has almost 200 educational games related to math, science, and creativity! It’s designed for kids of all ages. These games can be downloaded to your mobile phone or tablet to play offline at anytime as well. Download the app here.
Highlights Kids is also really well-rounded online resource where your kids can find creative and fun activities to keep them occupied and learning. Younger kids can play games and do crafts while older kids can submit jokes, drawings and embarrassing moments. They offer a few different apps for different age groups and activities which you can download here.
Cooking
Nomster Chef is helping you and your whole family cook kids-friendly meals and stay healthy during this time! The site is full of fun recipe picture books for kids aged 2-12. What’s great is that every recipe is displayed in a picture format so your kids can easily flip through them like a digital storybook and understand how to follow recipe steps. So not only do your kids learn how to cook, but they also learn about food science, the culture of food, and nutrition. It’s a great way to get kids engaged with following step-by-step instructions and build on their motor and cognitive skills in a fun way. It’s also a great way to spend more quality time with your kids and also a stress-free way to introduce your kids to cooking healthy food.
American Test Kitchen Kids has recently made their entire website free for everyone! They make cooking and following recipe steps exciting for kids of all ages. There are all kinds of colorful cooking experiments, food games, and recipe challenges that will have your kids turn into little young chefs by the end of this quarantine!
Art Classes
Cassie Stephenz is offering live art projects for kids via Instagram. See here!
Artist and writer Mo Willems (author of “Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!”) is hosting daily Lunch Doodles video sessions every weekday at 1 p.m. EDT. You also have the option to download each episode and save it for later!
Color Our Collections is offering free PDF downloads of coloring pages created from art in the collections of 117 reputable institutions such as The New York Academy of Medicine Library, Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg, RISD Museum, and the list goes on.
Lunch Doodles with Mo Willems, a reputable artist in Brooklyn is now offering free daily online drawing session at 1 p.m. EST. If you can’t make that time, these videos can be found on the Kennedy Centre website as well!
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