Educational Resources
Storytime Anytime has a popular YouTube channel that features classics as well as the “How To Catch” books written by Adam Wallace. The videos also include “Pig the Pug” books, superhero books highlighting some favorites like the Incredibles, Lego DC Super Heroes, Guardians of the Galaxy and Black Panther.
Brightly Storytime is another great resource for read-aloud picture books and flip-along storytime books. Their YouTube channel is split into categories by age, making it easy to find the right book for your child.
Marvel Hero Tales is an app that can be accessed on any iPhone, Android, tablet or desktop computer. The recently released app incorporates a learning structure that helps children to personalize their learning experience while reading about their favorite Marvel heroes.
The Moth is bringing back Storytelling School to make education fun for children. Each week, The Moth will revisit a story from its archives. After watching the video with your child, you can do the provided activities.
Family Equality is hosting live and on-demand LGBTQ+-friendly videos for children. Join them for story hour, dance parties and family boot camps to get your family up and moving, even during the quarantine.
Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT) is full of homeschooling resources. The site has resources for Pre-K-12th and for every subject including English, foreign language, math, science, social studies and many other subjects. TPT has more than 4.5 million free and paid resources.
Education.com is offering its premium resources for free to help parents and teachers alike. You can get grade-specific bundles of resources, independent study packets and guided lessons. Education.com also has games that teach children skills like sight words, counting, coding, spelling and rhyming. It’s perfect for children in preschool through fifth grade.
GreatSchools has math, spelling, reading, counting and science worksheets available for free for children in PreK-fifth grade. You will need to have access to a printer in order to take advantage of all the free resources.
ABC Mouse is offering a free month trial of their services, which normally costs $9.95 a month. The site has a full online curriculum with more than 850 lessons across 10 levels that is perfect for children ages two to eight. As your child completes one lesson, they are automatically guided to the next one and can win tickets and rewards. Kids can learn reading, arts, colors, math and science in the more than 9000 activities provided for free.
Scholastic is offering the Scholastic Learn at Home Program to students who have been affected by COVID-19 school closures. The site has learning material for students in PreK-ninth grade. Each day, students get a few new tasks, such as reading a book or article, watching a video and completing a few activities.
CircleTime helps children have fun while learning. You can either participate in the classes with your child or have them follow the expert instructor by themselves. Some of the options include storytime yoga, interactive storytime, sing-along and playing with colors. If you want to cook or bake with your child, CircleTime has classes that walk you through a few simple recipes. For parents with babies, there are “Baby and Me” yoga classes available as well.
PBS For Kids lets you focus your children’s lessons on emotions and self-awareness, literacy, character, social skills, math, science and arts. It’s perfect for children aged two to eight.
Carson Dellosa Education offers ready-to-print free resources. With material in reading, language arts, social studies, science, math and more, parents can find content quickly for their students. Each month, Carson Dellosa Education puts together a collection of resources to help your family stay on track with their learning goals.
Beanstalk’s mission is to keep your kids active and doing physical activities during the quarantine. They offer on-demand and live classes for free, covering a variety of topics like shapes, gardening, cooking and more.
Ancestry allows families to explore their history together. Children can become their own historian, build their family trees or learn about specific moments in time. Their paid service is now available for free.
ScratchJr is available as a free app to teach children ages five to seven how to code. As they solve programs and design projects, your child will be able to program games and interactive stories.
CoolMath4Kids helps make math learning fun through games that teach kids how to add, subtract, multiply, divide and use fractions. The site has lessons, quizzes, brain teasers and even printable flashcards to help students learn new math skills.
All Kids Network has worksheets, color pages, hidden pictures, mazes, and dot to dot pictures available for free. Included on the site are more than 1000 craft ideas that you can do together with your child on the weekends or during a work break.
You Can Draw is perfect for kids who want to practice their artistic skills. Jarrett Lerner has blank comic book pages, “Finish This Comic!” comics and drawing/writing prompts to get your child’s brain moving creatively.
Crayola has every type of coloring page available for free downloads. You can find plants, animals, places, popular TV characters, words and letters, Disney characters and more.
The Nature Conservancy helps kids feel like they are out of the house with these virtual field trips. Your child can explore the coral reef in the Dominican Republic, a coastal temperate rainforest and the great forests of China.
San Diego Zoo has free live cams of their animals. Some of the animals your child can watch include polar bears, elephants, giraffes, apes (and their new baby!), koala bears, tigers, penguins and pandas.
National Geographic has created a variety of age-appropriate resources for children. Their Learn at Home page encourages children to explore the outside world safely (when possible!). Also available are Explorer Classrooms, where scientists and researchers show their everyday life and introduce children to the world of science. Parents can also check out NatGeo@Home, a hub filled with learning resources including science experiments, quizzes and videos.
The Central Caribbean Marine Institute (CCMI) lets you go on a virtual tour of the Caribbean reefs. Children can learn more about being a scientist and how to protect the sea and its creatures. The beautiful views of the ocean can help your family feel like you are on vacation.
KidNuz | Daily News Podcast for Kids - five minutes of today’s top news stories, current events, politics, science, entertainment, sports and more — all nonpartisan and age-appropriate for kids. The broadcast journalists behind this podcast deliver accessible summaries of the news of the day. Every weekday morning, expect a seven-minute episode filled with age-appropriate stories from the world of politics, science, sports and entertainment. Each report ends with a flash quiz on the details delivered in the episode to encourage close listening, and the website features plenty of resources for educators and parents to keep the learning going.
The Ten News. In 10 minutes or less, the episodes of this current affairs show feature “the stuff grown-ups are talking about, explained, and way more fun.” “The Ten News” tackles things like Supreme Court nominations, the Postal Service, presidential debates, poll worker shortages and the gender pay gap in sports. The host, Bethany Van Delft, breaks down the topic du jour to the basics, giving preteens the background they need to understand why that day’s news matters as well as the context to better help them develop informed opinions of their own. New episodes air every Tuesday and Thursday.
News Time - ABC Kids listen - A podcast about all the amazing stories happening at home and abroad each week, made especially for young children to help them understand the world around them. Join Ruby for News Time as she.
In each weekly episode, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reporter Ruby Cornish counts down five news stories with the aid of preschoolers whom she calls her “news helpers.” While the show focuses mostly on the lighter headlines for 6-year-olds and under (think awesome animals and young inventors), it also offers deft summaries of the world’s more serious stories. But the show’s real strength is in how it lets kids explain the big news of the day from their own points of view. For example, in June, “News Time” gave a breakdown of the Black Lives Matter protests that was delivered by the news helpers themselves, who explained in their own words what the words protest, racism and movement mean to them. The show still manages to be full of silliness and surprise and encourages curiosity in the world around young ones.
Episodes - Gen-Z Media - The Big Fib. The hilarious game show where kids have to figure out who’s an expert, and who’s a liar, liar, pants on fire.
How do you raise a judicious consumer of journalism in the golden age of misinformation? You get a sassy robot to host a fact-or-fiction game show, of course. Every week on “The Big Fib,” a show for ages 7 to 12, the robot L.I.S.A. (“Live In-Studio Audience”) and Deborah Goldstein, the show’s co-host and executive producer, introduce a young contestant of the week to two adults, both claiming to be experts in a particular subject. But one is an impostor. The players must weigh the information given to them, ask smart questions and use reasoning skills to determine who is the real expert and who is the liar. The podcast, previously known as “Pants on Fire,” keeps the subject matter fun and family-friendly. Topics have included “Bread,” “Hip Hop,” “Puzzles” and a perennial kid favorite, “Toilets,” in which a 9-year-old named Theo has to figure out whether a civil engineer named Gloria really created a solar-powered toilet, or if the other grown-up in the hot seat, Joe, is really an expert plumber. It’s a goofy premise that nevertheless shows children how to be good skeptics and equips them with the critical-thinking tools they need to interpret the world around them.