You must keep your children learning during quarantine to ensure they retain knowledge and improve their skills. Because of lack of practice, Children could lose up to 30% of their school-year gains in math and reading!
Plus, keep them learning reduces the negative psychological impact of quarantine and help preserve their wellbeing (discover here 5 things to do every day to preserve your children well-being).
It is challenging to teach (kudos to all our amazing teachers out there), especially when at home while working remotely or worrying for the future after this crisis. This is particularly difficult for single parents who are alone to take care of their kids.
You need to follow or develop lessons plans, explain principles and create activities, exercises or tests to practice. This is a huge task that requires time, didactic skills, creativity and patience: all things that parents may not have.
There are many educational resources available online to support parents in providing structured learning to their kids. But with all those choices, it may be difficult to identify the right ones! When seeking options for an effective online educational tool, it is critical to look at: the cost, the scope, the content, the practice, the visual and the safety of the website.
It could be overwhelming to explore all the resources available but no worries… I got you covered with this list of 10 outstanding online education websites, all free, to keep your children learning during quarantine:
- PBS Kids: PBSKids.org is an educational and fun site full of games, videos, and interactive lessons featuring kids’ favorite PBS television show characters.
- Scope: Targets preschool and school aged children in each of the four key areas of childhood development – cognitive, social, emotional and physical
- Content: Structured content in various disciplines including Mathematics, Sciences, Social studies, English language art, Technology, Arts, etc.
- Practice: Interactive lessons and many games to practice. Sign up to track the progress of your kids by signing up to track the progress
- Visual: Engaging website design with a lot of fun videos, interactive lessons and animations
- Safety: Personal information of your kids is not requested, and content is all kids-friendly
- Cost: FREE!!!!
- CK12 : ck12.org pairs high quality content with the latest technologies to enable any kid to learn in her/his own way and make education accessible to everyone for FREE.
- Scope: serves both as an information resource and an application platform for K-12 teachers, educators and students
- Content: Structured content in various disciplines including Math, Science, English, Social studies, astronomy, etc. as well as STEM subjects
- Practice: Interactive lessons, simulations and videos with adaptative practice for each lesson, addressing different learning styles. Kids can play, learn, interact and explore concepts as well as track their progress
- Visual: Well-designed website with nice colors, videos, animations, and interactive activities
- Safety: Children under 13 should get consent of parents to register and no personal information is collected without consent of parents
- Cost: Free
- Khan academy: Khanacademy.org is dedicated in providing free world-class education for anyone, anywhere.
- Scope: Provides personalized learning resources for all ages and free tools for parents and teachers
- Content: Structured content on various disciplines including Math, science, computer programming, art history, economics and more…
- Practice: Instructional videos, variety of practice exercises and personalized dashboard allowing students to track their progress
- Visual: Although less engaging, kids, friendly than the previous websites in the list, the site is well structured and easy to explore
- Safety: Children under 13 are not allowed to register without parent’s consent
- Cost: Free
- Prodigy: prodigygame.com is a curriculum-aligned mathematic platform used by over 50 million students, teachers and admins at no cost, all educational content is free.
- Scope: Targets Grade 1 to 8 students to motivate them to learn and practice math
- Content: Covers only mathematics with game-learning methodology that adapts in difficulty to suit the child’s learning style and grade level
- Practice: Game-based and adaptive learning where kids have to solve math challenges to progress in the game
- Visual: Engaging interactive activities and well-designed website
- Safety: Children practice in a safe and private environment. No personal interactions or social networking can happen inside or outside the games
- Cost: Free with option to get a premium membership.
- Scholastic: Scholastic’s classroom magazine team has created a free “Learning at Home platform” for teachers and families offering day-by-day projects to keep kids reading and thinking at home. Not to mention that Scholastic is one of the leading Canadian publishers and distributors of children’s books and educational materials.
- Scope: Targets PreK students up to Grade 9
- Content: No structured content on a specific discipline but full of exciting articles, stories, videos for different grade levels to keep children reading and thinking
- Practice: Fun learning challenges and knowledge-building activities for each day. There is no progress monitoring and no option to sign-up for an account
- Visual: Basic web-site design but fits for the purpose
- Safety: Safe and easy to navigate in
- Cost: Free
- Funbrain: Funbrain.com is one of the leaders in free educational games since 1997
- Scope: Created for kids in grades Pre-K through 8
- Content: Games, books and videos that develop skills in math, reading, problem-solving and literacy
- Practice: Interactive games and activities to practice math, problem solving and reading skills by grades
- Visual: Fun and engaging website with interactive games, kids friendly
- Safety: Safe environment, does not collect personally identifiable information from kids
- Cost: Free
- National Geographic Kids: kids.nationalgeographic.com is dedicated to inspire new generations in protecting our planet through exploration and education initiatives. Games and educational videos and activities are free
- Scope:
- Content: Videos, stories, books to develop extensive knowledge about animals, sciences , space, planet , etc.
- Practice: Interactive games, quizzes, maps and experiences to get more knowledge. No sign-up
- Visual: Engaging website with lot of colors, videos and animated activities
- Safety: Safe and easy to explore
- Cost: Free, optional subscription to magazines and other paid products
- Switch zoo: Switchzoo.com is a fun website where kids learn about animals and their behaviors. It started as a small project, playing around with the idea of making new animals by switching their parts. At first, the zoo had just nine animals, and it was the only attraction on the website. Today, Switch Zoo has 142 species, and the website features additional animal games, music created from animal voices, a reference section about all the animals in Switch Zoo, lesson plans, and poetry, stories and artwork created by students and other visitors. and easy to explore
- Scope: Targets kids interested in learning more about animals and their behaviors
- Content: 142 species, and additional animal games, music created from animal voices, a reference section about all the animals in Switch Zoo, lesson plans, etc.
- Practice: Games and interactive activities.
- Visual: Basic website design but a lot of fun guaranteed when playing
- Safety: Safe and easy to navigate
- Cost: Free
- The Old farmer’s almanac for kids: Almanac for Kids features a lot of fun facts, creative activities, and great ideas that will keep kids of all ages loving learning on different topics to increase their culture.
- Scope: Targets kids of all ages
- Content: Facts and fun activities on subjects such as weather, sports, astronomy, history, nature, pets and much more
- Practice: Quizzes, games, jokes and interactive activities to learn and discover new facts
- Visual: Basic website design but a lot to learn even for adults…
- Safety: Safe and easy to navigate
- Cost: Free, optional subscription to magazine and other paid products
- How stuff work: Howstuffworks.com is an award-winning source of unbiased, reliable, easy-to-understand answers and explanations of how the world actually works.
- Scope: Older kids and +
- Content: Articles, audio podcasts, videos on various topics from science to money, tech, culture and more…
- Practice: Quizzes and puzzles
- Visual: Well-designed website but less engaging for kids
- Safety: Safe but not easy to navigate for kids
- Cost: Free
We know how important education is, (learn more on What parents need to know about education) and how budget could be challenging for single parents especially. Even with limited budgets we all want quality education for our kids and those outstanding websites provide just that: quality content for free!
Hope this list will be helpful for you. Any website you would add to the list? Let us know and give us your feedback in the comment section.
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