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You don’t need to be a teacher or an educator to get access.
by MARISA LASCALA, CONTRIBUTOR
GOOD HOUSEKEEPING
With all of the recent school closures due to the COVID-19 outbreak, thousands of parents have turned into homeschooling educators overnight. And while many school districts are providing some kind of distance learning, parents still find themselves scrambling to come up with lesson plans, educational activities, DIY projects, indoor activities, and brain-boosting diversions to keep the kids entertained while everybody is staying home. This is especially true of the younger kids, since it’s so hard to find content that is appropriate for their age and grade level — and they get bored easily if something doesn’t grab them right away.
Educational companies to the rescue! Many apps, websites, and curriculum planners have been lowering their paywalls and offering their services for free to families affected by school closures. Others were always free, but seem all the more essential now. These 15 education companies are currently offering free subscriptions. And, while many other apps and websites are offering free services only to teacher and school districts, these go directly to parents — you don’t need an educator’s account to start using them. From science experiments to daily read-alouds to interactive video lessons about cooking and music, they’ll fill the days with diverting enrichment.
Scholastic
With the new Scholastic Learn at Home, every day Scholastic’s website will offer a new mini-lesson that includes a story, a video, and an activity. The lessons are grouped into four age groups: pre-k and kindergarten, Grades 1 and 2, Grades 3 to 5, and Grades 6+.
PBS Kids Daily Newsletter
While there’s always child-friendly content at PBS Kids, the organization is going the extra mile during school closures: It’s creating a newsletter that’ll give you ideas for learning activities at home. A new newsletter arrives every weekday.
Khan Academy
During school closures, the education website offers free daily schedules for students from the ages of 4 to 18. It’ll also be hosting livestreams on their Facebook, YouTube and Twitter about navigating school closures.
Circletime
At Circletime, educators host free, interactive videos in whatever their area of expertise might be. You can find video lessons in everything from yoga to family cooking to sing-along songs.
Club SciKidz
Every day on their blog, Club SciKidz will post a different simple science experiment for kids and parents to do at home. The first, for example, uses the scientific method to determine what household ingredient works the best to clean a dirty penny.
Duolingo
The always-free app (which does offer extra paid features) teaches foreign languages using bite-size lessons. Users earn points for correct answers an “level up,” offering extra motivation to keep at it.
Math Games
You can sort through these always-free math games by grade level, or by skill you’re looking to work on. There are also free worksheets you can print out.
Bamboo
Bamboo works with Amazon’s Alexa to do free, voice-based activities around math, music, social studies, and stories. If you register on Bamboo Grove, it can track your child’s progress and give rewards.
HippoCampus
For older ones, this site offers 7,000 free videos for middle schoolers through college students. You can check out the playlists in one of 13 subject areas, or you can browse by collection, like the NASA collection of science videos.
Mystery Science
Mystery Science combed through its past lessons and pulled the ones that were easiest to reproduce at home. Activities range from five-minute mini-lessons (including one called “How Does Hand Sanitizer Kill Germs,” which seems appropriate right now), to full, 45- to 90-minute classes with hands-on experiments.
Beanstalk
Beanstalk, which offers interactive online classes for preschool kids, is offering free memberships throughout the duration of the COVID-19 outbreak. Recently taught classes include “How Rainbows Work” and “All About Our Lips.”
ScratchJr
With this always-free app, kids can fool around with coding and eventually program their own interactive stories and games. The app is geared for kids ages 5 to 7, and then they can graduate to the regular Scratch.
Outschool
Outschool offers live, online classes for ages 3 to 13, and, for a limited time due to a big donation, it’s signing up families affected by school closures into $300,000 worth of online classes (limit $200 per family). And if you’re not one of the lucky ones, the lessons are still very affordable — some are as low as $5 per class.
Rosetta Stone
During school closures, Rosetta Stone will be giving three months of free language learning to all elementary, middle, and high school students. The program teaches language through immersion, with instant feedback and with progress reports.
TED-Ed
Bring the inquisitive curiosity of TED Talks down to school-age level with TED-Ed. There are free resources for students, and it also offers parents a daily TED-Ed activity that can be a hands-on, interactive lesson they can do with their children.
Audible
Audible has a free hub, Audible Stories, where kids can listen to great works of literature. Selections run the age gamut, from Beatrix Potter and Winnie the Pooh all the way up to Moby Dick and C.S. Lewis.
Rebel Girls
The folks behind Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls have put together some at-home resources for families. Activities include how to write a business plan, how to write a computer program, how to plant a garden, and more.
RV App Studios
The learning apps from RV App Studios, which was started by a parent as a passion project, are always free, and are downloaded by parents 3 million times per month. One app, ABC Kids Tracing and Phonics, won a “Best Games of 2016” distinction from Google Play.
GoNoodle
When it’s time for them to get up and move around, this always-free app has videos that kids can follow along with for a little dance break. They’re also coming up with daily activities for parents to use at home.
