Ever since lockdowns and quarantine safety measures were put in place due to the coronavirus outbreak, many parents have found themselves juggling their jobs and raising their children at home. With some schools shut down in the meantime, parents now have to play the part of the teacher and provide education to their kids at home.
Thanks to digital technology and tools though, you can now find a vast amount of free online resources for kids to help with their learning. From finding out how to solve math problems to online Chinese language classes, you can find a slew of tools and resources that can assist you in exercising your children’s minds and further develop their understanding of different subjects.
To save you some precious time, we’ve rounded up about 22 free online learning resources for kids that can aid them when studying for tests, doing homework, researching, and improving their productivity. Essentially, these resources aim to bolster their learning progress. Let’s dive into it!
General References to Help With Homework:
wikiHow provides helpful how-to guides that go through multiple layers of quality assurance to ensure accuracy and reliability. It aims to teach people from around the world how to do anything. From how to grow plants to how to make a telescope, it has all possible answers that can help with your children’s homework.
Encyclopedia Britannica may have made the leap from print to online, but it is still servicing students, scholars, and educators with accessible information worldwide for 250 years. You can refer to this useful and reliable website for facts or information about historical and prominent figures, world history, science, literature, and more.
If you’re looking to add more incredible books to stimulate your child’s literacy, Steps to Literacy provides the best collection. They have a variety of grade-level genre packs and libraries, including fiction and non-fiction, read-aloud picture books to develop their reading skills, and a whole lot more. This site can help you ignite a desire for reading in your child.
Online Resources to Learn Different Things:
Allow your child to explore their musicality in between lessons by visiting PianoLessons4Children online. It offers piano lessons designed for beginner and elementary level. Parents can tag along and learn, as well! Beyond piano lessons, they also have lessons about famous composers, how to read music notes, and free music sheets.
Encourage your kids to be a tech genius at an early age with this nifty site. Codecademy is an interactive website that aims to teach people, especially kids, how to write programming codes. Start them young and see them write real code in minutes, regardless of experience level. The basic classes on Codecademy are free.
Has your kid expressed interest in learning another language? Let them learn via Duolingo. This app allows users to learn over 30 languages. Their approach to language learning is fun—offering bite-sized lessons that look and feel more like a game than a traditional teaching method.
Are you encouraging your little ones to learn Chinese? You can enroll them in Ni Hao to learn Chinese online. Their live online sessions encourage immersion and interaction between students and lecturers, helping them hone their proficiency in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. You can schedule a free trial class first to assess your child’s language level.
Language & Literature:
Ni Hao’s YouTube channel is their answer to the high demand for Chinese language learning. They post videos to help those learning and want to learn the language to improve their Mandarin skills. Their videos are colorful and fun, which are perfect for keeping kids’ attention when studying.
OWLPurdue is the official YouTube channel for Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL). Their videos about grammar, public speaking, citation styles, paragraph organization and flow, and more are perfect for junior and senior high school students who need further guidance on writing their papers.
Alive Studios elevates the language arts and math instruction learning experience by bringing animals to life through augmented reality. They make learning letter sounds, sound-symbol recognition, social-emotional learning, and other subjects more fun and colorful for pre-kindergarten and kindergarten children!
Math:
Khan Academy is a household name for high school and even college students, offering excellent video lessons to help solve students’ confusion in math, biology, chemistry, physics, economics, grammar, and many other subjects. From analyzing tone when reading to how to solve word problems, this channel simplifies complex notions for better understanding.
MathHelp.com upholds its mission to “give everyone a second chance to learn math.” Parents can find informative videos that can help them and their children understand math better. Moreover, their videos will make online learning for grade school, middle school, and high school students feel like they’re actually in a classroom with a teacher.
Arts:
This channel is hosted by a family of creatives—the father teaches the audience (usually fellow parents and kids) how to draw alongside his own children, showing viewers that making art is a fun bonding project for families. It also shows that people of all ages can draw! They upload new art lessons from Monday to Friday.
This YouTube channel creates fun art-making videos. For her Kids Art Week videos, she will often use materials that can be found at home, allowing you and your children to follow the art projects easily. Introduce art and create amazing pieces with your children, just like this easy and fun Picasso Dogs project!
Apps and Games to Keep Learning Interesting:
Lumosity is a mobile brain-training app that showcases over 50 science-based games designed by neuroscientists to enhance the users’ cognitive skills. It boasts free interactive learning games for kids that will challenge their brains through different categories, including memory, speed, attention, problem solving, math, language, and more.
This app offers a library of texts and videos to pair with lectures for English & Language Arts (ELA), Science, and Social Studies. It’s geared towards educators and students, allowing them to access full-length novels, articles, famous short stories, textbook sections, and more. Actively Learn is best suitable for elementary to senior high school students.
Anki is a cross-platform flashcard software that helps students study better and learn faster. You can use it for quizzing your children with term definitions, language learning, vocabulary testing, and more.
You can access pre-made flashcards or create your own. Its algorithm is trained to learn how well you do with the flashcards and prioritizes the things you don’t know compared to things you already do for high-efficiency learning.
Tools to Help Make Online Learning Easier:
Google Classroom is a free website platform that enables educators and students to stay organized with their assignments, promote collaboration, and improve their communication for more productive and meaningful learning.
While it is made for educators, parents can also use it to enhance their children’s online learning. You can talk about school-related subjects there, give quizzes, and keep your materials and resources in one place.
If you’re having a hard time remembering important test dates or quiz dates, this exam countdown app can help. Exam Countdown Lite is a free and easy-to-use app that can help you and your kids keep track of exam dates. Moreover, it allows you to include important notes and set up study reminders to prepare your kids for the tests.