As students and families across the country navigate this season of uncertainty, we've compiled a list of quality and engaging activities for children.
As parents across the country tackle homeschooling and keeping their children engaged during this season of uncertainty, we have compiled a list of resources that we believe are valuable to students and parents. Whether it’s watching live video footage of giraffes and pandas at the San Diego Zoo or an interactive read aloud, these resources can be fun and meaningful.
Educational Fun!
- San Diego Zoo: Watch live video footage of animals including pandas, penguins, polar bears, giraffes, and more! Don’t forget to take a tour of the zoo as well.
- Distance Learning from the Smithsonian Museum: Games, activities, and resources for parents and students via the Smithsonian Museum.
- National Geographic for Kids: Explore reptiles, mammals, and amphibians!
- National Geographic Learn from Home: Activities and lessons for students from K-12th grade that provide engagement in different topics on science, geography, and social studies.
- PBS Kids: PBS KIDS’ new weekday newsletter offers activities and tips you can use to help kids play and learn.
- Education.com: Need help thinking of arts and craft activities? Education.com offers some ideas along with step-by-step instructions on how to create the materials needed.
- Tune into the Weather Channel: Once an hour, at 50 minutes past – The Weather Channel is taking a break from forecasting and is instead providing lessons targeted to school-aged kids ranging from explaining thunderstorms, blizzards, and more!
Curriculum Resources
- Scholastic Learn at Home (grades pre-K to 9): Interactive reading, activities, and projects to keep kids reading, thinking and growing!
- Khan Academy (grades pre-K to 12): Offers student schedules for remote learning in addition to tons of resources for math practice.
- Unite: Includes a large selection of picture books on an interactive website. Unite allows your child to flip through the book and have it read aloud to them in a variety of different languages.
- BrainPOP! (K to 12): It includes a range of videos and activities for reading, science, social studies, math, arts and technology.
- ABC Mouse (ages 2 to 8): Offers curriculum and more than 850 lessons. As your child completes each lesson, he or she is guided to the next one and is motivated to continue learning by ABCmouse.com’s Tickets and Rewards System. The first month is free!
- NYC Department of Education (grades pre-K to 12): NYC Department of Education shares activities and supplementary learning materials for math, ELA, science, and social studies.
- Education.com (grades K to 5): Offering free access to independent study packets that are printable booklets containing a week’s worth of learning materials across all subjects.
- Great Minds: Updating content daily with written materials for math (Grades K to12) and daily instructional videos for English language Arts (Grades K to 8), math (Grades K to 12), and science (Grades 3 to 5) are provided.
Teacher Resources
- newsela: Newsela offers a variety of nonfiction texts for students in which you can adjust the Lexile level. Newsela also created text sets which include guiding and supporting questions and different activities that connect with the reading topic. Complimentary access through the 2019 to 2020 school year. This could be a great resource for teachers to share reading material with their classes.
- Kahoot!: This resource could be useful if teachers are looking for a way to engage their students or hold them accountable to some extra practice. This could be used for spiraling grammar or vocabulary skills!
- ReadWorks: This can be a tool for both parents and teachers alike. For teachers, ReadWorks includes a webinar that will help with best practices for remote learning, how to use ReadWorks for synchronous or asynchronous learning, and how to get started with ReadWorks account for digital classes. For parents, it will allow access to easy-to-use reading materials and instruction.
- Success Academy: Success Academy offers tips to teachers as they transition to remote learning. See best practices here!
