Homeschooling. Unschooling. Virtual schooling. Online School. Educating. I’m still trying to get my head around the possibility of becoming housebound. It’s something I never imagined. Yet here I am collating activities each day, adding them to my list, sorting them into categories, so I have them at my fingertips if I need them. There’s nothing like a little preparation.
We’re adding to this resource bank regularly as we find more and more courses suitable for your online school.
Sunshine is still in primary school, whereas Striker is in High School. I imagine that, like me and my setting, their respective schools are busy preparing strategies to provide work for the kids from home in the event schools close. We might just enter the era of the Online School for kids. However, I want some extra items ready to go just in case. I thought you might like access to my growing resource too?
Hot Tip: In these uncertain times, Operation Ouch and specifically this video are supportive resources to help give kids accurate and age-appropriate information about what is happening.
Online School : Virtual Courses and Learning Resources for Parents
Table of Contents
Literacy Resources for Online Schooling
Reading and Phonics
Reading Eggs Before you rush out and purchase this resource, check with your chid’s school as they may already have a subscription. If they don’t, check out their 30 day FREE trial. Reading Eggs is an online program (accessed via website or app) created by experienced Australian teachers to help your child learn to read and prepare for school. In my experience, kids love it and find the program engaging and fun. Suitable: preschool to Stage 4
Lalilo is a great little app that supports students to develop phonics, word recognition, and comprehension through adaptive exercises. Students journey through different worlds, collecting badges and unlocking stories. The vocabulary-rich stories teach students about nature and animals in engaging and fun ways. Lalilo recently announced that they are providing FREE premium access to teachers until the end of the school year (I suspect they mean the US school year).
Scholastic Learn at Home provides a range of reading and literacy activities designed to keep kids reading, thinking, and growing. This is amazing resource that scopes out daily reading activities that includes virtual books, questions, puzzles and research items. I’m impressed!
Teach Your Monster to Read is a program that covers everything from letters and sounds to reading full sentences. It is an evidence based phonics instruction program that is FREE via the website. There’s also an app.
Storyline Online is an amazing resource that streams videos featuring celebrated actors reading children’s books alongside creatively produced illustrations. Each book includes supplemental curriculum aiming to strengthen comprehension and verbal and written skills for English-language learners.
Official Neil Gaiman Website For Young Reader as a bonefide fan of Neil Gaiman, learning that he has developed a website for kids almost made me weep for joy. Whilst it doesn’t have a whole heap of literacy resources, it does offer some reading the Graveyard Book in its entirety, some online games and some downloads. I think that’s pretty awesome.
Squishy Minne Bookstore is my absolute favourite Children’s Bookshop in the whole entire world. Now that’s a pretty big declaration, but it’s not just because of the books, or the shop’s ambience. It’s because the team behind this amazing place truly understand the importance of family and community and have developed a rather exceptional safe space where children can get lost in a book. Each week, the delightful Lucky offers Storytime live. At the moment they’ve gone digital for storytime, so head to the Squishy Minnie Youtube for the latest clip (they expire after 7 days).
Handwriting activities
Handwriting Lessons 20 video lessons to support learning to write letters of the alphabet.
Suitable: Early Stage One – Stage One
Fine Motor Skill Activities for home Fine motor skill activity suggestions to keep kids busy and practicing crucial developmental skills
Suitable: preschool, Early Stage One, Stage One
Spelling
Sumdog engages children in 28 games featuring read aloud and look-cover-spell questions. You can also set custom lists
Numeracy Resources for Online Schooling
Place Value A series of 14 videos explaining place value and accompanying activities Suitable: Stage Two – Three
Matific provides thousands of activities and worksheets that cover every concept students learn in K-6 mathematics, and is available on all devices, including the web, iOS, Android and Kindle Fire. They are currently offering 60 day complimentary access to Matific for all schools. Check with your child’s school for access.
Mathletics is used in primary and secondary schools across Australia. It is likely that your child already has an account, but if not, they do offer a free trial for home users.
Prime Number video Striker loves finding interesting tricks he can use for maths, so when I spotted the prime number video I knew I had to save it for a day where we could have some fun with numbers. Boo-yah!
Sumdog personalised mathematics that provides adaptive learning and multi-player games for ages 5 to 14. You can set focused and personalised practice in less than a minute. They choose the game they want to play whilst you choose the table they need to practice!
Prodigy is a math platform that easily motivates primary to year 8 students to learn and practice mathematics. Accessible at home or in class for FREE!
Problem solving activities provides a range of printable tangram task cards to download and print out so you can provide the kids with some problem-solving sessions.
Khan Academy supports students to practice concepts at their own pace, first filling in gaps in their understanding and then accelerating their learning. It is US based, but a great resource to have up your sleeve.
25 Fun Maths Activities And Games These are all free and all possible to create for home.
Science Resources for Online School
8 LIve Wildlife Webcams Striker and Sunshine love wildlife so with no wildlife park visits on the horizon I came up with this little resource to provide us lots of fun to see live animals in their natural habitats from our lounge room. Cool, right?
Australian Museums to visit again, from your living room. You can look around, check out the many different exhibits, and have a whole lot of fun.
Khan Academy supports students to practice concepts at their own pace, first filling in gaps in their understanding and then accelerating their learning. It is US based, but a great resource to have up your sleeve.
National Geographic for Kids boasts a range of geography and biology activities for the kids to explore.
ChemMatters Connections to Chemistry Concepts is a great website resource that explores chemistry concepts for high school students.
Paper Structures Engineering takes everyday items and challenges students to build a range of structures. It’s heaps of fun!
Innerbody is an interesting website that helps kids explore the human anatomy, and its various systems. With interactive models and detailed explanations, this website will help them learn more about the internal mechanics of the amazing human body.
Brain Breaks Resources for Online School
Lunch Doodles with Mo Willems! Mo Willems is the Kennedy Center Education Artist-in-Residence who is staying at home right now. He is inviting you into his studio every day for his LUNCH DOODLE. The kids can draw, doodle and explore new ways of writing by visiting Mo’s studio virtually once a day for the next few weeks. Grab some paper and pencils, pens, or crayons as Mo invites you to doodle together and explore ways of writing and making.
Virtual Excursions
14 Australian Museums to visit from your Living Room is a resource I created to give me a quick reference to some Aussie museums the kids and I can visit over the coming weeks. There are quite a few and through the power of the internet, you can explore the buildings and exhibits.
FarmFood 360 is such a cool concept. From either your laptop or device kids can visit a range of Canadian farms and factories to see where and how food is produced. They can even use Google Cardboard for a real virtual experience.
Explore Mars the surface of Mars via NASA’s Curiosity Rover. It’s not in real-time, but the kids can have a close to real-life look at the red planet.
The Louvre Museum in Paris is a true bucket list item. It will be a while until France reopens its borders so you can visit, in the meantime visit the museum’s exhibition rooms and galleries, contemplate the façades of the Louvre…
The Great Wall of China is one of the amazing wonders of the world that we are yet to visit but hope to one day. To prepare us for our one day visit the kids have been exploring the wall through this virtual tour.
The British Museum is created the most awe-inspiring platform to give kids a virtual tour of their space. Virtual visitors to tour the Great Court and discover the ancient Rosetta Stone and Egyptian mummies.
Languages
Duolingo is possibly the best app for teaching kids a second language. Learning with Duolingo is fun and addictive. Earn points for correct answers, race against the clock, and level up.
Geography
Carmen Sandiego was one of my favourite games as a kid. Carmen, the expert super-sleuth, helped to unravel a bunch of clues to navigate my way around the world. It was so much fun. This website provides a range of resources to supplement the Carmen Sanidego Netflix show from posters to card games to episode guides and more, you’ll find everything you need to spark curiosity and inspire your Carmen crew.
Coding
Building a Galaxy with Code If you have a kid that loves Star Wars, you will love these coding activities.
Music
Theta Music Trainer is a complete system of online courses and games for ear training and music theory.
Podcasts
Sometimes all you need is a good 30 – 45 minutes quiet time so you can complete some chores. For me, podcasts are a great solution as I am able to engage the kids in a mindful colouring activity or LEGO while they listen to one of the best podcasts for kids I’ve rounded up for your listening pleasure.