Enrichment Resources

• Brain Pop Jr: BrainPop videos, games and activities

• Epic: Get access to thousands of online books, learning videos, and more

• Fun Brain: Online books and games for reading and math.

• Go Noodle: Get students moving, and provide learning opportunities in multiple areas, including social-emotional health.

• Junior Achievement: Learning experiences that students can do on their own, with a parent or other caring adult; resources are leveled by elementary, middle and high

• Khan Academy: Resources to keep students on track with learning, including daily schedules.

  • Khan Academy Kids: Khan Academy for younger children.

• Learning Trajectories: Videos of math activities and math games that can be completed at home. (You have to create a classroom to get access to most of the materials, but it is free to do so.)

• PBS Kids: Learning games with characters from popular children’s shows and books.

• Scholastic Learn at Home: Free resource provides 20 days of articles and stories (can be read using built-in speech synthesis), videos, and fun learning challenges.

• Splash Learn: Practice math skills through fun online games.

• Storyline: Celebrities read children's books

• Starfall: PreK through Grade 3 learning activities for math, literacy, and more.

• Virtual Fieldtrips: Free virtual field trips allowing students to travel the world without leaving home

• Zones of Regulation: Program helping students learn about their emotions and self-regulation skills.

There are a variety of companies providing eBooks and/or Audiobooks for parents and educators while students are not able to attend their schools.

Parents: Here are some ideas for ways you can use eBooks or Audiobooks to encourage reading at home.

Beginning Readers: sit and listen to an audiobook together.

• If taking a break partway through it, ask your child what they think is going to happen next

• Talk about your favorite characters afterwards

• If the story had a problem to solve, ask your child how they would have solved the problem differently

• Have your child draw a picture that goes along with the story

• Ask your child what they would change about the story

Readers:

• Ask your child for details about the book they are reading or listening to. If you don't know what to ask here are some questions to start: what about the characters did they liked/didn't like, what was the plot of the book, where/when did the book take place, what genre (type) of book it was.

• Pick out a book together to read or listen to, discuss it during and afterwards

• Tell them about one of your favorite books or authors and encourage them to try it

• Also, ask them about their favorite book or author and try reading it

• Ask your child to create a book report in a creative way - the sky is the limit! Video, presentation, interpretive dance, flyer, poster, etc

Here are some ideas/resources that can help encourage your child to write:

Multi-day writing

Journaling example-

COVID-19 Pandemic: "chronicle the changes you observe as your community, the country, and the world respond to Covid19" This document includes a variety of modification for elementary, students with special needs, and even one with added social-emotional reflection questions. It can be helpful for students to process through their experiences and what they are hearing and seeing.

Some modifications/other ideas:

• create daily entries as if you were your favorite animal (may involve some research!)

• journal about a problem you are working through and the creative ways you are trying to solve it (ie. getting out of chores, watching more tv, sleeping in until noon)

• use a daily reading journal, jotting down quotes, summaries, invoked emotions, or other impact ideas from what you read today

• start a personal journal

Write a story example-

"Rewrite a fairy tale. Some ideas: change the gender/social position of the hero; set it in the present; tell it from the villain's POV, etc." (posted by @Michal Lemberger

Some modifications for this type:

• rewrite a poem by changing 5 words

• change the ending of the current book you are reading

• write a story based on your favorite video game

Single-day Prompts

• open a dictionary and pick 1 random word - write something about your day and include the word in your writing appropriately (if you do not have a dictionary, go to dictionary.com and use the word of the day)

• find a writing prompt on Twitter (you don't need an account!) - simply copy and paste #WritingPrompt

• create your own writing prompt. Some examples: write about your perfect day, write about a day in the life of your pet, write about someone you look up to

Pictorial Prompts

There are 2 types of these: those that provide a question with the picture, and those that let the picture itself be the prompt. Here are some examples:

• New York Times Learning Network - Picture Prompts

• Astronomy Picture of the Day

• Wiki Commons Picture of the Day (you can access the whole month)

• Smithsonian Picture of the Day

Parents of early readers/writers

Some options to invoke the creative part of the writing process when your child is still learning to write

• if you do have them write, let them write and tell their story - don't correct spelling, etc. The details of what they are thinking are more important!

• let them create a video recording of their "writing"

• let them tell you their "writing" and you write it for them

• There are many organizations that are offering video resource (or TV programming) each day which may be useful to parents and teachers. Here is a short list of a few that are freely available you may want to check out:

• Public television (and their companion websites) are changing programming to focus on materials for K-12 Students at home until further notice. PBS stations have blocked out time for each level - 7-9am is PBS Kids materials appropriate for 2-8 year olds; 9am - 1pm is for students Grades 4-8; 1-6pm is for students Grades 9-12. Additionally many have companion resources that can be used with the programming.

• PBS Learning has resources and learning activities in most subject areas. Students do need to make a (free) account if they do not already have one.

• Discovery Education is providing daily learning activities for parents & teachers. The daily activities are provided for 4 different grade groups: K-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12. There is an archive of the last 2 weeks if you need more than one activity. (For Teachers - they also have put together some "Grab and Go lessons" for some quick starters. This does require your DE login.)

• Khan Academy is providing "schedules" for parents to use to help students keep learning, along with Parent and Teacher resources for using the resources.

• BrainPop provides learning videos in nearly all curriculum areas, including Social-Emotional Learning. They provide a BrainPop Topic each day which a video, quiz, challenge and variety of activities.