Supplemental Home Activities

Conversations about COVID-19 with Children

• Fred Rogers Center – Talking to Young Children about the Coronavirus

• CDC: Talking to young children about coronavirus

• PBS: How to Talk to Your Kids About Coronavirus (with PBS Kids Videos and shows that discuss handwashing)

Early Learning

• Storyline Online – The SAG-AFTRA Foundation’s Online Library of Read Alouds by various actors and actresses

• Kindergarten Readiness on IDOE Early Learning’s For Families Page

• Vroom has activities to support your child’s brain development from birth-5.

• Scholastic Learn at Home – Day-by-day projects to keep kids reading, thinking, and growing. The site will be updated weekly until 20 days of content is available.

English Language Arts & Reading

• Literacy Family Guides

• Starfall – educational games, stories and lessons Pre-k- grade 3

• Florida Center for Reading Research Reading Activities Grades K-5

• Read, Write, Think Student Interactives – Engage your students in online literacy learning with these interactive tools that help them accomplish a variety of goals—from organizing their thoughts to learning about language—all while having fun. – grades K-5

• Boom Writer – Begin with a story starter and students log in to write. After the different developments are read, students decides which direction the story should take. Edits and conferences abound until students agrees the story is finished. Then it is published! – grades 3-8

Fine Arts & Virtual Tours

• Cincinnati Zoo – plans to live stream several animals and exhibits starting March 16, every weekday at 3 p.m.

• Lunch Doodles with Mo Willems – Mo Willems invites YOU into his studio every day for his LUNCH DOODLE. Learners worldwide can draw, doodle and explore new ways of writing by visiting Mo’s studio virtually once a day for the next few weeks. New episodes will be posted each weekday at 1:00 p.m. E.T. Each daily episode is accompanied by a downloadable activity page and will remain online to be streamed afterward.

• Story Time from Space sends children’s books to the International Space Station (ISS), where the books are read on video by astronauts as they orbit hundreds of miles above Earth.

• Google Arts and Culture showcase more than 2,500 museums around the world which have made their collections accessible online.

• Google national parks in the U.S. allows you to access virtually tour the Kenai Fjords, Hawaii Volcanos, Carlsbad Caverns, Bryce Canyon, and Dry Tortugas.

• There are 10 live webcams at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where you can peek at sharks, sea otters, penguins and more. The San Diego Zoo has 11 animal webcams, Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute has four animal webcams, and there are six webcams at the Houston Zoo.

• And if you’re feeling really adventurous, you can visit the surface of Mars in a spectacular high-resolution, 360-degree photo tour, created from images captured by the Curiosity rover.

General Resources

• PBS LearningMedia – PBS LearningMedia is a free service that offers thousands of contextualized learning materials aligned to state and national standards.

• Scholastic Learn at Home – Day-by-day projects to keep kids reading, thinking, and growing. The site will be updated weekly until 20 days of content is available.Scholastic launched a Learn at Home website with daily lessons that combine videos, stories and prompts for drawing and writing activities. Grade levels include pre-K and kindergarten, grades 1 and 2, grades 3 to 5, and grades 6 and up.

• The Exploratorium – an ongoing exploration of science, art, and human perception. Explore the vast collection of online experiences to feed your curiosity and education resources supporting online teaching and learning.

• Crash Course is a YouTube channel offering engaging educational videos suitable for high school students. The channel features a wide range of subjects, from anatomy to world history.

• Khan Academy, a free online learning resource offering lessons, exercises and quizzes, has daily schedules for organizing at-home learning for students ages 4 to 18 years. On weekdays, Khan Academy is also offering daily livestreams on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to help parents and educators best utilize the website’s tools and resources.

Schedule Examples

• Khan Academy Schedule Samples – These schedules are meant to be templates that you can copy and modify to better suit the needs of your child(ren).

Health & Social Emotional Learning

• CALM – curation of content hand-picked to support your mental and emotional wellness

• CosmicKids – Stories, mindfulness, yoga, relaxation and dance routines are available which can also be sorted by length and energy.

• GoNoodle – Movement lessons and activities

• The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) – COVID-19 specific resources

Math

• Which One Doesn’t Belong – A website dedicated to providing thought-provoking puzzles for math teachers and students alike. There are no answers provided as there are many different and correct ways of choosing which one doesn’t belong.

• Estimation 180 – Building number sense one day at a time.

• Esti-Mysteries – Estimation meets mystery – Each image invites students to wonder what number is represented by the image. As you click through each Esti-Mystery, clues will appear that will allow the students to use math concepts to narrow the set of possibilities to a small set of numbers. In the end, the students will need to call upon their estimation skills to solve the mystery and find the missing number.

• Bedtime Math – posts daily math problems for families to build mathematical literacy. Just 5 quick minutes of number fun for kids and parents at home. Read a cool fact, followed by math riddles at different developmental levels so everyone can jump in!

Science

• Mystery Science – K-5 science lessons available with no signup or login required.

• GLOBE Observer – an international network of citizen scientists and scientists working together to learn more about our shared environment and changing climate.

• Teen science fans will nerd out over Nova Labs at PBS, where they’ll discover multimedia experiences that combine video, animation and games to delve into fascinating scientific topics, such as polar ecosystems, solar storms and renewable energy.

• NASA isn’t just sending missions into space; the agency has also launched Teachable Moments, connecting classrooms — and homes — with resources for investigating the latest discoveries about our universe. There are a range of activities and lessons that are suitable for grades K-12.

• NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex is another source of free online content. Educators share daily Facebook Live videos that pair with hands-on activities (instructions are available as free downloads) using materials that can be found at home. Topics include rocketry 101, tours of Space Shuttle Atlantis and the Astronaut Training Experience, and living in space and on Mars.

• “Space Racers,” an animated series for preschoolers about spacefaring cadets at the Stardust Space Academy, also offers science-based lessons, games and space-related educational activities that families can explore together.

Social Studies

• National Geographic Kids

• Smithsonian History Explorer – History Explorer is the online portal for free, standards-based K-12 resources including lesson plans, interactives, videos, and artifacts from the National Museum of American History.

• Maptia – Geographic and cultural story-telling. Also, an excellent cross-curricular resource for English/Language Arts.

Technology Applications

• Code.org – coding lessons and resources