Remote Learning Resources

There are many fantastic free or mostly free websites out there that can strengthen or review skills. It is an aewsome way to continue the learning at home.

PBS Kids

Chances are your kids have watched the educational programming on PBS Kids, but have you used their website full of apps, games, and videos of their favorite characters? This free educational website is primarily for children ages 2-8 and they are sure to learn while playing the very well designed educational games for hours on end.

Make Me Genius

Does your student love science? Then they may also enjoy Make Me Genius, a free science educational website for kids. There are science lessons, power points, quizzes, and even a cool facts for kids section. This website is organized by topic and grade level so you can find appropriate activities for your students.

Starfall

Starfall is a free learning website for kids that teaches reading and phonics. The website has games and videos that focus on phonics, reading, and math for children in pre-k through the third grade. In addition to their educational content, they also have seasonal content and character lessons.

Highlights Kids

Highlights Kids is a fun and free educational website for kids with lots of resources available, just like the magazine. There are recipes, jokes, games, activities, and more that your student can explore while they learn.

ABCya

ABCya is a fun educational website for children in pre-K all the way through the 6th grade. The site is categorized by age group and there are math, reading, word, skill, seasonal, and strategy games available for each grade level. This free website for kids has a lot of educational value, and the kids will enjoy it so much they might not even realize they are learning.

National Geographic Kids

Does your student or students love learning fun facts about animals, the human body, and the world around them? Then the National Geographic Kids website is for them! There are also lots of games, videos, and other cool stuff to explore on this cool educational website for kids.

The KIDZ Page

The Kidz page website offers a lot of online coloring, pictures, word, math, memory, logic, and maze games. They also have a selection of games that can be printed if your child prefers working with pen and paper.

Funbrain

Do your children love to read, watch videos, and play online math and reading games? Then the Funbrain website is a good choice for them. The website is organized by grade level so that you can find age appropriate educational content for your student.

NGAkids Art Zone

The National Gallery of Art has a kidzone website where budding young artists can create and display their own works of art in their personal online gallery. They can also learn about and interact with some of the gallery’s most famous works. This is a unique free educational website for kids.

BBC History for Kids

The BBC History for Kids website is a free learning website for kids. The site is based in the United Kingdom but the lessons are great for students around the world. Here you will find short videos about history for kids 3 years old and up. In addition to video lessons and quizzes about history, there are also some biology, and foreign language games to play.

Storyline Online

Does your child enjoy having stories read to them? If so, you might check out the free reading website Storyline Online. Story Online has books for children from Pre-K to 4th grade that are read out loud by famous actors and actresses. This educational website for kids is free and new books are added to the website each month.

Youngzine

Youngzine is a free online educational magazine website where students can learn about science, the environment, and current events. In addition to news stories, there are also contributions from students just like them and they can comment and discuss these stories with other students from around the world.

Fuel the Brain

Fuel the Brain is a fun and free educational website with printable worksheets, interactive games, teacher guides, and the ability to create, print, and publish your own mini-books. Here you will find learning games for math, phonics, health, science, and social studies for students in pre-k through fifth grade.

Mr. Nussbaum

The Mr. Nussbaum website offers interactive online educational games for kids in K-8th grade in a wide variety of subjects. This free learning website was started and continues with the intention of providing fun learning opportunities that reinforce important educational concepts and facts.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac for Kids

The Old Farmer’s Almanac for Kids website is an amazing free educational resource where students of all ages can learn about animals, the weather, gardening, phases of the moon, and more. There are fun learning activities to do, and you can read past editions of the print magazine online.

Exploratorium

The Exploratorium website is an extension of the Exploratorium Museum in San Francisco, and they offer a wide variety of free educational activities and exhibits online for arts, sciences, and math. There are lots of fun experiments and activities for kids of all ages to enjoy at home.

Turtle Diary

Turtle Diary is a free kids learning website that offers thousands of interactive educational games for kids in Pk 4 all the way through the 5th grade. There are games, videos, printable worksheets, teaching tools for parents and educators, and quizzes on a wide range of subjects and concepts.

e-Learning for Kids

The e-Learning for Kids website offers free lessons and activities in math and science for students kindergarten through fifth grade. The interactive lessons have students explore math and scientific concepts while also introducing them to countries and cultures around the world.

Sesame Street

The Sesame Street website features your toddler and preschoolers’ favorite characters with videos, activities, online coloring, printable coloring sheets, and interactive games that can be played with their favorite characters. This is an excellent fun and free educational website for preschoolers.

Fun Fonix

Fun Fonix makes learning phonics fun for kids. Here you will find interactive games that introduce the alphabet and letter sounds, as well as printable phonics worksheets to reinforce what your student is learning. There are also free worksheet generators that you can use to create spelling, reading, and writing worksheets.

Seussville

Suessville is an educational website featuring all of your younger student’s favorite characters from the Dr. Suess books. There are games on the site that help beginning readers identify rhyming words, as well as seasonal games.

Tvokids

Tvokids offers on demand educational tv content, as well as interactive games, and apps that feature their favorite characters. Paw Patrol, Flugals, Odd Squad, Wild Kratts and more can all be found on this entertaining educational website for free.

The Story Starter

Do your students enjoy writing stories but sometimes don’t know how to get started? Check out the free story starter website where they can find more than 8 million story starting sentences. There are also more than 250,000 story starting writing prompts for kids available on the website.

NASA Kids’ Club

Does your student love learning all that they can about space and astronauts? Then the Nasa Kids’ Club is a cool educational website for them. There are videos and lessons about space, pictures of space missions, and interactive games and projects that are fun and demonstrate scientific concepts.

CryptoClub

Does your student love figuring out puzzles and secret codes? Then the CryptoClub website might be another cool educational website for kids that they will enjoy. This site teaches students how to crypt and decrypt messages using different styles and methods of encryption. There are online and downloadable games, comics, challenges, and even crypto groups that they can join to leave messages for others.

Earthquakes for Kids

Are you planning an earthquake unit study for your curriculum? Then let your student visit this educational science website for kids. There are earthquake animations, lessons about the science of earthquakes, lots of interesting earthquake facts, and even science fair project suggestions.

Smithsonian Learning Lab

The Smithsonian Learning Lab website is a unique free educational website that allows you to create your own subject based collections using resources that have already been discovered for you. This website can be used to create unit studies for your student, to explore already created collections on a particular subject, or you can have your student design and create a collection of their own.

Study Jams

Study Jams is a multi-media free educational website with more than 200 interactive lessons in math and science. There are tutorials, video lessons, practice problems, slide shows, games, and more to engage your student on different concepts. The Study Jams website is completely free and sponsored by Scholastic.

Grid Club

Grid Club is a free learning website for kids with games and activities that teach literacy, geography, math, science, music, history, and more. These activities and games are designed for students ages 5 to 12 and aim to show students that learning is fun and everywhere.

Steve Spangler Science

Are you looking for some amazing science experiments to wow your students with at home? Then the Steve Spangler website is the cool educational website for kids that you have been looking for. There are lots of easy at home science experiments that you can choose from, with YouTube video demonstrations, and explanations of the science behind the experiments.

The Happy Scientist

If you are looking for some additional free science resources for your homeschool program, look no further than The Happy Scientist website. The Happy Scientist has videos, text explanations, experiments, and more on all kinds of scientific topics all free for your use.

Khan Academy

Khan Academy is a free educational website for students of all ages. You will find video lessons and supplementary practice activities on a vast catalog of subjects for students from kindergarten through college. There are also practice tests to help older students prepare for the SAT, PSAT, and ACT tests for college admission.

Magic Tree House

The Magic Tree House website lets students ages 6-12 follow along on the adventures of Jack and Annie from the Magic Tree House book series by Mary Pope Osbourne. Students can play missions and/or join the Kids Adventure Club where they can earn rewards for keeping track of their reading progress.

DOGO News

The DOGO news website is a cool educational website for kids that provides them with current event news stories about science, the environment, civics, and social studies. There is also a book review portion of the site where kids can read and write book reviews for children’s books.

Science Bob

The Science Bob website is a fantastic educational website for kids ages 6 to 12 to find science experiments, videos, and science fair ideas with their funny host Bob, who also has a YouTube learning channel. In addition to all of these great resources, Science Bob also offers additional safe and fun science websites for kids.

Grammaropolis

Grammaropolis is a good educational website for kids that need a little help learning their parts of speech. The Grammaropolis website presents the eight parts of speech in a fun, interactive way through games, videos, and songs to help your students ages 6-12 to remember them and how they work.

Cells Alive

The Cells Alive website is an interactive free science website with animations, models, quizzes, and slide shows about different types of cells and their replication process. There are also memory games, crossword puzzles, and jigsaw puzzles to help keep students excited about cells.

KidsReads

Is your bookworm looking for some new reading recommendations? Have them check out the free reading website KidsReads. Here students ages 6-12 can find book recommendations and author information about books that they might not have otherwise heard about.

Google Earth

Google Earth is a free website from Google that lets you virtually travel to anywhere in the world. This free educational tool can be used to supplement any of your social studies or geography lessons by letting your student see where you are learning about.

Rainy Day Fun:

UMBRELLA CRAFT

I love using shaving cream in kid activities, so we decided to use it to make this umbrella swirled with colors! Using shaving cream for crafts is fun because you can also use it for a sensory activity after you are done with the craft.

Here’s what you need:

shaving cream
food coloring
baking sheet
knife
card stock paper
scissors
glue
black paper
umbrella template teachingmama.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Umbrella-Template.pdf

It’s super simple to create this swirled look. To start, spray shaving cream onto a baking sheet. Then drop food coloring around the sheet. Swirl around using a butter knife (or something similar).

Next, place a piece of card stock paper on top of the shaving cream and press down until the whole paper is coated. Then pull it off the shaving cream and let it sit for a few minutes.

Next, wipe off the shaving cream with a paper towel and let the paper dry.

I created a couple sheets for umbrellas and one for the rain drops.

After about 30 minutes, the paper will be dry and ready to make into an umbrella!

I printed the umbrella template, cut it out, and traced it onto the shaving cream paper.

After tracing, I cut out the umbrella and glued it onto a black piece of paper. I also cut out raindrops from the blue shaving cream paper.

This was a fun and easy craft to make. I think it would be fun to create at home with your children. Happy Spring!

SWIMMING SPAGHETTI

Make spaghetti do tricks with this fun and fizzy experiment.

What You Need:

uncooked spaghetti
1 cup of water
2 teaspoons of baking soda
5 teaspoons of vinegar
tall clear glass

What You Do:

Put water and baking soda in the glass. Stir until the baking soda is dissolved. Break spaghetti into 1-inch pieces. Put about 6 pieces in the glass. They will sink to the bottom. Add vinegar to the mixture in the glass. Observe what happens to the pieces of spaghetti. Add more vinegar as the action starts to slow down.

What’s Going On:

When baking soda and vinegar are mixed together, a chemical reaction occurs. It produces a gas called carbon dioxide, which forms lots of bubbles on top of the mixture and smaller bubbles at the bottom of the glass. These little bubbles stick to the spaghetti and make it float to the surface, just as you do when you sit on a swimming pool noodle! When the spaghetti reaches the surface, the bubbles pop and the spaghetti sinks to the bottom.

HOW TO MAKE PLAYDOUGH RECIPE WITHOUT CREAM OF TARTAR from Stay At Home Educator

I love this playdough recipe because, not only is it quick and easy to make and smells delicious, but it’s also the perfect consistency for hand strengthening. Preschoolers need hand strengthening activities to prepare them for life skills. It also prepares them for learning the correct and mature pencil grasp. Playdough is also a great accompaniment to a variety of preschool themes and math activities.

And, did I mention it’s cheap? I don’t know about you, but with the quantities of play dough made around here, cream of tartar can get pricey. Or, if you’re like me, you’ve used the last of it in your mom’s best snickerdoodle recipe and now you have none left for play dough.

So, a playdough recipe without cream of tartar is a really valuable thing!

This recipe does not call for cream of tartar to stabilize it, and the recipe doesn’t call for expensive extracts or essential oils for fragrance.

Aside from this playdough recipe being so extremely affordable, the playdough itself really is just perfect. It is malleable, but not sticky, holds its shape beautifully, but without being crumbly. This is a no cook recipe!

SCENTED NO-COOK PLAYDOUGH RECIPE WITHOUT CREAM OF TARTAR

INGREDIENTS

· flour

· salt

· cooking oil

· lemon juice (fresh or bottled)

· Kool-Aid(optional for scent and coloring) or essential oils for fragrance

· Food Coloring (optional)

COOKING SUPPLIES NEEDED FOR NO-COOK PLAY DOUGH

· large mixing bowl

· glass, heatproof, microwavable 2-cup measuring cup

· measuring cups and spoons

· aluminum foil, parchment paper or wax paper

· wooden paddle for stirring

PLAYDOUGH RECIPE WITHOUT CREAM OF TARTAR

***I created this recipe to make small batches so it would be easy and quick to make several colors. Each batch makes just a bit over one cup of play dough. If you want to do rainbow colors like the above photo, begin with white and work your way all the way through the rainbow. This way you won’t have to wash or rinse in between batches.***

1 cup flour

1/4 cup salt

3/4 cup of water minus 3 tablespoons

3 tablespoons of lemon juice

1 tablespoon cooking oil

2 packets kool-aid (optional for fragrance and coloring)

DIRECTIONS FOR MAKING PLAY DOUGH WITHOUT CREAM OF TARTAR

Measure the water and lemon juice into a heatproof, microwavable 2-cup measuring cup. Heat in the microwave until just boiling, about three minutes.

Meanwhile, mix together the flour and salt.

If using Kool Aid for the fragrance, slowly (and I mean s-l-o-w-l-y, because the mixture will foam a bit) pour the kool-aid packets into the HOT water and lemon juice mixture and add additional food coloring to intensify the color if desired. Slowly pour the liquid into the flour and salt mixture, and stir with a wooden paddle until it just barely begins to form a dough.

Drizzle the tablespoon of cooking oil over the dough and stir again until it forms a ball. At this point, you may want to knead the dough with your hands.

It may feel a bit sticky, too, but DO NOT add more flour. As the dough cools it will thicken and become less sticky. (Just like how gravy turns to sludge once refrigerated).

Now, once the dough is completely cooled, you may add flour a tablespoon at a time until it is the perfect consistency.

Allow the dough to cool a bit on a sheet of aluminum foil, parchment or wax paper. By the time you finish the next batch of play dough, the first will be cool enough to store. I love to store playdough in these freezer jam containers because the screw on lids are more airtight than snap-on lids.

I’ve never had this recipe not turn out, and it’s definitely an added bonus that this playdough recipe doesn’t call for cream of tartar. Save that stuff for Snickerdoodles!

Dear Teachers and Parents,

I wanted to put together a list of ideas/resources to have on hand while we are all home looking for activities to keep the kids busy, but also keeping up with our skills!

This is not meant to serve as individualized therapy for your child, simply some general ideas to have in your back pocket.

Websites

http://therapystreetforkids.com

I love this site because you can search by different skill areas and they also give you ideas for activities using things you may already have in your home (putty, play doh, finger paint)

https://www.toolstogrowot.com

This is a membership site, however some of the materials are FREE TO PRINT OUT. They have great seasonal/holiday activities and you can search by skill areas as well.

https://busytoddler.com

This is a blog that has fun hands-on activity ideas including having fun with stickers, sensory bins, puzzles, and specifically being creative INDOORS.

www.lwtears.com

Learning Without Tears is usually a paid-for website, but they are offering FREE resources at this time. Great materials to practice pre-writing strokes, print and cursive.

www.amazon.com

Yes, amazon has it all- but if you have PRIME VIDEO try out Cosmic Kids Yoga. The videos are about 15 min long and good for following along with body positions, stretching and calming down. This could be a fun way for you and your child to participate together at some point during your daily routine.

Other Ideas:

Baking: you can find so many ideas on pinterest alone! Great way to incorporate measuring, pouring, mixing, following adult directions or written directions. And of course, taste testing
Scribbling, coloring, writing outside with sidewalk chalk
Painting the house or car...kind of...give your child a clean paintbrush and a cup or bucket of water to “paint.” This one might be best when the weather warms up.
Hopscotch
Jump rope

Have fun exploring at home and stay well!

Meghan Noonan, M.S. OTR

Occupational Therapist

More Free Resources

Discovery Ed

https://www.discoveryeducation.com/coronavirus-response/

BrainPop

https://educators.brainpop.com/2020/02/19/free-brainpop-access-for-schools-affected-by-the-corona-virus/?utm_source=organic&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=coronavirus&utm_content=free-access

Kahoot

https://kahoot.com/blog/2020/02/27/kahoot-free-access-schools-higher-education-coronavirus/

Pronto

https://pronto.io/coronavirus/