GIANTmicrobes

Saturday, November 24, 2012

Great online homeschool resources

Here’s a collection of online resources of games, videos, audio and other things kids actually enjoy learning with. There's also some parent resources for putting together your own curriculum if you like or getting help teaching.
 

For Kids

Fun video/audio sites

  • LearnOutLoud.com has a bunch of audio and video resources. There are tons of educational audio books, MP3 downloads, podcasts, and videos. They are categorized wonderfully to make finding what you need easy, including a Kids section and a Free section.
  • Mangomon special education games are online games that help with reading and math.
  • Neok12 has a collection of free online educational videos, lessons, quizzes, games and puzzles. We recommend watching the videos first to make sure they are good quality because not all are.
  • Math Playground is for elementary and middle school students. Kids practice math skills, play logic games and have fun. There aren't as many math games for basic math like addition and subtraction as there are for decimals, fractions and percentages. Also the videos aren't exciting and fun like the games are.
  • Starfall is a great site for beginning readers. There are great activities for kids just starting out. It helps reinforce phonemic code with visuals and sounds.
  • Funbrain has a lot of educational games to help kids with a variety of subjects and several just-for-fun games too.
  • National Geographic Kids has lots of videos, stories and activities. This is more of a look and discover site. If you are looking for something specific to help teach a certain subject, you may find it hard to find exactly what you are looking for. But it is a fun site for kids to go to and learn while on the Internet.
  • The History Channel site has many free videos of their shows. Be sure to watch before showing any to your kids because not all are for kids. Because this is not a strictly kids' site, there are commercials to worry about before videos. This site also has games and a few other interesting features.

Some reading needed (audio or video may also be included)

  • Despite the name, some of the stories on Online Audio Stories are only available as text on the screen. You can click on the ALL AUDIO STORIES tab at the top to see the vast selection of children's stories available as audiobooks. There are a lot of children's classics, myths, fables, nursery rhymes, fairy tails, and poems.
  • The Exploratorium site covers science, art and human perception. There are plenty of videos and other things on this site that bring the subjects to life. This is also a good site for parents to pick up some lesson plan ideas.

Reading required (mostly text)

  • Science News for Kids has a lot of really good articles on a variety of science topics, especially recent discoveries and science news.
  • BioKIDS helps kids learn about animals. It provides plenty of photos of the animals along with information about their lifestyles and habitats. It is a good site for doing research for reports.
  • Project Gutenberg is the place where you can download over 30,000 free ebooks to read on your portable reading device. Their audiobooks partner site is LibriVox.

For Parents

  • Science buddies has many science experiments to help you enhance science lessons or to use for science fairs. The great organization on the site makes it easy to find exactly what you need for whatever science topic your kids are studying.
  • Math Projects Journal has lesson plans for teaching pre-algebra, algebra and geometry in multi-sensory ways to help make the lessons more memorable and fun.
  • A to Z Teacher Stuff is a teacher-created site designed to help teachers find online resources more quickly and easily. Find lesson plans, thematic units, teacher tips, discussion forums, downloadable teaching materials and eBooks, printable worksheets, emergent reader books, themes, and more.
  • Discovery Education has free lesson plans written by teachers for teachers. Classroom Resources has hundreds of original lesson plans for all ages of students. Use them as-is or as a base to develop your own lesson plans.
  • The Science News for Kids Teacher Zone provides lesson plans that go along with the most recent articles as well as a long listing of more websites that might be useful for parents or teachers.
  • Adrian Bruce's Educational Teaching Resources has fun educational games (that can be printed) and more to help create fun lessons for kids.
If you know of any other sites that should be listed here, please list it in the comments section below.

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