FREE Online resources and activities to support Home Schooling
Please see below a list of free online resources to help you with home schooling. Simply click on one of the boxes below to jump to learning resources in that subject.
Listen to 100s of kids' audiobooks, incl Beatrix Potter and Winnie the Pooh (normally £11-£15)
With the majority of schoolchildren across the UK now learning from home, Audible has released a collection of audiobooks for free, which it says will be available 'for as long as schools are closed'.
Books include Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Secret Garden, Winnie the Pooh and Timeless Tales of Beatrix Potter. If you (or your kids) prefer to read rather than listen, see our 11 cheap Kindle book hacks, including how to get any book from the Harry Potter series for free.
You can also access popular spelling app Sir Linkalot for free until 12 June 2020 (normally £6.99/month). You'll need to sign up to its mailing list and you'll be sent a code for free access.
Stories by David Walliams free every day for 30 days
Interesting ways to hook children and young people of all ages into writing 365 days a year, providing something engaging to keep creative writing on the daily agenda with a picture a day for inspiration and a selection of writing prompts beneath each picture. http://www.pobble365.com/
The Literacy Shed
Home to a wealth of visual resources collected over 10 years by a primary school teacher. The “sheds” are broadly thematic and most of the resources can be used for KS1 and KS2 but some do lend themselves to KS 3 and 4. www.literacyshed.com
PhonicsPlay
Even before school closures, parents are by far the most important people in helping children learn to read. Here you will find lots of information for parents about phonics including: what exactly phonics is, how it is taught in UK schools and suggestions for helping pre-schoolers prepare for learning phonics. You will also find lots of games and ideas to explore with children at home. www.phonicsplay.co.uk/freeIndex.htm#
Storyline Online
Storyline Online, streams videos featuring celebrated actors like Lily Tomlin and Kevin Costner reading children’s books alongside creatively produced illustrations. Around the world teachers use Storyline Online in their classrooms, and doctors and nurses play Storyline Online in children’s hospitals. www.storylineonline.net/about-us/
Oxford Owl
Free resources to support learning at home. Advice and support for parents with educational activities, games and a free eBook library for 3- to 11-year-olds. www.oxfordowl.co.uk/
Into the Book
Into the Book is an American reading comprehension resource for primary aged children. It focusses on eight research-based strategies: using prior knowledge, making connections, questioning, visualizing, inferring, summarizing, evaluating and synthesizing.
Fun Fonix is a phonics warehouse of resources and materials that are designed to move quickly through phonics rules. Ideal for learning and practice at home during lockdown.
The Story Starter randomly generates story starter ideas (from a list of over 356,000,000,000!) used by writers of all ages, simply open the link below and hit the "Click here..." button.
The wonderful world of Dr. Seuss! Here you will find resources, videos and games to share with your children of all ages with tips on how to incorporate Dr. Seuss books into your days at home – including recipe ideas! www.seussville.com/explore/
Science and Technology
Science Boxes for KS1 & KS2 HOME SCHOOL
Engaging and educational Science Box projects that you can do at home or in school with your class.
These practical hands-on activities used in Primary schools across the region are safely designed, specifically for the children to carry out themselves. Now modified for home-schooling, each contains simple guidance for parents and carers, so you don’t need to be a scientist to have fun and support your child with these.
Check out the taster below and then sign up to receive the virtual Science Boxes.
The Nancy Rothwell Award celebrates specimen drawing in schools and highlights the benefits of combining art and science.
There are three age categories (7-11, 12-14, and 15-18). Find out how to enter here.
What are Atoms and Molecules?
Making Model Molecules
NASA
For all the Space enthusiasts out there, NASA at Home offers something for the whole family. It brings together a repository of binge-worthy videos and podcasts, engaging E-books on a variety of topics, do-it-yourself projects, and virtual and augmented reality tours, which include the agency’s Hubble Space Telescope and International Space Station, as well as an app that puts you in the pilot’s seat of a NASA aircraft. NASA at Home will feature ongoing opportunities to interact and hear from agency experts. For example, record-breaking astronaut Christina Koch reads children’s books weekdays at 4 p.m. EDT onInstagram live as part of educational and STEM activity for students.
Join Amazon Future Engineer and fly drones, design smart cities and create chatbots with Python. Access 20 hours of free content, these resources use a Python Programming Platform, exploring ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ themes, plus a moderated forum and handy FAQs. Students can earn experience points for completing the work and earn badges when they unlock skills.
Daily doses of Science, Engineering and Computing activities to try at home. You can join him daily watch live as he demonstrates the activities by simply following the YouTube link and you should see him appear at 10:00am GMT each day! You can also catch up on ‘past doses’ on the site
New Stuck at Home Science activities released every weekday
Science happens everywhere! Join us this week from April 20-24, as we take you through our Big Lab at the California Science Center and help you explore fun ways to learn how science is happening in your own home. Not all science labs are the same, but what matters is what scientists do inside the labs!
These educational activities are designed for families to explore, investigate and have fun learning together without leaving home. All activities use easy-to-find household supplies and are appropriate for a variety of ages.
Fun and creative activities, built by teachers to help you guide your child through fundamental parts of the computing curriculum without the need for screen time. They include everything you need to get started with activity sheets and accompanying materials.
Starters for STEM are ten activities that parents can use at home to help children develop their science, technology, engineering and maths skills. These activities are easy-to-resource and provide children with the stimulus to talk about the world around them.
Popular BBC presenter and science communicator Maddie Moate will be broadcasting on youtube with daily 30 minute Let’s go live science shows. www.youtube.com/user/maddiemoate
Minecraft Education Edition: free lessons
If you head over to the Minecraft Marketplace, you will find some of our favorite lessons from Minecraft: Education Edition in a brand new Education category. These educational worlds can be played on your own, with your kids, parents or friends. From the comfort of your home, you can tour the International Space Station or even explore the inside of a human eye. We’ve also included ten worlds from our Marketplace creator community! Thanks to creators Everbloom, Jigarbov, Lifeboat, Razzleberries, The World Foundry, Blockworks, and Imagiverse you can explore renewable energy, marine biology, Greek history, and more! The worlds include lesson plans like creative writing activities, build challenges, and tricky puzzles.
All of these worlds are launching today and are free to download through June 30, 2020.
Royal Society
Education in science and mathematics should develop the natural intellectual curiosity and creativity of young people. Creative and experimental approaches will be particularly important for keeping students interested and engaged in science, and for equipping them well for the future, whether or not they pursue a career in science. To support this activity in primary schools, Brian Cox, the Society's Professor for Public Engagement in Science, presents a series of FREE video resources to increase confidence with experimental science and relate the experiments to the real world.
This Home Science website has a lovely learning center; rich with resources and ideas. The Learning Center is a place where parents and teachers can learn, plan, and prepare to inspire young minds through hands-on science discovery. You will
benefit from the expertise and experience of our community of parent-teachers who are contributing content.
Our goal is to make it surprisingly easy for you to do hands-on science at home or in the classroom. You can confidently achieve your science education goals for your children and students
Stay up to date on the latest news and science discoveries with articles written in a kid-friendly way. Science News for Students offers helpful resources for at-home learning
The Science News in High Schools Digital Library has dozens upon dozens of original STEM-related exercises, all tied to Science News articles. Whether you’re looking for material about evolution, space, chemistry, climate change, public health or anything in between — we’ve got you covered. Use these resources to engage students with core high school concepts or to build virtual lessons for your students
All of the lessons are expertly designed to engage students, achieve learning outcomes, and be easy to use. They have short mini-lessons that are completely digital and full lessons that include an activity. All of the activities are designed to use simple supplies a parent will likely already have at home.
If you are already using, or planning to use, video streaming tools for remote learning, you can combine them with our free micro:bit classroom tool to run your own live micro:bit coding lessons. Students do not need micro:bit devices to use classroom, they can program the simulator in MakeCode.
This website was created by an Indian High School student who has a You Tube channel of the same name. The free resources include science based videos, powerpoints and tests for children of all ages, as well as curiously, a page entitled “Festivals for Kids”.
With Scratch, you can program your own interactive stories, games, and animations — and share your creations with others in the online community. Scratch helps young people learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively
Steve Spangler Science - 50 Experiments for 50 days
Each week we plan to deliver a set of experiments (1 per weekday) designed to keep kids learning, engaged and entertained with materials you might have laying around your home
The Happy Scientist is a real labour of love by American scientist Robert Kampf, totally free for everyone with daily questions or challenges but mostly to just explore, have fun, and learn some science along the way.
For pupils aged 14-18 years. The titration screen experiment has been designed to be a free flexible tool for teachers and students. You can choose to carry out a strong acid - strong base titration (or any combination of strong and weak acid-base titrations). There is also a redox titration experiment to complete for students to practise their understanding and skills.
The Great Science Share for Schools is about children communicating something that they have been investigating which starts with a question that they are interested in. Already having reached over 100,000 young people since its launch in 2016, we are excited to invite you to be part of the collaborative 2020 campaign. They are moving their events online - what will you share?
Tech We Can is a set of free lesson plans designed to be taught to both boys and girls. Originally set up to be taught by teachers in the classroom but now available to parents and carers for teaching at home. The lessons are all mapped to the National Curriculum and are structured, fun learning packs all about technology careers and seeing the use of technology in everyday lives.
We’re very excited to announce Tech We Can Tuesdays! Starting Tuesday 28 April, we will be hosting free technology lessons aimed at students (10-13 years) on a webcast platform. Here is the link to register and log in - https://techwecan.org/tech-tuesdays/
The lessons will each have a different theme and the aim is to inspire children to consider a future career in technology...and encourage more downloads of the full lesson plans for continuous learning.
Each lesson will be approximately 20 - 30 minutes long and will be led by Becky Patel, our resident teacher and Katie King, our nanotech expert! We will then set the students a challenge to complete in the hour or so following the lesson. The lessons will be fun and informative, looking at the use of technology in our everyday lives and link into future career paths for the students.
All teachers / parents / carers need to do is register with their details and encourage their children to tune in at 10.30am every Tuesday morning. We will run these lessons until the end of the summer term 2020. Here is the proposed timetable for the next four weeks:
Current timetable
Tuesday 28th April - 10:30am - Tech for Fun - with Katie King
Tuesday 5th May - 10:30am - Tech for Manufacturing and Engineering - with Becky Patel
Tuesday 12th May - 10:30am - Tech for the Environment - with Katie King
Tuesday 19th May - 10:30am - Tech for Education - with Becky Patel
CREST Awards
The Crest Award scheme is a popular STEM award scheme used in schools for children 5 - 18. The activities are available through the resource library for each age range in the form of a downloadable booklet and are free. Once the children have completed some of the activities, they will be eligible for a CREST award and certificate. The activities are a great opportunity to introduce students to science from the convenience of their homes. They are also a great chance for parents to showcase everyday science without the formal setting of a classroom.
A safe place for children to play as they learn about NASA and its missions. On this site, you will find games of various skill levels for children of pre- and primary school age
Bob encourages parents and teachers to practice "Random Acts of Science" by providing instructions and videos for interactive science experiments for all ages
To support you though the school closures, we have set up www.stem.org.uk/home-learning which provides free resources for home learning and continuing in-school delivery. This is arranged by age range and will be updated weekly with new activities and engaging content for parents, young people and teachers. We also welcome suggestions or questions via the new Education Live Chat advisory service on the webpage.
The Exploratorium is a public learning laboratory in Calaronia that explores the world through science, art, and human perception. The website is a vast collection of online experiences to feed curiosity and education resources to support online teaching and learning.
Carol Vorderman's maths school for Free(normally £2/week) Carol Vorderman has announced that access to her maths school The Maths Factor will be free while schools are closed (normally £2/week). It's aimed at 4 to 11-year-olds and is matched to the national curriculum.
Coolmath
Coolmath.com offers "math for ages 13-100" -- explanations that are easy to grasp on topics like algebra, pre-calculus and more. Coolmath4Kids
For our 12 and under users, Coolmath4Kids is an amusement park of math, games, and more, designed to teach math and make it FUN. CoolmathGames
This is our brain-training site, for everyone, where logic & thinking meets fun & games. These games have no violence, no empty action, just a lot of challenges that will make you forget you're getting a mental workout!
White Rose Maths
The White Rose Maths Team has prepared a series of five maths lessons for each year group from Year 1-8. We will be adding five more each week for the next few weeks. Every lesson comes with a short video showing you clearly and simply how to help your child to complete the activity successfully.
The goal at Math Blaster is clear: “Your success depends on your ability to use your brain and logic skills.” With an exciting theme featuring aliens and outer space, Math Blaster lets your students become intergalactic heroes based on their math operation and critical thinking skills. Registration is required, but the game itself is free.
From the Multiplication Grand Prix to the Knight and the Princess, students can practice their basic maths skills in a fun and engaging way on this maths site for children. There are additional resources available on the website for parents who want to help reinforce and teach skills. Check out the “Classroom Games” section for off-line fun.
Designed for students from pre-school to KS2/3, Math Game Time offers fun, educational games focused on critical math concepts. With options like Integer War, Ratio Martian and Jet Ski Addition, this site also has cross curriculum links to other subject areas such as the science and geography.
Tablesmaster is a great way for children to practise times tables. Play it every day to help improve numeracy skills, mathematical proficiency and mental strength.
“Play with Numbers and Give Your Brain a Workout” is the motto of Math Playground. Give your children games to play related to logic, number skills practice, geometry, algebra, probability, fractions and more. There are also maths word problems and video instructions to help students remember how to solve them.
CONJUGUEMOS is the place where 3.5 million users come to learn/teach their conjugations in fun, graded, and customizable activities... but it's also more. You can also practice vocabulary, grammar, and now listening with thousands of free, publicly available activities. Each activity brings associated games, worksheets, and other features.
Free three-month language course for schoolkids from Rosetta Stone
To help kids who are learning from home, educational software company Rosetta Stone is offering schoolchildren free access to its popular language courses for three months.
This is a decent freebie, as it normally costs £50 to sign up for three months. There are more than 20 languages to choose from, including French, German, Italian and Spanish. Rosetta Stone says that if you have more than one child you can sign up multiple times, you'll just need to use a different email address each time.
General School
Virgin Media
Virgin Media have put together a list of the best educational TV shows to help parents easily find useful educational resources for all ages, including structured lessons and practical advice.
“...a free education programme, helps young people aged 5–14 in developing their understanding and love of fresh, healthy food, the skills they need to cook for themselves and the desire to celebrate good food with friends and family. To support parents/carers teaching at home, we've collected a selection of our great resources to help you explore fresh, healthy food, exclusive insights from Olympic athletes, and build all-round healthy habits outside of the classroom."
Many children have questions or concerns about the coronavirus and all the changes to their lives - this free new e-book is designed to help.
The new picture book is by Axel Scheffler, the illustrator of "The Gruffalo," and the staff of publisher Nosy Crow with input from educators, a child psychologist, and medical experts. "I think it is extremely important for children and families to have access to good and reliable information in this unprecedented crisis." says Scheffler.
Designed for children from 5 to 12, it addresses what the virus is, how people catch it, and why closures of schools and other activities are a key part of the global effort to stop its spread, as well as what children can do to help - all in a child-friendly, non-scary, and fact-based way.
A platform to support families with free activities for all subject areas and signposting to videos. Particularly nice is the schedule that is given so you can plan activities around live events taking place.
Twinkl have prepared a parents hub to support home schooling during the period of school closures. There are home schooling packs that can be downloaded from the site that cover different Key Stages and Activities
Topmarks is a leading independent educational website for children, teaching professionals and parents, covering all areas of the curriculum, while some of the resources require a paid subscription, many are free.
At the top of the list has for all topics and home schoolers is BBC Bitesize, covering all age ranges with games, videos and articles for all areas of the national curriculum
Fun Educational and Online Games: Introduce children to new, exciting ways of learning with the help of fun online games, videos, experiments, puzzles, coloring sheets, and more! TurtleDiary activities pair with the appropriate grade level to enhance retention of material and increase success in the classroom.
ABCya provides over 400 fun and educational games for primary aged children. The activities are designed by parents and educators, who understand that children learn better if they are having fun. Games are categorized by age and subject, and cover topics such as multiplication, parts of speech, typing, pattern recognition, and more.
There are games that are just plain fun (and safe) to play! With so much variety, there is sure to be something for children at all learning levels and styles.
Fun interactive learning games & videos for kids, schools and families - learning can be fun! - Improve skills in English, maths, science & a whole lot more!
This is a childrens website that features over 10000 online and printable activities including over 400 games, tutorials, simulations and videos covering a vast range of topics, the advertising can be annoying but well worth a look.
Youngzine is a one-of-a-kind Web site where children can learn about current news and events shaping their world -- in a simple, engaging and interactive manner.
The free content on PBS Kids is suitable for preschool and school-aged children and aimed to develop kids’ curiosity, imagination and critical-thinking skills as well as accumulating knowledge.
The website is a digital companion to the print magazines of the same name, which are meant for children ages 3 to 6 (National Geographic Little Kids) and 6 to 14 (National Geographic Kids). Tapping into the resources of the world-class scientific organization National Geographic, this website for young learners features videos, games and other interactive media with a focus of learning about science, geography and the world around us. A highlight of the online learning tool is its Interactive World Map, which will put the world at your child’s fingertips and allow for virtual exploration and an education on the geography, people, culture, history, government and natural environment of a country. Though there’s a lot of great free content, but the website heavily promotes the magazine and National Geographic merchandise.
With content that is designed and differentiated for 11–19-year-olds, this Geography teaching package includes activities using case studies, images, maps, statistics, videos and eyewitness accounts.
These online learning games and songs for children are fun, teach important skills for preschool and primary school kids and they're free. Focussing on building skills in maths, language, science, social studies, and more.
In high school dyslexic children are often encouraged to learn to touch type - this website is totally free, builds gradually and a very useful skill for all to learn.
Starfall began as a free public service to teach children to read. Since then it has expanded to include language arts and mathematics for preschool, to year 3.
Join Jack and Annie on incredible missions traveling around the World and through time: geographical, historical and mathematical challenges and a Kids Club area for Key Stage 2 upwards
A brand new site from Classroom Secrets packed full of activities for children to use independently. This is free while the site is still in Beta version.
Free ballet and opera broadcasts from the Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House might be closed, but it's offering free broadcasts on its Facebook and YouTube channels, including:
Peter and the Wolf, The Royal Ballet, 2010 – 7pm on Friday 27 March
Acis and Galatea, The Royal Opera, 2009 – 7pm on Friday 3 April
Così fan tutte, The Royal Opera, 2010 – 7pm on Friday 10 April
The Metamorphosis, The Royal Ballet, 2013 – 7pm on Friday 17 April
After they've been broadcast, these performances will be available on those channels to view 'on demand', so don't worry if you can't tune in at the times above. There's also free content from the Royal Opera House available on BBC iPlayer to watch anytime, including The Royal Ballet: Mayerling, Pappano's Greatest Arias and Darcey Bussell: Looking for Margot.
Free online guitar lessons for three months from Fender (normally £10/month)
If you've more time on your hands (and access to a guitar), now could be a great time to learn a new skill. Instrument manufacturer Fender has made its online guitar courses free for three months – but you'll need to nab a code, and there were only 100,000 available when the offer launched on Friday 20 March, so go quick if you want one.
You can choose from acoustic, bass, electric or ukelele, plus a variety of different music styles (eg, blues, country, pop and rock).
Art
Quivervision
Coloring pages have never been so much fun! The Quiver App combines physical coloring with state of the art augmented reality technology to bring you and your children an extraordinary experience.
With a mix of free and paid content (certain page packs require an in-app purchase to activate the 3D experience) every coloring page can be brought to life in its uniquely colored way, giving the artist an immediate and special sense of ownership and pride! Not only is the app incredibly fun, but it is also a great tool for developing skills and knowledge on various topics.
All you have to do is create Rainbow pictures and stick them in your window for children to find on walks especially during this hard time of self isolation. You can be as creative as you like using pens, paints or anything you have to make one.
Family Programs at the National Gallery of Art are based on a philosophy of slowing down, focusing on one work of art, developing observation and thinking skills, inspiring curiosity and wonder, and fostering collaboration between children and adults.
Rob is a bestselling and multi award-winning author/illustrator (He is also the official World Book Day Illustrator for 2019 and 2020). He realised that lots of people were going to find themselves at home with their children for several weeks/months looking for things to do. So he has decided to post a draw-along video every Tuesday and Thursday at 10am GMT that parents could watch with their kids and, hopefully, make some nice pictures.
These popular meditation apps normally cost £50-£60/year for a subscription, but they've both released free content specifically to help those struggling with anxiety and stress at this time.
Calm is offering 'soothing meditations', a 'calm masterclass', 'calm kids' and mindfulness resources. They're available via its website – see Calm's free content.
Online PE lessons for kids every weekday morning with Joe Wicks
Every weekday at 9am, Joe Wicks (aka 'The Body Coach') is live-streaming a 30-minute PE class on his YouTube channel for free (his normal fitness plans are £97 for 90 days). If you can't tune in then, don't worry – you can watch them back whenever you want.
If your kids are getting restless, this is a great way to get them burning off some energy while they're stuck indoors, and a fun way to start the day if you're home-schooling.
Chris Hemsworth Fitness Programme
Free workouts for SIX weeks with Chris Hemsworth's fitness programme (normally £23/month)
Actor Chris Hemsworth (you might know him better as Thor from the popular Marvel films) has announced his health and fitness programme Centr will be free for six weeks (normally £23/month). It includes workouts with 'world-class trainers', meal plans and mindfulness exercises.
You can also get a free 30-day membership of Davina's McCall's Own Your Goals fitness programme (normally £9.99/month), which includes a number of different classes such as HIIT (high intensity interval training), boxing and dance. You don't need to enter any payment details to get the free trial.
NHS 10 Minute workouts
These equipment-free fitness routines are great to do at home and short enough for you to easily fit them into your daily schedule. There are 6 workouts, 1 for every day of the week if you include a rest day, each working on a different area of your fitness.
There are fitness apps and YouTube videos for every type of activity or exercise you can imagine.Stairs, chairs and household objects can be used to create your own indoor circuit class.
Conceptualising 3-D structures is often difficult for children and models help to represent the relative size, structure and relationship of different organs and structures - this knitting book is not for the beginner but while we're on lock-down could provide a very useful alternative to jumpers!
Loving horses this activity is great! it requires considerable patience, but the results are adorable. The activity was published online by an American home-schooling mum who blogs about her day, she includes ideas for fun often Lego based activities.
Empower children to learn the timeless game of Chess on the world’s #1 Chess site for kids! Our learning tools will keep kids motivated to learn and improve their Chess skills. More importantly, learning Chess will give them skills that they can take with them throughout life: strategy, tactics, creativity, perseverance and calculated risk-taking.
Just because we are in isolation because of COVID-19 doesn't mean we can't enjoy museums, zoos and other attractions from around the world. A lot of museums, zoos and in general the world of IT have come together to open their gates and possibilities for us to visit the haloed places from the comforts of our home while we self-isolate and #StayAtHome
