Home Schooling Resources During COVID-19

• Amazing Educational Resources: A spreadsheet of 300+ education companies offering free subscriptions due to school closings. Additional helpful resources can be found in this article by Forbes.
• Resources for Educators During the Coronavirus Pandemic: Common Sense Media has created a collection of remote teaching resources, family education materials, and research-backed strategies to ease stress and encourage learning at home. On this other page, you can find Online Learning Resources to Supplement Homeschooling, Free Educational Apps, Games, and Websites, and more.
• Zoom’s Free Videoconferencing Tools: During the COVID-19 crisis, Zoom is providing K-12 institutions free access to their videoconferencing tools needed to run online courses. Get details here. Also here are tips on how to look your best on a webcam.
• Free Zoom Artistic Backgrounds: If you would like to customize your Zoom background, you can find free art from Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli (the makers of Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, etc.) You can also get free art from world class museums. Instructions for customizing the background can be found here.
• Engineering Challenges for Children During Lockdown: Designers from the James Dyson Foundation “have come up with a series of challenges to help kids learn at home during isolation. Comprised of 22 science tasks and 22 engineering activities, the Challenge Cards can be completed by children using common household items such as eggs, string and balloons.” There’s a related set of videos on YouTube.
• Free Online Resources for Schools Shifting Online During Coronavirus Pandemic: A collection of resources curated by SchoolChoiceWeek.com. It covers communication platform resources, math and science resources, social studies resources and more.
• Ideas to Steal: A New Zealand organization provides free activities you can do with your kids, using basic materials at home.
• Khan Academy: Khan Academy has created guides designed to help parents and teachers get through the COVID-19 crisis.
• Google Teach From Home: A central hub of information, tips, training and tools from across Google for Education to help teachers keep teaching, even when they aren’t in the classroom.
• Google Learn at Home: Google has partnered with Khan Academy and other learning creators to bring parents & families resources and activities to make the coming days as educational and fun as possible. These resources won’t replace any homework assigned by teachers — but they can complement that work.
• How Schools Can Start Teaching Online in a Short Period of Time: Free Tutorials from the Stanford Online High School.
• National Emergency Library: In the wake of our crisis, the Internet Archive has made available online 1.5 million books. They’re ready to be checked out.
• Netflix Educational Documentaries: During this period, Netflix has made some of its educational documentaries free to stream online. The list notably includes David Attenborough’s nature series Our Planet and Abstract, which looks at the art of design.
• New York Public Library COVID-19 Resources: Need some good book recommendations? Read aloud suggestions? NYPL has your at-home reading needs covered for kids of all ages.  See sections on Pre-K to 2nd Grade, 3rd to 5th Grade, Middle School and High School.
• Scholastic Learn at Home: Day-to-day projects to keep kids reading, thinking and learning. Goes from PreK to 9th grade.
• Free Online Drawing Lessons for Kids, Led by Favorite Artists & Illustrators: During the COVID-19 crisis, some well known illustrators (Mo Willems, Wendy McNaughton, Wendy, etc.) are offering free drawing lessons for kids.
• The National Constitution Center: This organization is offering daily live constitutional conversations for middle school, high school, and college students, available through Zoom, and accessible on home computer, laptop, or phone

Free Audio Books, eBooks and Textbooks

• Free Audio Books: Our collection of 450 free audio books includes many children’s classics. The Wizard of Oz, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Mark Twain, The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, The Swiss Family Robinson, Gulliver’s Travels, Anne of Green Gables, Aesop’s Fables, The Wizard of Oz series, and much more. You can download audio files straight to your computer or mobile device.
• Free eBooks: This collection includes many children’s classics in ebook format. You generally have the option to download these texts to your Kindle, iPad, Nook or computer. Video tutorials are included on the page. You may also want to visit our resource: Download 20 Popular High School Books Available as Free eBooks & Audio Books.
• Audible Stories: During the COVID-19 outbreak, Audible is providing free stories to kids and teens.
• Bartleby.com: Gives you access to free online classics of reference, literature, and nonfiction, including Strunk & White’s Elements of Style, The World Factbook, The Oxford Shakespeare, and The King James Bible.
• Calibre: Download free e-book software that will manage your electronic library, convert e-books from one format to another, and give you online access to free e-books. We have more on it here.
• CK-12: This non-profit provides “open textbooks” for K-12 students all over the world. It offers free high-quality, standards-aligned, open content in the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics).
• Historic Children’s Books: The University of Florida’s Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature has digitized 6,000 books. They’re free to read online from cover to cover. You can find other collections by The Library of Congress and UCLA.
• International Children’s Digital Library: Provides free access to high-quality children’s books from around the world in different languages, including Arabic, Afrikaans, Danish, English, Farsi and beyond. Hosts books for kids 3-5, 6-9, and 10-13. Start browsing the library here.
• Librivox: A favorite of ours, Librivox provides free audio books from the public domain. You will find 5000+ books in their catalogue.
• OER Commons: Free, adaptable, openly licensed textbooks and supplemental resources.
• Project Gutenberg: The mother of all ebook sites hosts 40000 free ebooks, and makes them accessible for Kindle, Android, iPad, and iPhone.
• The Harvard Classics: Harvard’s influential president, Charles W. Eliot, said that if you spent just 15 minutes a day reading the right books, you could give yourself a proper liberal education. He published a 51-volume series, now known as The Harvard Classics, and they’re available free online. Ideal for the older student.
• Free Textbook Collection: Our site provides a meta collection of free textbooks available on the web. It covers everything from Art History to Biology, Math, Physics, and Psychology.
• Physics Comic Books – PhysicsCentral, a web site run by The American Physical Society (an organization representing 48,000 physicists), has created a series of comic books designed to get kids excited about physics. Among other comics, you can can read Nikola Tesla and the Electric Fair for free online.
• RadioLab for Kids: Kid-friendly stories curated by Radiolab. All in one bingeable spot.
• Watch Stars Read Classic Children’s Books: Betty White, James Earl Jones, Rita Moreno & Many More: Storyline Online streams imaginatively produced videos featuring celebrated actors including Viola Davis, Allison Janney, Chris Pine, Wanda Sykes, Justin Theroux, and Betty White reading children’s books alongside creatively produced illustrations.

Video Lessons/Tutorials

• Free Courses: Our collection, 1,700 Free Online Courses from Top Universities, contains countless video lectures from courses offered by top universities. Some material can be useful for high school students, or their teachers.
• Khan Academy: The site famously features K-12 video tutorials created by Sal Khan and team. It currently gives students access to thousands of video tutorials that explain the ins-and-outs of algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, statistics, finance, physics, economics and more. Videos can also be accessed via YouTube and iTunesU, or on the Khan Academy’s website.
• Crash Courses: Created by author John Green, this YouTube channel provides crash courses in physics, philosophy, games, economics, U.S. government and politics, astronomy, anatomy & physiology, world history, computer science, biology, literature, ecology, chemistry, psychology, U.S. history and more.
• Learner.org: Run by The Annenberg Foundation, Learner.org hosts multimedia resources for teachers, students and lifelong learners. You can browse their general collection of educational videos here. Selected collections are cataloged below.
• MIT-K12: Taking a page from Khan, MIT is now producing ”short videos teaching basic concepts in science and engineering” for K-12 students. The videos are generally created by MIT students. You can sort the videos by topic and grade level. Find versions of these videos on iTunes.
• NeoK12: Designated a “Great Site for Kids” by the American Library Association, this site provides educational videos, lessons, quizzes and educational games for K-12 students in various subject areas, such as science, math, health, social studies and English.
• The Kid Should See This: This blog aggregates interesting, kid-friendly videos focusing on science, art, technology, and more. The videos weren’t necessarily made for kids, but kids can get a lot out of them. That’s the premise of the site.
• TED-Ed: The maker of TED Talks now provides carefully curated educational videos or “lessons worth sharing.” Topics range from Literature and Language, to Mathematics, to Science and Technology.
• Schoolhouse Rock: Animated musical educational short films that aired during the Saturday morning children’s programming on the U.S. television network ABC. The topics covered included grammar, science, economics, history, mathematics, and civics
• WatchKnowLearn: This site has indexed over 33,000 educational videos from YouTube and placed them into a directory of over 3,000 categories. The videos are available without registration or fees to teachers in the classroom and to students at home 24/7.
• YouTube EDU: A curated collection of educational videos from sources ranging from Sesame Street to Harvard. Created by YouTube itself.

YouTube Channels

• American Museum of Natural History: This channel features the excellent “Known Universe” video, which gives you a six-minute journey from Mt. Everest to the farthest reaches of the observable universe.
• Bad Astronomy: Bad Astronomy is all about astronomy, space, and science. The videos are created by Phil Plait, an astronomer, writer, and sometimes TV-science-show host.
• HooplaKidz: This channel is dedicated to animated nursery rhymes and stories designed to entertain and educate children between the ages of 2 and 8.
• Edutopia: Offers inspiration and information for what works in education. Edutopia is run by The George Lucas Educational Foundation.
• Khan Academy: This channel features thousands of videos that will teach students the ins and outs of algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, statistics, finance, physics, economics and more.
• Minute Physics: Cool science videos that are all about getting people into learning physics.
• NASA Television: NASA’s mission is to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research. This channel helps explore fundamental questions about our place in the universe.
• Numberphile: Videos about numbers – it’s that simple. Videos by Brady Haran.
• Periodic Videos: Your ultimate channel for all things chemistry. A video about each element on the periodic table.
• Sick Science: Videos and cool science experiments from Steve Spangler and SteveSpanglerScience.com
• SpaceLab: Can plants survive beyond Earth? Can proteins observed in space reveal the mysteries of life? These questions and more get answered by SpaceLab, a YouTube channel created by Google and Lenovo, in cooperation with Space Adventures, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
• YouTube EDU: YouTube hosts a section dedicated to academic videos. It’s a little bit of a mixed bag, but it features some quality videos.