Lockdown – Useful resources to engage kids
Ever since the lockdown was imposed, parents have been struggling to keep their kids engaged without resorting to TV or other electronic screens. The work from home pressure has been increasing and it might become very challenging for the parents to cope up with the work and demands of their child who’s not used to be confined by the walls of the house.
The bigger challenge is to engage the kids with something meaningful and something that adds to their knowledge and skills, so here is a list of resources that you can use free of cost while also educating the little ones. We will continue adding to this list over time, so do check back again.
Online Learning Portals
Some of the online learning portals have made their content free to access during the lockdown. Here is a list.
Byju’s – The online learning portal has made all the courses freely available till 30th April.
Vedantu – This online tutoring portal is providing free access to live online classes and premium courses for grades 1 to 12 and JEE/NEET.
Khan Academy – Khan Academy is providing free lessons for kids of all ages.
CK-12 – This nonprofit organization has curated lesson plans and short video essays to help school students understand science, mathematics and social science subjects.
Toppr – This learning portal provides free access to online classes.
Logiquids – This site and app focused on improving logical reasoning in children is offering 20 free worksheets during the lockdown.
The National Repository of Open Educational Resources – This NCERT supported website provides multiple online courses and e-books.
Chachi – This nonprofit project has an activity generator app providing questionnaires and worksheets for various grades.
Big History Project – This Bill Gates supported resource provides a free, online social studies course that emphasizes skill development as students draw connections between past, present and future.
Mindspark Maths – Mindspark is giving 60-day free access to students whose schools are closed due to lockdown.
Math Games – This website provides various math-related puzzles and games.
Books
Audible – Audible is providing free access to curated collections of stories for the duration of lockdown.
National Book Trust – NBT, a Government of India entity, is providing 90 books for free download.
David Walliams – Children’s author David Walliams is currently releasing audio of him reading a story a day from his ‘World’s Worst Children’ book series.
StoryWeaver – Pratham Books’ StoryWeaver has more than 19,000 storybooks to choose from in 230 languages, which you can read online and on your phone. You can download, print PDFs, and save the storybooks to read offline – all for free.
LibriVox – This site provides audio versions of books that are in public domain.
Activities
Scholastic – Scholastic has learning activities based on student’s grades.
National Literacy Trust – UK’s National Literacy Trust’s Family Zone has a whole ton of excellent age-appropriate activities and videos. It provides access to free reading and writing resources, audiobooks, videos, competitions and reading challenges
Zooniverse – Checkout crowd-sourced citizen science projects. Listen to baby noises, transcribe Arctic plant collections, help locate black holes, and more!
The Royal Institution ExpeRimental – Check out these videos for fun, hands-on, cheap science experiments that can be done at home.
The Fab Lab With Crazy Aunt Lindsey – This YouTube channel turns everyday STEM concepts into easy DIY projects and crafts for children.
Wild Time Learning – This website is full of kid-centered outdoor activities.
Hip Hop Science – This YouTube channel is aimed at bridging the gap between music/entertainment and science by introducing scientific elements to everyday pop culture.
NASA At Home – NASA has put together a collection of resources to bring the wonder of space to your home! From podcasts to virtual tours to hands-on science activities, there’s a lot here for all ages.
Science Max – Another YouTube channel that provides small science experiments.
Coding
Code.org – This nonprofit provides a platform for kids to learn programming using games.
Scratch and Scratch Jr. – This MIT supported project gets children interested in coding by helping them understand the basic principles of programming language using stories and games.
Artificial Intelligence – Analytics India Magazine has shared a list of AI projects that even kids can work on.
Mouse.org – Mouse Open Projects has lots of free creative STEM & tech design activities that 5th-12th graders can do without facilitation.
Virtual Tours
National Gallery of Modern Art – India’s National Gallery of Modern Arthas started a virtual tour of its paintings and artifacts.
Museums – You can tour over 2500 museums.
The Smithsonian, National Museum of Natural History – The Smithsonian, National Museum of Natural History is offering a virtual tour of its exhibits.
Arts/Drawing
Lunch doodles – Award-winning author and illustrator Mo Willems has teamed up with the United States National Cultural Center to start a YouTube series on illustrations for children in the wake of the coronavirus epidemic. The series will teach you how to improve your pen skills by doodling.
#draw together – This is a campaign started by The New York Times’ best-selling illustrator and graphic journalist, Wendy Macnaughton. She takes in requests from kids and teaches them how to draw what they want to draw. The best submissions by the children are displayed on her Instagram page.
Draw every day with JJK – Best-selling illustrator and author Jarret J Krosoczka has started a series where he gives tips on using practical tools for storytelling using drawings and words.