Educational resources
for learning at home
Fun and educational activities to keep your child occupied if they are not at school and learning from home.
e-Books, e-Audiobooks and e-Magazines:
Top tips for parents
• Be guided by your child’s school. Check out the learning information on the school website or speak to your child’s class teacher
• Get your child to create their own learning timetable. They’ll be more likely to stick to it
• Keep the learning sessions in short bursts
• Get creative. Get messy! Painting, water play or slime making will keep your child interested
• Include some physical activity during the day. Get outside if you can. Go for a walk, or a bike ride. Hula hooping, skipping, kicking a ball around, playing ‘It’ or hide and seek. Kids need 60 minutes activity each day. Or you could try these 10-minute shake-ups
• Enjoy the garden or outdoor space. Get the kids involved in planting seeds. Give them their own space to grow their own veggies or flowers. Younger children could do a scavenger hunt or go bug hunting
• Get them to write a diary each day. Even just a short paragraph. History in the making!
• Get them involved in the kitchen. Help making dinner or doing some baking, weighing and measuring are great maths skills
• Write to a school friend or a family member they won’t see for some time
• Try to restrict screen time. Set an allocated time when phones, tablets and TV are all switched off
• Take a moment to enjoy quality family time. Dig out the board games and jigsaws. Scrabble, playing cards, even monopoly can all help sharpen learning skills
Home learning for under 5s
Cosmic Kids website has a range of activities to get under-fives active and to develop motor skills.
Bookstart have interactive stories and games on their website, as well as suggested reading.
General learning
BBC Bitesize offers in-depth online learning covering ages 3-16+
Scholastic Learn at Home website has an excellent range of information. Content is written for US children, so for guidance grades translate as; PreK and K Nursery: Reception – Year 1, Grades 1 and 2: Years 2 and 3, Grades 3-5: Years 3 – 5 and Grades 6+: Year 6 upwards.
Twinkl are offering a month’s free access to their premium site. They have worksheets, activities and crafts for preschool and primary aged children.
Online Classroom OAK National Academy are providing online lessons for teacher, parents and students.
English and reading
Children’s author, Oliver Jeffers @oliverjeffers, will be reading a story on Instagram live every day at 6pm and talking about his book ideas.
The British Library’s Discovering Children’s Books website has lots of information about books and stories and some great activities.
Michael Rosen has an amazing website of him reading and performing his poems, plus more resources.
Shakespeare Week website has lots of themed activities in their Kids’ Zone. There is a printable booklet to track what children have been doing.
Project Gutenberg – the website for books out of copyright – has a range of books for children.
BookTrust Looking for something fun as a family? Enjoy story time with our free online books, play games, win prizes, or test your knowledge in our book-themed quizzes.
Hamilton Learning at Home Packs for English – Y1-Y6.
Who Else Writes Like…? is recognised as a standard work to help introduce both book borrowers and buyers to novelists whose work is unfamiliar to them. It is designed to answer the perennial question “I’ve read all the books by this author, who else writes like that?”
Who Next…? A guide to children’s authors is an interactive online tool designed to help parents, teachers and librarians in schools and public libraries to encourage children and young people to read more widely, by suggesting authors they might enjoy. The tool can be used to guide children who have already enjoyed stories by one writer to find others who write in a similar way.
Science
Science Museum website has a range of learning games and apps that are free.
British Science Week website has downloadable ‘Diverse Planet’ activity packs for early years, primary school and secondary school children.
Geography
National Geographic Kids website has fun learning games including quizzes, puzzles and word scrambles.
History
Virtual tours of famous museums allow you to experience some of the best museums in the world, from the comfort of your own home.
British museum timeline of history around the world.
Languages
Memrise have free online language learning packages for a range of different languages.
Transparent Language have free online language learning packages for a range of different languages.
Technology
Hour of Code Try a one-hour tutorial designed for all ages in over 45 languages. Join millions of students and teachers in over 180 countries starting with an Hour of Code.
Scratch Coding website has a range of tutorials for different coding activities.
Grid Club Coding and educational fun games and activities.
TinkerCAD Easy, free, online computer aided design tool, with tutorials.
Future Engineer 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.
Learn at Home The Raspberry Pi Foundation have launched a new, free Learn at Home initiative to support parents and young people with coding at home. You don’t need any coding experience to join in, and all of their resources and activities are free forever.
Creative activities for children and young people
Creative Isolation a lovely roundup of activities and learning from a range of organisations.
Learning Resources Chester Zoo have some great resources to keep students busy.
Jigsaws Jigsaw Explorer has free online jigsaws.
Crossword A free daily crossword puzzle.
How to Make Miniature Books. A short video on how to make a miniature book, easy creative fun for anyone.