With back-to-school upon us, parents may be looking for different educational websites to help support learning at home. As a teacher, nothing brings me more joy than a parent who takes an active role in their child's education; however, I know that many parents struggle to know what websites are best to provide engaging and quality content for kids. Don't worry, we have it covered!
These websites make kids feel as though they are playing, yet they are actually learning at the same time. These safe and educational websites for kids offer online teaching games, printable worksheets, videos and more and are a great way to use technology in your homeschooling environment.
To help you out, we’ve rounded up our favourite learning websites that’ll keep your child’s learning on track.
Fun Brain
Fun brain is a great educational entertainment site that uses interactive games to coach learning for children. It also includes learning aids for parents and teachers who tutor kids at home or in school. The site has options to filter different types of content according to age for better comprehension and connection. Parents can use the site to buy books and comics or try reading games with their children that will help improve their vocabulary and grammar skills (examples of reading games include: the translator alligator, word turtle and scramble-saurus).
Explore Learning: Explore at Home
Explore Learning is renowned for helping children aged 4-14 learn through its Explore at Home one-to-one tutoring: brilliant if your child needs a little help to get back on track now they're back at school, or is preparing for the 11+ or other important exam.
When you sign up for Explore at Home, your child’s personal expert tutor will devise a bespoke programme tailored to their age and stage, aligned with the primary curriculum. Your child will have a weekly one-to-one online session with a qualified centre tutor (the sessions can be delivered from any device, including mobile and tablets); learning will happen through a split screen and feedback will be provided to both you and your child at the end.
Your child’s progress is tracked so their tutor can identify their strengths and weaknesses and support them with the areas they find difficult, plus they'll have unlimited online access to an individualised online learning programme, with downloadable educational resources and worksheets, so they can work on their maths and English skills from home. Explore Learning is offering a free trial of Explore at Home so you can decide if it would be right for you and your child.
Khan Academy
Khan academy is an educational platform that features videos, micro-lectures, tutorials and pre-tests that make for a great customized learning experience. Children are encouraged to sign up using their parents’ email and choose what subjects they would like to learn first (math, science, economics and finance, arts and humanities, computing). Khan Academy is available in many languages and can be used by people all around the world.
BBC Bitesize Daily
From the start of the academic year, BBC Bitesize Daily is providing regular online lessons in English and maths, tailored to your child’s key stage. You can use these to supplement what your child is learning at school, or to keep them learning if they're off school for any reason.
Hosted by famous faces like Karim Zeroual and Oti Mabuse, BBC Bitesize will help your child stay on track with key curriculum areas, backed up with resources from reputable organisations such as the Premier League and the Royal Shakespeare Company.
There are also videos, quizzes and podcasts to make learning fun, plus educational programmes on iPlayer and the red button.
Topmarks
Children learn best if they’re enjoying themselves, which is why we love Topmarks: a website full of fantastic maths games for children aged three to 14.
The games are grouped by age, and you can also pick a particular category for your child to focus on, like place value, money maths, shapes and problem-solving. Games include Place Value Basketball, Rocket Rounding, and Number Patterns.
Many of the games are tablet-friendly, while others use Flash and so need to be played on a computer or laptop. There are also parents’ resources to give you ideas for improving your child’s maths skills, for example learning through cooking.
PBS Kids
PBS Kids is a game-based learning website that helps children learn reading, vocabulary, math and science in an engaging way. Most activities are in exciting game formats that will surely entertain young ones. PBS can also be used in school. The site is certified smart board compatible and can be used with interactive whiteboards for teachers and tutors in day-care programs.
Blockly Games
Blockly Games introduces children to the basics of computer coding through interactive games. Blockly is a programming language that works by stacking blocks together, a bit like a jigsaw. These blocks are used to create chunks of code that can then be converted into professional text code.
Blockly Games helps children get to grips with coding through games, puzzles and activities like making an animated character, writing instructions for a maze, and composing music using simple commands. This helps them understand key principles of coding like sequences, conditionals and loops.
Toppsta
Whether your child is happiest with their nose in a book or needs encouragement to read, Toppsta is packed with inspiring ideas to support reading for pleasure. The website is full of book recommendations for children aged 0 to 14, with reader reviews, book lists for different ages, stages and subjects, featured books, giveaways and inspiring ideas to help your child enjoy reading.
During school disruptions, Toppsta is also publishing a bookish activities blog listing many of each day’s brilliant live streams, YouTube and Instagram videos and talks by children’s authors, such as David Walliams and Tom Fletcher – perfect for bookworms and reluctant readers alike.
Your local library
Whether or not your local library is open at the moment, you can take advantage of their well-stocked shelves to keep your child reading.
If you have a library card, you can borrow a vast range of children’s and young adult ebooks and audiobooks from your local library to read or listen to on a tablet or phone using apps like Libby, Borrowbox, PressReader and rbdigital. Visit your library’s website to find out which app it uses.
You can also access a wide range of online reference books to support your child’s homework projects, as well as newspapers and magazines to give them a grounding in reading non-fiction and current affairs.
Make Time 2 Play
Learning isn’t all about sitting at the table with pencil and paper; there’s a lot that kids can learn through play, too. Once your child is back at school, they might struggle to get back into the swing of table-top learning, so why not have a look at Make Time 2 Play? It has over 450 play ideas for primary school children and younger that can be played online or downloaded to a tablet or phone. You can search by age, the number of children participating, the duration of the game and the particular benefits.
There’s a great selection of activities including arts and crafts, physical challenges and imaginative play, many of which you can do in the home and garden.
Home Learning Timetable
It’s natural to feel daunted if you’re supporting a secondary school child’s learning at home, especially if they've just started Year 7 and are facing a bigger homework workload than they're used to. Every day, Home Learning Timetable links to three online lessons on websites like YouTube and TED-Ed, covering key curriculum areas like maths and science plus optional subjects like media studies.
You can access previous days’ learning activities, so there’s no obligation to do every lesson every day, and there’s an emphasis on fun, with quizzes, TV programmes and practical challenges alongside more structured lessons.
If you or your child finds a great learning resource online, you can submit it to the website to be considered for inclusion.
TED-Ed
TED is renowned for its short, informative and powerful talks on a huge range of subjects – and TED-Ed is its youth and education initiative, bringing new ideas to children from primary age up.
Short animations that spark ideas are TED-Ed’s bread and butter, with collaborations from teachers, designers, journalists, science writers and historians, covering subjects as diverse as the immune system, the myths behind the Chinese Zodiac, and materials science.
Disney Family
Disney Family is a fun DIY site for children interested in creative crafts and cooking. The site has a collection of simple DIY projects for kids and moms wanting some creativity in their bonding time. Simple projects like recycling broken crayons to make tie-dye Mickey crayons, old cookie jars to a Dory-inspired mason jar crafts, or organizing a Star Wars-themed movie night. This site has all the amazing DIY projects your child needs.
How to find a good learning website?
When you’re hunting for the best learning websites for your children, there are several things to keep in mind. The website should be easy to use, fun to browse through, safe to leave your kids alone with, protected from external factors such as social-media links or malware attacks, and at the same time, brilliant in conveying its message/lessons.
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