Free Online Resources for Kids
Animals
Ocean Portal: Find Your Blue created by the Smithsonian Natural Museum of Natural History. Discover the sea through a fun-filled blog, media gallery video, or current museum happenings. Explore ocean life and amazing ocean photos. Under the Educator’s Corner, check-out lessons plans for all grades.
San Diego Zoo Wildlife Explorers Take a virtual trip to the San Diego Zoo! You can find pictures of all the animals at the zoo, or watch videos or live animal cams. There are also games and activities on this site. Most suited for elementary age kids, but younger kids might enjoy the pictures and videos.
Cornell Lab of Ornithology Learn all about birds at this website including bird names, species, location and history. Also includes bird songs and videos.
Aquariums and Underwater Zoos from Around the World
Animal Webcams
Monterey Bay Aquarium Sea Otters
Art/Music
Awesome Art! Learn to draw, paint, and sculpt with the help of free videos featuring kids and adults creating art together.
Classics for Kids: Learn about some of world’s greatest classical composers and listen to amazing music! This site also includes information about the history of music, games, and materials for caregivers and educators, and lots of multimedia content.
Free Arts and Crafts Resources for Home Learning
Authors/Books
Dav Pilkey’s Extra Crunchy Website-O-Fun Meet Dav Pilkey in comic book form! Explore his books, videos, games and book app! Be sure to check out “Fun Stuff” for more activites and silly facts.
Laura Numeroff: Visit Laura Numeroff’s Web site to find out about her life, pets, and books. You can also find fun games and activities relating to her books.
Storyline Online: The SAG-AFTRA Foundation’s award-winning children’s literacy website, Storyline Online, streams videos featuring celebrated actors reading children’s books alongside creatively produced illustrations.
Exercise and Movement
RPD Recess is your at-home resource for recreation! Play is an essential part of everyone’s day and is needed now more than ever. RPD Recess is a place to find short videos from our recreation experts that show a fun new skill, game, or activities. We are here to help you enjoy life! Let’s have some fun!
Cosmic Kids: Introduce your children to yoga through these fun videos. You can select videos based on length, energy level and category. There’s something for everyone!
Jr. NBA at Home: Keep your basketball game sharp with skills and drills featuring NBA and WNBA players that can be completed individually and in limited space. Each video provides drills, activities and instruction to promote skill development, physical activity and character development.
Games & Puzzles
FunBrain is the #1 site for online educational games for kids of all ages including math, grammar, science, spelling, and history.
Learn to play chess! In a safe environment, discover the rules and strategies of chess. Improve your game, memorization skills, patience and sportsmanship with free online games, tournaments and club matches with kids around the world.
Puzzles for everyone! A variety of puzzles including jigsaw puzzles, word searches, Sudoku, and memory games to engage all kids.
History
Ben’s Guide to the US Government Kids aged 4-14 years and up can learn about our government, how laws are made and elections work, Ben Franklin’s life, and the importance of historical documents; and play related games.
Visit Colonial Williamsburg and see life in a Virginia colony of 250 years ago. Includes a large educational section on Colonial America.
Select a date in history and learn what happened in that day’s headlines. Participants can narrow their focus to specific dates in Automotive, Civil War, Cold War, Crime, Entertainment, Literary, Old West, Vietnam War, Wall Street, and WWII history.
Math
Code.org is a site designed to support the learning and teaching of computer coding. Features Hour of Code, a special program designed to teach beginners how to code. Through well thought out tutorials people of all ages can learn Scratch, Hopscotch and Java programming languages.
Biz Kids provides resources that teach the basics of financial literacy.
Cool Math: This site is fully interactive and allows the user to sharpen basic math skills, play math-related games and explore new math concepts.
Science
Science Experiments for Kids: Science experiments you can do at home. Try out over 50 science experiments using household objects. Each experiment includes a list of materials, step by step instructions and an explanation of the science behind it. Don’t have some of the materials? No worries! Videos of each experiment are included.
Dinosaur Maker Online: Kids can mix and match parts of different dinosaurs to come up with their own unique super-saurus! Add a name and description of your dinosaur. Print it out to hang on your wall.
Ology: American Museum of Natural History put together this wonderful website to help kids learn about all the cool creatures and natural elements that make up our world.
Everything space! Learn about astronomy, space, telescopes, stars, discoveries. Includes “Tonight’s Sky” constellations, deep sky objects and planets.
Story Times
Goodnight With Dolly: Join Dolly Parton as she reads some of her favorite books. In addition to stories, each episode includes songs, activity sheets, parent reading tips and more!
Save With Stories is offering stories on Instagram and Facebook, both at @savewithstories. The Instagram page also directs parents to Save the Children to donate money toward school and community programs that are feeding children who have been impacted by coronavirus. Among the readers: Jimmy Fallon, Demi Lovato, Jennifer Garner and Lupita Nyong’o.
Operation Storytime: Search the hashtag #OperationStoryTime on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube to find authors, illustrators and others sharing story time with children. Among the readers: Author and illustrator Eric Carle reading “The Very Hungry Caterpillar,” Molly Idle reading “Pearl” and illustrator Sophie Blackall reading “Ivy and Bean.”
Virtual Field Trips
The Great Wall of China: See one of the wonders of the world with this amazing, thousands-year old fortification system known the world over.
Access Mars: Check out a 360 degree tour of Mars from the Mars Rover.