Looking for some hands-on ways to bring your anatomy studies to life? The University of Texas at Austin’s Department of Anthropology has some wonderful freebies to help. The fantastic printables include: A life-sized adult skeleton A life-sized child skeleton in B&W or color 9-piece scramble puzzles of Prosimian Skulls, Prosimian Skulls and Hominoidea Skulls Word […]
Here’s an fun and effective way to help kids learn history and get an idea for when things happened in relation to each other. Make a timeline game! Here’s all you do: First, find a timeline of history that includes events you want to teach about. This site has collections of timelines of people, places […]
Right now, we finally have nice weather in southern Minnesota and it would be nearly criminal to have the kids sitting inside doing anything, even educational stuff! That said, everybody needs cooling off times and it’s great to have some educational fun on hand for rainy days. Here’s ten sites with games, activities, drills and […]
Have you made your summer bucket list yet? If you need a little inspiration, here’s our list from 2010 of 101 fun, educational, sentimental and silly things to do over the summer. Catch fireflies Take part in the library reading program Dance in the rain Master the multiplication tables Read the Little House series together […]
Here are some great ways for the kids to play (and learn) in every subject from right at home today. These online games are all free and require no special downloads or installations other than basics like Java or Adobe Flash Player in some instances. Math: Zeus’ Petals teaches kids multiplication skills. The game says: […]
PBS LearningMedia classrooms has announced a great new iPad app for K-12 students that is absolutely free. Designed specifically for students in grades K-12, the app provides access to thousands of resources covering all subject areas, from math and science to English and social studies. The PBS Student app allows kids to watch and learn […]
Here’s a fabulously fun way for kids to learn their American states and world geography. Statetris is a free online game that kids play just like Tetris. States appear and the player uses arrow keys to move them to the proper place on the map. There are three levels: easy, medium and hard: In the […]
Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational has created a wonderful free printable card game that helps kids learn all about the geography and history of the states. Battle of the States is played a little bit like “War” but by comparing numbers and dates related to the states such as population, number of counties, electoral votes […]
Are your kids interested in learning to play chess? Wikijunior offers an 84-page printable chess book for free. It can be viewed online, read on devices as a PDF file, or printed. The book, Chess, contains full-color photos and illustrations, rules of play, information about how each piece can be moved, a sample chess game […]
There’s no need to make kids suffer through boring worksheets and lesson plans to learn their parts of speech. There are all kinds of fun ways to help them remember the names and functions of each one. Here are a few wonderful ways to help kids learn nouns, verbs, adjectives and more. Mad Libs: These […]
Do you have a Lego lover in your house? Legos are great for learning when they’re used as building tools, but there are also all sorts of great lesson plans on the web to use them in even more educational ways. From chemistry models to creative writing prompts to symmetry challenges, there are fabulous lesson […]
Are you looking for fun resources to teach your kids about the Vikings? There are all sorts of wonderful crafts, printables, lesson plans and more — free for the taking! Crafts and costumes: Bug, Boo and Bean has instructions to make your own cardboard Viking helmets and swords and shields. Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational has […]
Looking for some ways to make history really come alive in your homeschool? There are oodles of fun ways to teach history besides dry textbooks or boring curricula. Here are ten fabulous ways to bring history to life for your kids. Do a weekly “meet and greet” with historic characters. This can be a fun […]
The National Gallery of Art now provides a phenomenal lending library of art materials that any homeschooler can borrow through the mail for free, including teaching packets, DVDs, art reproductions and more. Individuals, educational institutions and other groups throughout the United States can borrow their teaching packets and DVDs for up to nine months at […]
Here’s a wonderful resource for your nature studies. Hobby Farms is offering free, colorful animal track ID cards that you can print out to use for all sorts of educational fun. The sixteen cards include: Deer Mountain Lion Wolf Wild Turkey Skunk Beaver Bobcat Squirrel Fox Opossum Mole Mouse Raccoon Rabbit Coyote Bear The cards […]
Hobby Farms Magazine offers wonderful wildflower ID cards that can be used in all sorts of ways for nature study fun in your homeschool. The full-color cards offer photos and descriptions of fourteen wildflowers that can be found throughout the United States. These can be used in a myriad of ways for games, nature studies […]
Recently, a fellow homeschooling mom asked for good resources to teach social studies. She particularly wanted fun, hands-on ideas. She wrote: We’re looking for something that will lighten things up. History is so full of wars, disease, power struggles and such that my kids are amazed that humans ever made it past the Renaissance. Here’s […]
Have you been to A Book in Time? This wonderful free resource for homeschoolers helps history come alive through great book recommendations, games, crafts and more. The site’s founder, homeschooling mother Carol Henderson, says, “A Book In Time first began years ago when I wanted my students to read some good history books along with […]
Recently, a homeschooling mother wrote that she was looking for ways to incorporate more math into her homeschool. Zany word problems are a fun way to do that. Whenever we give math problems to our kids, we tend to make them rather crazy or fun. Sometimes it’s “mad scientist” math questions, sometimes it’s shopping questions, […]
Here’s a great resource for elementary and middle school math. Math Live is a website developed by Learn Alberta to teach math in a fun way. The online Flash-based application mimics a television set, with math lessons presented as cartoon episodes. Each one is filled with short, interactive segments to really reinforce the topics. […]
Educational games for kids just got even more impressive. The Nobel Prize Foundation has created a variety of games to teach kids about subjects like blood typing, DNA, the immune system and more — and it’s all free. Nobelprize.org explains: Through the assistance of foundations, corporate sponsors and educational bodies, Nobel Media AB creates and […]
Whether you consider your family to be unschoolers or not, there are many aspects of unschooling that make homeschooling easier and more enjoyable for kids and parents alike. What is unschooling? Pat Farenga, author of Teach Your Own: The John Holt Book of Homeschooling and many other unschooling books says: This is also known as […]
Looking for free Spanish resources for your homeschool? Here’s a roundup of absolutely free lessons, videos, printouts, games, curricula and ideas to teach your child (or yourself) Spanish, from the preschool level to high school and beyond. Mi Vida Loca This online series from the BBC “takes you on an intrigue mystery adventure […]
Okay, so you crossed that first homeschooling hurdle and your child is reading well. Chances are, spelling is another story — and it will be for at least a couple of years. Although reading and spelling seem to go hand in hand, most children fully grasp reading long before they’re spelling well. This is normal, […]
I’ve been sharing free curricula for every subject and each grade in this column, and several parents have asked me to share free curricula for preschoolers. I’ve put off doing a preschool list yet for two reasons: If you’re new to homeschooling your kids, it’s more important to find resources for older kids than it […]
Here’s a fabulous new resource for parents whose kids are learning to read. Sight Words, a free website sponsored by the Georgia Preschool Association, offers a multitude of tools for parents, teachers and caregivers to help kids learn to read. The site says: Sightwords.com is a comprehensive sequence of teaching activities, techniques, and materials for […]