School’s Out! Every kid’s two favorite words now sound daunting as COVID-19 spreads across the country, forcing most schools and daycare facilities to close. For parents, this is distressing, as they handle working from home while tackling digital learning and homeschooling. To help, Maroon Weekly and the SEAD Academy team put their heads together to gather useful resources for parents to quickly and easily manage the task so that children can continue their education effectively.
When it comes to content and tools, you can rely on many great online resources that cater to all ages and subjects.
Start here:
A first key to successful homeschooling is routine. When all family members are suddenly gathered under one roof and are expected to stay on task, creating a schedule and a set of guidelines will bring peace of mind and keep children engaged, especially if you include them in the decision-making process.
Keep your kids and yourself on task with KHAN Academy’s schedule template. KHAN Academy provides an extensive library of trusted, standards-aligned lessons with instructional videos, exercises, quizzes and tests. Specifically designed for homeschooling, their scheduling templates outline an hourly schedule to follow for all grade levels from preschool through 12th grade. Both the templates and the course material at KHAN are free, and the links to the courses are already listed on the template for your child’s age group. Easy! You can find the templates with links to the class material here: https://bit.ly/2vMXabJ.
TEDEd has an impressive repository of video-based lessons organized by age and subject. In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, TEDEd is developing interactive, video-based lessons featuring expert educators and TED speakers from all over the world, and you can have lesson plans for the appropriate age group sent to your inbox every day. Go to https://bit.ly/3dpwsGZ to access courses and sign up for email delivery.
YouTube has also pitched in and released learning channels offering videos, tutorials and activities appropriate for all different ages and areas of interest. Go to https://bit.ly/2vN0t2D for more info.
If you want to find data and answers about pretty much anything, WolframAlpha is a great online computational knowledge engine that answers factual queries by computing the answer from curated data coming from external sources. Find all that here https://bit.ly/39kNe6J.
A house can also be a great laboratory and art studio. Encourage children to learn about science by making their own experiments at home and promote arts and crafts. Many websites propose activities that can be done at home with minimal material:
Science Fun for Everyone! Science experiments for kids https://bit.ly/2QFrITJ.
Science Bob — easy science experiments https://bit.ly/2Ufhrjl
Science Kids — Fun science experiments and technology for kids https://bit.ly/3aclPW1.
Happiness is Homemade 50+ Quick and Easy Kid’s Crafts That ANYONE Can Make https://bit.ly/3afjQjG.
Whatever resources or tools you use, we hope this time is as educational and productive as possible for you and your children.
Be safe!
The SEAD Academy team
Marie Marchand manages the Innovation Underground, a privately owned business incubator headquartered in Bryan, TX. She is also director of SEAD Academy, providing education and inspiration to the next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs.
Can I get a explanation of the cost