New Offerings and Resources​

As school districts close in the face of the COVID-19 outbreak, many parents are wondering what they can do to keep their children's brains active at home.

First, I want to let you know about three things I am offering.

1. A free 15-minute consultation on steps you can take and resources you can use to keep up your child's academics while they are home from school. These would supplement any activities your child's teacher/s put together for online learning.

2. I have spots open for online sessions geared toward supplementing reading and writing. These could also be used for SAT Reading, Writing and Language and Essay prep. If you're a current student, you could also add another session to our regular meetings.

3. Online math and science supplemental lessons.

If you have a student with learning differences, it will be important for them to keep flexing their academic muscles so they don't lose any ground they've gained during the school year so far. If you are working from home and don't have a lot of time to do extra work with your student, you could ask them to keep a journal as writing practice. You could get them a Big Life Journal.

Or, you could give them a writing prompt and ask them to write for 10–20 minutes. Then check the writing for the CHOPS together: capitalization, handwriting, organization, punctuation, and spelling. Ask them to read their favorite book, or listen to an audio book, and give you an oral report about what they read.

Ask them to listen to a podcast, take notes, and share what they learned. Here is a starter list.

Below, you'll find a list of online resources you can use during a school closure. I will update this list as I discover new ones and it will be on my blog.

Archive.org: a massive archive of books, audio, video, software, and images.

The illustrator Jarrett Lerner has created fun worksheets and blank comics for kids to work on. If you have access to a printer, print new activities daily for them to work on.

Scholastic is offering free lessons for K–6 students each day.

Science Mom has free science videos on YouTube.

Author Tara Lazar will read one of her picture books each day on YouTube.

Artist and art teacher Rama Hughes is putting a daily drawing challenge up on YouTube. It’s for his class, so you can ignore his instructions about “homework” and instead do the fun part: drawing!

Explore national parks using Google Earth. Here’s a list.

Take virtual field trips to aquariums, zoos, cities, and more. Here’s a list.

Story Online: Actors like Lily Tomlin, Viola Davis, and James Earle Jones read picture books to children. The site lists the books read with their grade levels and how long the video lasts. You could play the video and then ask your child to answer questions about the story, either orally or written.

Amazing Educational Resources: This started as a Google Doc a few days ago and quickly mushroomed into a website. The site lists educational web sites offering free content.

List of museums that offer free online tours by Travel + Leisure The list includes the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam and the Guggenheim in NYC.

ABCya! has online games geared toward the common core.

Khan Academy: Great for math, science, and history. I really like Pixar in a Box, which teaches the art of storytelling.

EPIC: An excellent collection of ebooks and videos. Books are leveled. If you have a student who isn't reading at grade level, think of a book they do well with, and look up the lexile level here. Then search for other books in that lexile level.

Coursera: University level courses for free on a multitude of topics. Great for the advanced high school student who is stuck at home and bored. If this type of resource interests you, here is a longer list.

TedEd: Lessons on everything under the sun, curated for kids.

Schoolhouse Rock: Go retro and watch these classic videos.

Finish the picture prompts: The Art of Education University created downloadable drawings that encourage kids to use their imagination to finish the picture. This link also includes their recommendations for fun activities.

This is a fantastic list of free educational resources created by Open Culture. It includes links to sites where students can learn about music, philosophy, art, science, history, and technology, and it has a list of YouTube channels with educational content.

And don't forget about this list of library resources I created, including ways to access your library online when it is closed.

Photo by Jeremy Avery on Unsplash.​