With hundreds of free resources popping up all over, I wanted to curate a smaller, quality list of the resources we use in our homeschool. These are the things we go back to again and again on these long days of quarantine.
Many of these resources are offered for free or at a discount at this time. If you want to see more resource deals, you can check the "Quarantine" story highlights on our Instagram.
I'm starting off with some non-screen resources, then a science recommendation that is a combination of an online lesson and a hands-on experiment, and lastly...our favorite literature based Spanish app.
Stay sane, stay healthy!
Enjoy!
Nature Journaling is a meditative and calming exercise. You can sketch in your backyard, from a living room window, or even houseplants! How to Teach Nature Journaling is the newest book from John Muir Laws - a leading naturalist, artist, and educator. The guide is available for free download. It is in English, but I have found nature journaling to be an easy subject to study in our minority language.
My children adore listening to audiobooks while drawing. It is a wonderful activity for quiet time. Scribd is offering free access to their audiobook vault for 30 days, and their Spanish library is impressive. If you have a library card, you can also check to see if your library offers access to audio books through apps like Hoopla. Audible is also currently offering a limited selection of children's books in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian and Chinese!
This site is in Spanish and can be difficult to navigate. However, it is a wealth of free printables. The best way to find what you're looking for is to search by the categories on the right sidebar. While we rarely use worksheets as seat-work, they do make an excellent springboard for interactive activities.
These bite-sized science lessons include a multi-media slide show that focuses on answering a single question. For example, "How Do Germs Get Inside Your Body"? There is a simple experiment following each lesson. While the slide shows are in English, the worksheets that accompany the experiments are available in Spanish. We generally watch the lesson in English, and then speak Spanish through the experiment. Mystery Science is offering their most popular lessons for free right now.
FabuLingua is a Spanish learning app like none other. The app contains beautifully illustrated and interactive books that are first read aloud to the child in English and Spanish, then read in only Spanish, and lastly your child can record their own voice reading the stories in Spanish. Along the way there are interactive games that reinforce vocabulary. There is an option to turn off the bilingual feature (which is what we do) so that stories are read exclusively in Spanish. They are offering their app free during throughout this pandemic.
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with any of these companies or websites. These are simply a list of our favorite resources.
What resources have been helpful for you during this stay-at-home time?
Let me know in the comments!
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