Schools are opening across the country for the fall semester. Though many kids are going back to regular methods of learning, virtual practices are being utilized as well with both “positive and adverse impacts”.
You might feel nervous for kids to have additional screen time, but learning online can be easy, fun, and educational. With so many options to choose from, it might feel impossible to find the right remote tactics. From online workshops to interactive games, Below is a list to help keep kids engaged both in and out of school hours.
Class Dojo
Class Dojo is an app that feels the most like in-person learning. Its basic functions provide seamless communication between parents, students, and teachers. With learning existing outside of normative structures, Class Dojo can provide some organizational tools to keep everyone on the same page.
The app has a couple of features to aid teachers and parents with their kids’ work ethic and concentration. There are timer functions to delegate how much time is devoted to certain activities and noise meters to control outside distractions. Keeping all the child’s priorities in line is hard even without a pandemic, so Class Dojo makes it easier to organize their work and check on their studies. Visit Class Dojo.
Outschool
Similar to Class Dojo, Outschool provides an educational extension to your kid’s school curriculum. There are a variety of classes to choose from, with a focus on small-group learning.
Courses of all interests can be found by scrolling through Outschool’s website. If you’ve got a tech-savvy adolescent, there are classes on game and web design. For the literary inclined, there are creative writing courses ready to be explored. With so many of us relegated to learning at home, Outschool makes it easy by having an extensive catalog of enticing classes for all students K-12. Visit Outschool.
Grace and Friends Birthday Cafe
Learning doesn’t always have to be dry and information-heavy. Sometimes we learn things by being provided with something more interactive. Take Grace and Friends Birthday Cafe: a simplistic game that has the power of teaching subitizing and quantitatives for even the most stubborn among us.
A repetitive structure and birthday theme make this math game perfect for your beginner mathematician. With multiple levels, your child will be learning under the guise of fun and competition. Get an early jump on subitizing with this game and see your child’s skills drastically improve. Visit Grace and Friends Birthday Cafe.
Math Science Music
For our teenagers, learning remotely often has a deficiency in arts education. Woodworking and band rehearsal have tremendous limits when it’s necessary to maintain social distancing. Luckily, Math Science Music provides some solutions to interdisciplinary learning when it comes to music-making.
This website contains lesson plans, interactive functions, and games to practice math and science through music. Providing teachers with a free toolkit on the site, you can keep your students engaged with topics ranging from geometry to coding. With a focus on creating and understanding music, students of all ages can combine their academic interests into making percussion loops and practicing music theory. Visit Math Science Music.
Fun Brain
If you’re looking for a website that hosts games for all different subjects, then Fun Brain is the place to go. Since 1997, Fun Brain has had a myriad of educational games for K-8 students.
As a young kid, I was overly obsessed with marine biology and anything aquatic. The coral reef simulation on the website is a perfect look into these diverse ecosystems. You can pick and choose various animals and plants to see how they interact with each other, discovering their intricate world and all the features that comprise our wondrous reefs.
If biology isn’t a topic of interest, there’s reading, writing, and educational videos to get your kid engaged. Comics to peruse are available on the site, as well as scientific vlogs and cartoons. There is so much to explore on Fun Brain, it might even be impossible to get your kids off the site. Visit Fun Brain.
Wordscapes
Crossword lovers, here’s an excellent alternative for you. The app is called Wordscapes and it combines problem solving and vocabulary in this sophisticated puzzle game.
For competitors of all ages, this app twists a normal crossword into a tetris-esque contest. The player starts with a few letters with only a couple intersecting rows. The goal is to use the three letters assigned to make different words for all of the rows available. As the rows and letters increase, the harder it is to conjure up new words and make them fit on the board. The simplistic concept is great for anyone with an adoration for puzzle solving. Visit Wordscapes.
Coco – Educational Games
Similar to some of the other sites and apps I included above, Coco is a collection of activities for kids to enjoy. Focusing on memorization techniques, this app has plenty of educational games for when your child needs a mental break from their classes.
With options to play by yourself, multiplayer, or split-screen, Coco has the potential to engage anyone and enhance attention and memory. Popular games like ColorMind focus on memorizing color combinations with increasing complexity. Other games like Silly Sequence are more rapid-fire, where letters and numbers appear on the screen with the goal of catching the duplicates.
Simply put, Coco has a range of games to make free time an opportunity for engaging our minds and memory. Visit Coco Educational Games.
Final Thoughts
Staying home and learning remotely doesn’t mean losing out on education. In fact, the accessibility of the internet has made education more convenient and creative. Whether your kid needs assistance in the classroom or wants to engage in stimulating puzzles, there are endless possibilities to explore. Brushing up on math or learning a skill or two has never been easier with this list of wonderful activities for kids of all ages.