How to keep your kids educated at home during lockdown

With schools shut and the UK in another lockdown, parents are again faced with the prospect of helping their kids keep on top of their studies. While also trying to keep them healthy and fit. Not to mention that many parents will still need to fit in working from home in-between.

Thankfully, there is a growing list of activities, products and initiatives being launched by experts to help make everything a little more manageable. Here’s how to homeschool and deal with self-isolation with kids like a pro.

Education

Price: Free (with a TV licence) Age range: 4-16

From Monday 11 January, the CBBC channel will be broadcasting a free, three-hour block of primary school programmes that start at 9am. Programmes from BBC Live Lessons and BBC Bitesize Daily, as well as Our School, Celebrity Supply Teacher, Horrible Histories and Operation Ouch will all be shown throughout the week.

BBC Two will then run at least two hours' worth of educational programming for secondary students every weekday, which will include adaptations of Shakespeare plays as well as science and history shows. During the first lockdown last year, BBC Bitesize ran daily lessons for students online and on iPlayer, but these weren't made available on regular TV channels.

Price: Free Age range: All

Scholastic has been in the business of textbooks for decades and, in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, the company’s Resource Bank has put together a range of free home learning packs to help parents and teachers keep their kids up-to-date with their schooling and development. The packs are divided by learning age – Early Years, Key Stage 1, Lower Key Stage 2 and Upper Key Stage 2 – and can be downloaded from Scholastic’s Home Learning site.

Price: Free Age range: All

If the very thought of homeschooling your children fills you with dread, add some method to the madness with free templates from design platform Canva. Canva is used by more than 8 million teachers and students globally and provides a host of templates from class timetables to worksheets, fact sheets and storyboarding. You can even download certificates to reward your children (or yourself) for making it through each day. On its Distance Education site are tips and fact sheets to help guide parents, too.

Price: Free Age range: All

Twinkl – one of the country’s largest education platforms – has made 630,000 home learning packs available to parents for free to help them plan their child’s day and make sure they keep up with the school studies. Each of these packs include activity sheets, information packs and interactive presentations, complemented by online games and videos. The packs are categorised by key stage groups from the Early Years Foundation Stage up to GSCE, as well as those requiring special educational needs provision, and Twinkl has also put together guidance for parents and carers as to how to help children being schooled at home. All core subjects at each key stage are covered and are mapped to all UK curriculums.

Price: £1 for a month (usually £4.49 a month/£34.99 a year) Age range: 3-11

Busy Things is an online educational resource with more than 1,000 games and activities for Early Years, Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2. The site believes that children learn more effectively through play and laughter so the site is packed full of engaging content designed to get children involved. From funny characters, animations and sounds, Busy Things wants kids to have so much fun they don’t even realise they’re learning.

These games, activities and teaching resources cover maths, English, phonics, geography, history, coding and more. In fact, there’s an activity to suit every subject in the National Curriculum. Although many of the activities are screen-based, you can also print out a number of resources for you and your children to do together. Following Boris’ announcement, Busy Things is offering a month’s free access to all the activities for £1. This rises to £4.49 a month, or you can pay £34.99 for a year’s subscription.

Price: Free Age range: All

Quizlet’s USP in a sea of study and revision websites is that it uses AI to identify areas where a student is struggling and tailors its courses to address these difficulties, mirroring how a real-life tutor would teach. Through the use of digital flashcards, students can test and affirm their knowledge of various topics within English, Science and Maths, using ready-made packs or by creating their own. Teachers, for instance, can upload digital learning guides to the app for their students, or parents can add their own study guides. It’s not just limited to core school subjects, either. Students can learn about cocktail making, video games, how to cook and right down to niches such as famous Scottish people or the geography of New Zealand. We’re going to set up a study guide to teach our eldest how to use the washing machine.

Price: Free Age range: 3-11

Unlike during the initial lockdown, nurseries and Early Years settings are still open during Lockdown 3.0, for the time being at least. However, if you’ve got little ones at home still – or you’ve chosen not to send them to nursery – Learning Resources has a host of worksheets, packs and fun activities for preschoolers. These packs focus on counting, recognising numbers, letters, and shapes, and give an introduction to maths. Many of the educational platforms tend to focus on Key Stage 1 and above, so it’s great to see options for younger children. That said, if your kids are Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2, they’ll also find age-appropriate packs with their curriculum in mind.

Price: £69.99 a year, or £99.99 for “Forever” plan Age range: 1-8

Developed by a team of international speech therapists, Speech Blubs is a simple, clever app designed to teach your children through peer learning. It may not come close to the social interaction your little ones are used to in childcare or school, but Speech Blubs uses videos of real children to introduce users to early sounds, numbers, emotions and more. Research has found that when children watch their peers in real time, mirror neurons in the brain fire and this has been found to be effective in speech development. Speech Blubs’ video-modelling approach is particularly useful for children on the Autism spectrum. The app is free to download and you get the first two Early Sounds for free, but if you want to unlock the other chapters, an annual subscription costs £69.99.

Fitness

Price: Free Age range: All

Every morning this week, Joe Wicks – a.k.a The Body Coach – is hosting free workouts aimed at kids live on his YouTube channel. You don't need any equipment, just tune in to his channel for a 30-minute workout live at 9am Monday to Friday. On day one, more than 800,000 families signed in to take part (including WIRED). If you have a smart TV, Chromecast or Amazon Fire, or a set-top box with the YouTube channel, you can stream the videos to your living room through your TV. If you don’t, you can still stream via a phone or tablet and all workouts are being made available on catch-up, on Joe’s YouTube channel, after each event has ended to be streamed later if you cannot make the live class.

Price: £4.50 to £8 Age range: 18 months to 4 years

Diddi Dance has taken its toddler and pre-school dance classes online and each of its teachers is offering virtual lessons and parties to families across the country. These classes are designed to be fun and interactive to get your little ones wiggling and exercising without realising they’re doing so. Although the classes are run virtually, new customers are being encouraged to find their local teacher so children can continue attending the classes, if they want to, once everything gets back to normal. In theory, though, you can attend any class. Prices vary depending on region but average between £4.50 and £8.

Price: Free Age range: All ages

If your children are struggling with stress, anxiety or having trouble sleeping as a result of the ongoing pandemic, they may benefit from meditation and mindfulness. With this in mind, Sesame Street has teamed up with Headspace to create “Monster Meditations” – six animated shorts to help children learn the basics of mindfulness, meditation and social and emotional learning. The six shorts were first broadcast on YouTube during the summer and they’re still available, for free, on both YouTube and ​YouTube Kids​.

The shorts are each around three minutes long and feature animated versions of Sesame Street Muppets feeling frustrated, impatient, overwhelmed, nervous, disappointed, and excited. Headspace co-founder and former Buddhist monk, Andy Puddicombe, helps each monster learn various breathing and sensory activities and other mindfulness techniques to better manage relatable, everyday scenarios. The first in the series shows Cookie Monster impatiently waiting for his cookies to bake. Andy introduces a fun game called “I-sense” to teach Cookie Monster patience.

Price: £29.99 a year Age range: 4+ (although some of the lullaby tracks can be enjoyed from birth)

With many children’s daytime routine being disrupted, and countless news reports about the virus, there’s a chance many of them are feeling anxious and may even be struggling to sleep. In a bid to help children make sense of some of the recent changes, Moshi Twilight recently launched a new story featuring Lurgee the Sniffly Splurgee. It uses lullaby-style music to teach children about the virus and the importance of washing their hands through simple language and melody. Moshi Twilight works with sleep experts and psychologists to create stories, songs, music and meditation that can be built into daily routines to help children, and families, relax and sleep better. What’s more, some of the stories feature cameos from Goldie Hawn and Patrick Stewart to name a few.

Hobbies

Price: From $10 (£7.35) – don’t be put off by the currency used on the site, these classes are available in the UK / in the UK timezone Age range: 3-18

From drawing, to maths and science, philosophy for tweens and even standup comedy and entrepreneurism, Outschool has more than 100,000 live online classes on a huge range of topics. Each class is delivered by an expert in the chosen field and are kept deliberately small (typically around 10 participants) to keep things intimate and interactive.

Depending on the type of class you want, prices start at $10 for individual sessions up to in excess of $100 if you’re doing a block of lessons. And there’s something for all ages between preschool and Sixth Form. For our toddler (and our entertainment), we have our eye on the Paw Patrol-inspired Pup Party.

Price: Free Age range: Various

North London's Coal Drops Yard has its own design school STORE STORE which is running a whole bunch of arts and crafts workshops right now and even an After School Club running until the end of June (for Camden residents only). Its Makers Manuals are downloadable guides that anyone can grab the PDFs for weekend projects, though. If you get the supplies, we recommend trying out Lauren Macdonald's guide to tie-dying socks (or t-shirts or tea towels).

Price: Free Age range: No age limits (but more suited towards school-age children)

This app is a particular favourite with our nine-year-old – an app that teaches the basics of djing in a fun, interactive way without the need for expensive, specialist equipment. All you need is a phone or tablet and the free djay app by Algoriddim. Djay guides users through every stage of mixing, teaching them the basics of decks and loops before giving them the freedom to mix and remix their library of music. There’s even a video visualiser tool that lets users create their own music videos to accompany their mixes, and the app uses AI to help guide budding musicians through the process.

Price: Free Age range: All

Starting on 25 March, Code.org is launching its Code Break program – a free, live weekly webcast where members of the Code.org team teach coding and computer science to children and adults. The team will also be setting weekly challenges for beginners, experienced coders and even students without computers. You can sign up to receive each week’s Code Break via email here.

Price: £45 Age range: 8 to 18 years

The Machine Works build-your-own robot kits help children create working models of engines with realistic sound effects and Haynes-style instruction booklets. Some of the kits, including the Machine Works V8 Engine, also come with AR features that explain how engines operate and show how the 11 engine components work in real-life engines.

Price: £79.99 Age range: 6+

Kano specialises in computer and coding kits for children and two of its most recent launches are based on last year’s big Disney releases. The Disney Frozen 2 Coding Kit teaches kids to code to make virtual snowflakes, create blizzards and conjure their own ice palace like Queen Elsa, using hand gestures. The Star Wars The Force Coding Kit uses the same hardware but instead takes children from learners to Jedi coding Masters – or Sith Lords if they choose to take the Dark Side – teaching them how to swing lightsabers like Rey, summon Force lightning, overpower stormtroopers with Jedi mind tricks, pilot Rebel and Empire starships and more. Each kit offers step-by-step guides to help users build sensors and teach the basics of coding in fun, simple ways by guiding children through loops, logic and variables using puzzle games and fun challenges. Complex gestures come to life on accompanying apps. Children can then share their own versions of the apps online.

Price: £195 Age range: 6-14

Coding school Cypher began hosting live, interactive coding camps online last summer and has continued these immersive sessions into 2021. Each camp is based on a theme, aimed at making computational learning fun. The Big Blue Adventure session, for example, combines teachings of coding and marine ecology, where children complete under-the-sea themed challenges, learning how to save the oceans, design mythical creatures and find treasure in coded sea scenes, all whilst developing imaginative computational thinking.

The next course that’s available to book is the Amazing Art camp which takes place during the week of 15 February 2021. The camps are limited to 6 children of a similar age to support learning and development. They all last a week yet each session lasts 1.5 hours per day - perfect to keep children learning and engaged throughout their half term. The courses aren’t cheap, coming at £195, but it could be worth it for both developing their skills, and giving you an hour and half to yourself.

Price: Free Age range: 4+

If you’ve got kids of a certain age, you’ll know exactly what Roblox is. It’s a hugely popular, highly social collection of online multiplayer games. Every game is coded and designed by the players themselves and these games are shared with the rest of the Roblox community. In the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic, the company has been adding more curriculum and educational games to its teaching resources, and featured lessons include an introduction to coding and game design, how to create multiplayer maps and coding basics like arrays and strings.

Price: From £99 Age range: All

If your children are anything like ours, they live and breathe YouTube, so why not turn this passion into a hobby. Logitech sells a streaming kit designed to help your budding video stars create their own content and share with their friends or the world. The Logitech StreamCam (£139) attaches to a laptop or PC monitor to capture their footage and the Yeti Nano (£99) helps them record quality audio and soundtracks.

Price: Free Age range: 5 to 16 years

Primary Engineer and Ford of Britain have partnered with other engineering brands to launch two free online challenges designed to inspire the next generation of young engineers. The first is called the Leaders Award and asks children to submit ideas along the idea of: “If you were an engineer, what would you do?” The programme gives children of all ages the opportunity to interview engineers from NASA, Facebook, Ford and more about their careers before coming up with engineering solutions to everyday problems. The second challenge is called Statwars and is aimed at primary and secondary school ages to learn about climate change by developing mathematics, numeracy and data literacy skills. Children can enjoy the programmes at home with help from their parents and each has a hub of downloadable packages including videos direct from engineers.

Learning languages

Price: £20.99 for a three-month subscription; £32.99 for a six-month subscription; £57.00 for a year’s subscription. Currently free for school and university students for one month Age range: No lower or upper limit but more suited to confident readers

If your foreign language needs extend beyond Lingvist’s core four, Babbel uses a similar approach to individual learning as Lingvist via its own iOS and Android apps. It introduces users to key grammar rules and vocabulary via online games and challenges with the added feature of a Dialogue Trainer, which allows students to have a written conversation with a chatbot at various points throughout the course, to help them practice what they’ve learnt. Babbel’s languages include Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, German, Swedish, Turkish, Dutch, Polish, Indonesian, Norwegian, Danish and Russian.

This article was originally published by WIRED UK