A Complete Guide to the Best Online Kids Educational Tools for Learning at Home

Learning at home is a large portion of every child’s overall academic and extracurricular experience. Homeschooling has become popular in many parts of the world. The home-based approach to academics has been even more relevant since the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, even if your child is undergoing the traditional education process at school, they surely spend a lot of time outside the classroom learning and experiencing new things. The good news is that various ways exist to support this process for kids of different ages.

Online Resources to Boost Learning at Home

The IT and education industries have combined to advance the learning process both at home and in class. There are thousands of apps and websites offering free high-quality resources for learners, educators, and parents.

A lot of my work throughout the years has been focused on supporting children of any age and their caregivers in navigating through home-based education and out-of-class learning techniques. Based on my research, here are some of the best online kids educational tools for learning at home:

Online Resources and Study Apps for Preschool Children

Toddler and preschool learning is one of my most favorite areas. The activities are so much fun that I often disregard the fact that I am a professional educator and immerse myself to the point of forgetting I am an adult.

One of my most favorite online at-home learning resources is the platform of Vroom. It is directed towards children between 0 and 5 years old, and both the Internet site and the mobile app are free of charge.

The Vroom platform was born thanks to the efforts of the Bezos Family Foundation. Its goal is to motivate families to advance their lives by transforming everyday routine activities into “brain-building moments.” In other words, it allows you to evolve your daily life so that it incorporates essential brain development patterns.

The Sesame Street website and app contain educational videos, games, and other tools that help children of various ages to learn in areas like mathematics, reading, writing, science, social life, nature, and so on. The learning area is especially rich and is designed so that it can be easily incorporated into your everyday life at home or when traveling.

Another tool I have found useful is the MiniMath iOS-based app. It evolved from the Bedtime Math platform and aims to educate children around the age of 4-5. It allows the entire family to jump in and explore the magical world of numbers together with the preschooler. You have different fun topics to choose from, such as Vehicles, Food, Animals, and more.

Here is a brief video on different ways to learn how to count to 10 using the MiniMath app:

Online Resources and Study Apps for Elementary School Students

The only really elementary thing about elementary school is the word “elementary.” My practice has demonstrated that way too many children struggle with the academic material in elementary school. Thus, they need to spend a significant amount of time learning at home. As they are still young, these students often need support on behalf of their parents along the way. Here are some great tools I have found to be useful in this endeavor:

• PBS Kids
• PBS Design Squad
• Starfall
• Learning Games for Kids
• Primary Games
• Arcademics
• Time for Kids
• The Kids Page
• Fun Brain
• A Homer Reading: Learn to Read
• NASA Visualization Explorer
• My Books – Unlimited Library
• VocabularySpellingCity

We have already discussed my top pick, PBS Kids, in another blog post on this page, so I will go on to tell you more about one more of my favorites, Starfall. This platform is the creation of Dr. Stephen Schutz, who had learning difficulties as a child due to dyslexia. However, Schutz was determined to revolutionize the way kids learn.

That is how he created Starfall, an interactive platform that “felt like play.” It is designed to help children from preschool through the fifth grade to learn by experiencing the world around them through diverse multisensory activities.

While Starfall is not entirely free of charge, it does offer unlimited access to a massive library of learning resources. Further, the membership is low-cost enough to appeal to almost every pocket, and you get tons of useful stuff in return.

Arcademics is another handy and fun app I like to use. As the name suggests, it combines arcade games and academics to gamify the learning experience and make it easier and more entertaining. It is directed towards students from the 1st through the 6th grade. Arcademics covers mainly math topics, but there are also spelling, typing, and language games.