I am a marketer. I am a student. I am a mom. I am other things, too, but now? Right now? Right now, I am all of those things at once. In my home office, I share a desk with my six-year-old during the day and fight off the cats who want to lay on my keyboard at night. I am taking conference calls while correcting math worksheets. I am making lunch while responding to emails. I am perpetually covered in chalk and feeling guilty for every, “Shhhh, hang on one second, buddy.”
I, like many of you, am trying to figure out how to balance homeschooling with work. And, surprise! It hasn’t been super easy.
But, amidst all of this chaos and change, the support among parents here at Ruby and beyond has been amazing. Last week, a coworker received a mysterious Google doc chock full of the following resources. Feeling guilty or apprehensive about screentime? I totally get it…but what if I told you a little extra screentime teaches your kid how to code? Does your family love Piggie and Gerald? Great, your kids can spend a lunch hour doodling with Mo Williems.
Check out this bounty of schooling-at-home resources (plucked straight from that Google Doc!) and be sure to peek it again in a few weeks if you find it useful. We will be updating this periodically with any additional goods we find or any information that is sent to us at resources@ruby.com.
- Homeschooling Resources
- Headspace has meditations for kids
- Cooking–Knife for younger kids
- YouTube Learning Hub – The goal is to give people – especially kids – easy access to the universe of educational videos on YouTube
- If your kids are younger, YouTube Kids is the better way to watch YouTube, and also can be a gateway towards useful information.
- Audible
- Physics Girl for physics-related YouTube content. Best aimed at kids 6+ but she does a lot of at-home experiments as well
- Hiking with a magnifying glass and the iNaturalist app to identify species; good to get out of the house, get exercise, and avoid playground germs!
- Books, paperback or ebook. If you would like to avoid physical library books, you can still check out ebooks from the library.
- PBS Kids has a lot of educational activities and games on their website.
- Tynker – coding lessons and games for a variety of ages (subscription)
- Typing club
- Mystery Science pulled their most popular science lessons for K-5 and are offering them for anyone to use for free.
- Learning Ally – Learning Ally is a great resource for kids learning to read, or extra support. It has a volunteer reader (quality of reading may vary) reading along with highlighted text.
- Made by Joel has tons of crafts and activities on his site, and also wrote a great book Made to Play (this link includes a list of free printables).
- Lunch doodles with Mo Williams
- Netflix Educational Videos
Ages 0-2 Years Old
- Indoor Yoga on YouTube: Cosmic Kids Yoga
- Bath time fun (bath crayons, which are so messy, but very entertaining. Wipes off well with a baby wipe.)
- Aqua doodle
- Soap bubbles in the yard (or nearby park) – making sure the container is taped to a table/bench leg so that it doesn’t get poured out every 2 minutes
- Music using saucepans, kitchen utensils etc
- Scribbling with crayons, finger paint
- Make a den/makeshift soft play with pillows and cushions/old Amazon boxes
- Organize toys by category (e.g. cooking, music, farm animals, etc) and lay them out to keep things “interesting” and different per day
- Do video calls to cousins/friends who are also stuck at home.
Ages 2-4 Years Old
- Outdoor activities for backyard or the park (when you don’t want them touching the playground)
- Paint with water – Melissa & Doug
- Sparkle Stories app ($15/month) has a ton of great stories for kids.
- Busy toddler
- Crayons, watercolors, stickers, construction paper, preschool workbooks
- Playdough – always and forever. Feed Me I’m Yours Playdough recipe.
- Craft materials from IKEA are really good (particularly love the watercolour set)
- Replaceable sticker books
- Empty cardboard boxes, painters tape, and kid scissors.
- Magnatiles (for any age, really).
Ages 5-7 Years Old
- KiwiCo – Create/Innovate subscription boxes ($20 a month), ages 0-14.
- Duolingo
- Kodable – Fun programming app
- Coding Club – Teach your kids how to code (if they are reading)
- Todomath
- Coloring Books
- Small lego kits (~80 pieces)
- Puzzles
- Slime, slime, and more slime
- If you have camping gear + a yard, spend an afternoon setting up a campsite, teaching them to set up the tent, hang a bear bag, where to cook, and Leave No Trace principles.
- Tell them to hide something and create a treasure map for you to find it. Block off 30 min. so you can go on the treasure hunt.
- Scavenger hunts (free printouts)
- Facetime a bestie 20 mins a day.
Ages 7-9 Years Old
- Scratch – Free MIT site to make stories, games and animations
- IXL – Online math program, can customize by age
- Coding Club – Teach your kids how to code.
- Facetime a bestie 20 mins a day.
- Air-dry clay projects.
- Google’s CS First Lessons
Ages 9-12 Years Old
- Grasshopper
- Coding Club – Teach your kids how to code ( if they are reading)
- Code.org
- Khan Academy
- IXL – Online math program, can customize by age.
- Prodigy – Curriculum aligned math platform (free with optional subscription)
- Work on a project with a bestie over Facetime (i.e. plan a lemonade stand when the situation is over, plan a field trip, learn about a topic and present to your families online).
- Rubix cube
- Google’s CS First Lessons
- Google’s Applied Digital Skills Lessons – Filter for Late Elementary
- Most popular are Write an If-Then Adventure Story in Google Slides and Make Art in Google Sheets
We hope you found this helpful! For more working from home resources, check out our Resource Hub.
