Website resources for home school families abound

Valley Staff

For parents looking to continue their students’ education by making the transition to home schooling, during the statewide school closures, there are a plethora of online sites offering free lesson plans, courses and books to help ease the way. Here are 11 of the best websites Valley News found currently offering free access to parents and students.

According to its website, Project Gutenberg is a library of over 60,000 free eBooks. Choose among free e-pub and Kindle eBooks, download them or read them online. Readers will find the world’s great literature at https://www.gutenberg.org, with focus on older works for which U.S. copyright has expired. Thousands of volunteers digitized and diligently proofread the e-books, for enjoyment and education. The site is completely free for use by readers though the site does take donations.

Designed for teachers to supplement and inspire their classrooms, explore themes in American history and self-government through the study of original historical documents at https://teachingamericanhistory.org/resources.

Offering online resources, interactive activities quizzes and lessons in everything from science and social studies to art and engineering, parents can turn any room into a classroom with Brain Pop, https://www.brainpop.com.

The Core Knowledge Curriculum Series provides comprehensive, content-rich learning materials based on the Core Knowledge Sequence. Student readers, teacher guides, activity books and other materials are available for language arts and history and geography. Materials for science, music and visual arts are in development. For more information, visit https://www.coreknowledge.org/curriculum.

At Home School Legal Defense Association’s home schooling through high school, interested parents can learn the ins and outs of home schooling. Three high school consultants, Carol Becker, Stacey Wolking and Joyce Blankenship, are available to answer members’ specific questions, provide general advice and offer encouragement in virtually all areas of education including GPA calculation, college admissions and curriculum. Visit https://hslda.org/content/highschool/default.asp for more information.

Featuring the Snoopy and the entire Peanuts gang, the Space Foundation Discovery Center is offering free downloadable lesson plans that will help to build the next generation of space leaders at https://www.discoverspace.org/education/for-educators/stem-lesson-plans.

“With schools closed and tens of millions of students at home, Code.org is launching Code Break – a live weekly webcast where our team will teach your children at home while school is closed, and a weekly challenge to engage students of all abilities, even those without computers,” the organization said in a statement on its website. 

The webcasts will feature a weekly activity or challenge and options for beginners, experienced students and even students without computers at https://code.org.

Downloads from the Bill of Rights Institute, https://billofrightsinstitute.org, include a free digital storehouse of source-based, classroom ready lessons, a digital course on history, government and economics and even information on heroes and villains like Alice Paul and Benedict Arnold.

Is your student more advanced? Then check out the University of Dallas’ Arts in Liberty courses in logic, rhetoric, geometry and arithmetic and astronomy at https://artsofliberty.udallas.edu.

With free courses in everything from art and art history, biology, philosophy and political science, Open Culture, http://www.openculture.com, provides access to free online courses from universities worldwide as well as audiobooks and documentaries.

Offering free online courses from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, University of California Berkeley and host of other universities, EdX, https://www.edx.org, offers free online courses from universities on topics such as language, business management and engineering. 

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