Are your kids driving you nuts during the lockdown? Keep them busy, happy and learning with this list of the top 10 educational websites for kids and games for students.
Pandemics, lockdowns, and quarantines can be a scary time for both parents and kids. What makes it worse is having your kids with you all the time, so you never get a break to destress.
You need to give up your guilt of letting them sit in front of a screen for a few hours so that you have the time for the things you need to do for yourself. At times like this, it’s important to care for your own sanity first.
With online education and e-learning for kids becoming more popular every day, the list of educational websites for students has skyrocketed, with the realization that most parents need a way to keep their screen-addicted kids busy either when housebound or travelling.
If you’re finding it hard to keep your kids busy during the lockdown, and are looking for online learning websites in India, this article will show you the best educational websites for kids that offer the best educational games for all ages.
Top 10+ Educational Websites For Kids
If your kids are driving you nuts during the lockdown or quarantine, this list of the top 10+ educational websites for kids and games for students will help you keep them busy and learning new things for many happy hours a day.
1. Starfall
Are you looking for free educational websites for elementary students? Starfall offers free children’s games online for Kindergarten and pre-K as well as Grades 1,2 & 3. You’ll find ABC games, learning games for toddlers and educational games for 6-year olds to keep your little ones occupied.
Started by the Starfall Education Foundation, a nonprofit organization, as a free public service to teach children to read, and conceived by Dr Stephen Schutz, who had difficulty learning to read as a child, due to dyslexia, this is one of the best reading websites for kids.
Starfall offers untimed, multisensory interactive games that allow children to see, hear and touch as they learn and has expanded to include language arts and free math games for kids from preschool, kindergarten, first grade, second grade, and third grade.
Starfall’s emphasis on phonemic awareness, systematic sequential phonics, and common sight words in conjunction with audiovisual interactivity has proven effective in teaching emergent readers, making it one of the best reading websites for kids.
The Starfall games to play program emphasizes exploration, play, and positive reinforcement, encouraging children to become confident and intrinsically motivated.
If you’re looking for free websites like ABCmouse, Starfall is one of the best free websites for preschoolers as it provides one of the best online learning programs for elementary students.
Starfall is an educational alternative to other entertainment choices for children and is especially effective for special education, homeschooling, and English language development (ELD, ELL, ESL). It is widely used in schools that serve children with special needs and learning difficulties.
Their low-cost membership program expands the free educational games for preschoolers to include animated songs, mathematics, and reading activities spanning K-3. They are one of the best online learning sites for elementary students.
2. PBS Kids
Not only are the online games for kids on PBS Kids beautifully designed, but they also allow your kids to interact with all the familiar characters they watch on TV.
From Sesame Street to Clifford and Dr Seuss, your little ones will love all the fun games for students, language games for kids, and English games for kids featuring beloved characters like Elmo, on this educational website.
With reading and science games to keep your little ones entertained while learning their ABCs and science facts, PBS Kids is truly one of the best e-learning websites for kids. Whether it’s digging for fossils or building a rocket ship, you’ll find the best free online games for boys and girls here.
If you’re looking for free online games for kids, look no further. Subscribe to the PBS Kids newsletter and get alerts when they release new games.
3. Learning4Kids
Looking for fun educational websites for kids? Learning4Kids offers lots of fun learning activities and simple ideas to do with your kids that promote creative play and learning. You can browse by age for age-appropriate activities, or by category and also shop for educational toys and supplies.
Started as a blog by an Australian pre-primary early childhood teacher with a strong passion and love for teaching and creating meaningful learning experiences, Learning4kids is one of the best free learning websites for kids.
It aims to create an online resource where parents, educators and teachers can find a useful box of activities and play ideas to do with their children.
While these free activities will help promote learning and development, they are also great fun for your little ones and you can enjoy these activities along with them.
4. ABC Mouse
While not one of the free educational websites for kids, ABC Mouse does offer a free trial and a low-cost membership as well as annual discounts.
This early learning academy for kids from ages 2 to 8, offers ABC kids games and cool reading games for kids, fun math games for kids, science learning games, and arts and colours, too. So if you’re looking for colouring websites for kids, ABC mouse is one of the top educational websites.
The Step-by-Step Learning Path presents the full curriculum in a carefully designed program of more than 850 lessons in ten levels. As your child completes each lesson, they are guided to the next one and motivated to continue learning by their Tickets and Rewards System.
With so many toddler games online, you’ll definitely find games for little kids and educational games for 5-year olds, if that’s what you’re looking for. This website is accessible on computers, tablets, and smartphones, so you can access it from anywhere you have an internet connection.
5. E-Learning For Kids
E-learning For Kids is a non-profit organization providing free, fun, curriculum-based quality primary education to all children worldwide. The foundation was launched in the USA in 2004 and in the Netherlands in 2007.
Their vision is to be the source for childhood learning on the internet, available from anywhere and without charge. They have the ambition to reach 100 million children in 2025. As one of the free education sites, this e-learning website offers a number of free games for students from K to grade 6.
6. HelloKids
As one of the top 10 educational websites for students, HelloKids offers plenty of learning activities for kids from 1st to 8th grade. If you’re looking for free reading websites for kids, you’ll find plenty of material here.
As learning websites go, HelloKids has something for everyone, from colouring pages that you can either print or do online, drawings and drawing lessons, craft activities for children of all ages, videos, games, songs and even wonderful readings for bedtime.
HelloKids’ free video section offers kids movie trailers and reviews, movie posters, famous stars, movie facts, entertaining music videos, how-to tutorial videos, It’s Fred cartoon, animal videos and more.
7. CIA Spy Kids
Looking for spy websites for kids? Did you know that the CIA (yes, the Central Intelligence Agency) offers free educational activities for kids on its CIA Spy Kids website that allows your kids to go on their own secret mission (virtually, of course)?
Who knew that the CIA creates educational sites for students, right? But if your child loves solving puzzles, cracking codes, and discovering clues like a real CIA officer, they’ll love the children learning activities and spy games on this free educational website.
8. Kids Craft Room
Also in our list of educational websites, especially for creative kids, is the Kids Craft Room, one of the top learning websites for students who love arts and crafts.
This mom blog shares inspirational art and craft ideas for a more hands-on, fun and free-range childhood. With a focus on exploration, experimentation, self-expression and creativity, it offers quality child-centred activities to promote self-expression, self-esteem and creativity across the age ranges.
Use these art and craft activities as starting points to explore a technique or an idea in a way that is purely unique and meaningful to you and your child.
9. NotchUp
As one of the best coding websites for kids, NotchUp offers online coding courses for ages 5 to 15 years. Kids can also access live one-on-one coding sessions designed by IIT – IIM Alumni to prepare them for the digital future.
65% of today’s 5-year-olds will in 15 years find themselves in jobs that don’t exist today, and more than 60 million of these new jobs will be in fields related to computer programming.
Started an initiative by IIT-D IIM-A Alumni to inculcate critical new-age skills in children, NotchUp is an Indian website for kids that offers live interactive video classes from the comfort of your home which improves logical and problem-solving skills by more than 75%.
10. PopcornFlix Kids
Looking for free movie websites for kids where you can watch old kid’s movies and TV shows that you can’t find anywhere else? Go to PopcornFlix Kids.
From comedies like Mousehunt to TV shows like Sonic The Hedgehog and 3rd Rock From The Sun, you can spend some time enjoying all your old favourites with your kids. It’s a great way for both parents and kids to pass time during the lockdown.
11. NASA STEM @ Home For Students Grades K-4
According to Science Alert, NASA and the ISS National Lab have developed a range of adventurous programs and activities for all the children stuck in home lockdown, including a training program to become a home astronaut, build a hovercraft, launch rockets, and many more.
These free educational activities equip parents to help students explore science subjects, from life sciences and human health to robotics, maths and physics – complete with specific guides for kindergarten through to year 12.
Students can take part in experiments like astronauts do on the International Space Station, and compare the results to those from space.
For example, observing microgravity using simple materials to demonstrate how astronauts float in space – not due to lack of gravity, but because they are constantly falling towards Earth.
5 Best Websites With Games For Students
Looking for great websites for kids that offer games for students? Although your older kids may already have their own favourite gaming websites, you as a parent may not be aware of some great games that you can introduce your child to.
Here are some of the best websites that offer games for students:
1. Minecraft
Minecraft is an extremely popular sandbox exploration game with a massive community. It has many player-hosted public servers most of which are fairly child-friendly. There is also an educational edition meant for classroom use.
2. Steam
This popular gaming website offers DRM (Digital Rights Management) software that allows you to purchase, manage, and launch games through it.
It has all sorts of games – including some that are inappropriate for kids – however, you can prevent those from showing up on the store by changing the account settings.
Steam games have tags indicating their content and genre, also things such as “Great Soundtrack” and “Female Protagonist”. Prices are available in INR.
Some recommended games for students on Steam:
3. GOG (Good Old Games)
GOG or Good Old Games is a gaming website that was originally started as a way to port older games to newer systems. This is a DRM-free service, meaning that you actually own the games that you buy on there.
Certain games might be censored, but it contains no adult-only games. GOG also offers movies. Prices are in USD.
4. Epic Games Store
Epic Games are the creators of the hugely popular game, Fortnite, which is only available in their store. They give away 1 free game every week.
5. Flashpoint
Wondering where all those fun Flash games vanished? Flash games are no longer being supported after the takedown of Adobe Flash Player in 2020, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still download and play them.
BlueMaxima’s Flashpoint is the web game preservation project and is making Flash games available to play offline so that you can still download and play them.
Flashpoint utilizes a strong selection of open-source software. This project is dedicated to preserving as many games and animations from these platforms as possible so that they aren’t lost to time.
Since early 2018, over a hundred contributors have helped Flashpoint save more than 38,000 games and 2,400 animations running on 13 different platforms. So go download all those old Flash games you loved and share them with your kids.
With this list of educational websites for kids and games for students, you can keep your big and little ones occupied and learning new things during lockdowns or when travelling.
About the author:
Priya Florence Shah is the Group Editor at SHEROES and author of Devi2Diva, an emotional self-care book for women.
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