First and foremost: how are you doing? Please know that as we write and provide resources, we just want to help. But we also understand that this is an extremely stressful time, and no one is holding you to a perfect standard. Overnight you’ve become a homeschool teacher, who is trying to do your day job, teach your kids, and remain sane. We are all in this together, and our goal is how to best serve you during this time. So, we’ve gathered together different educational materials to assist you and your kids on this journey. Even at home, we’re all still learning together.

Educational

• Harper Publishing has created a multi-platform initiave!
• HarperKids – for the littlest readers, new content at noon EST every day
• Shelf Stuff – for middle graders, new content Tuesdays/Thursday at 2 pm EST
• Epic Reads – for young adults, Wednesdays on Twitter and Friday on Instagram at 4 pm EST
• HarperStacks – for teachers, librarians, parents, and caregivers , Mondays at 4 pm EST
• Dr. Seuss continues to be there for us with Suessville, which has so many different activities and games for children at home.
• Scholastic has dedicated a website just for activities for kids.
• My personal favorite is teaching your kids STEM by making bath bombs… and if you’re an adult at home, please know, it’s never too late to get interested in STEM and make your own bath bombs, too!
• Scholastic also created one of the most exciting staying in games that I have seen: Home Base. Home Base is your destination for characters, games, stories, and fellow fans. You can make new friends as you explore islands from the books you love!
• Simon and Schuster has a whole website dedicated to learning resources. One of the best parts of their site is that it provides dedicated cataloguges on genres like Asian Literature, STEM, LGBTQ, and graphic novels. If you’re at home for a little while, now is a wonderful time to be remember that the world is still bigger than your four walls.
• Penguin Random House has provided a plethora of resources for anyone at home.
• There are books for Women’s History Month, Inclusive Texts, US History Titles for High School, and Favorite Fiction for Middle School.
• They’ve also created a Let’s Work Together Teaching Guide, working to try to build student’s emotional IQ through books.
• Random House Teachers and Librarians is the perfect place to go right now for inspiration. They’ve got all their materials up for Women’s History Month, including book suggestions. They also have a Young Adult Creative Writing Guide, which is a brilliant activity to do at home. Education is about more than just algebra and vocabulary– this is an opportunity for you and your child to be creative together.
• Penguin also has a whole list of Teacher’s Guides for a large variety of classic books. There’s so much more you could do with this– you can start exploring how to make classics more engaging to your child, while also revisiting books you haven’t read since high school and seeing how your own perspective has changed.
• Little Brown has provided a library of materials. We personally love the all of the different podcasts about their different titles and the author essays explaining the writing process.
• Lonely Planet has a list of creative and educational activities— how important, when closed up inside, to plan for the future and the world we want to explore!
• Macmillan has wonderful resources available to everyone at home! They’ve got some podcasts geared at parents, like How to Explore Science Lessons Into Everyday Life and How to Establish a Daily Routine.
• Sourcebooks has common-core aligned resources available to you. Personal favorites include The Tree in the Ancient Forest activity kit and the activity kit for P is for Pterodactyl.

Books-a-Million, of course, has thousands of resources in store and online for you.

• All in-stock online orders ship within 24 hours!
• We’re doing Curbside Pickup/Buy Online Pickup in Store.
• We have a whole page dedicated for you to build your stay at home headquarters!
• We have tons of workbooks ready!
• Brain Quest has a whole year of questions and activities that align with common core standards.
• Summer Bridge requires just fifteen minutes a day to keep school skills sharp and follows state standards.
• Spectrum is designed to be effective and engaging, and divides workbooks and flashcards by different skills and grades.

Recess!

There are all different ways to learn about the world.

STEM

• Code.org will be offering Code Break, a live weekly webcast where their team will teach children at home while school is closed, and a weekly challenge to engage students of all abilities, even those without computers.
• The Kennedy Space Center is offering a ton of different activities for kids of all ages during this time! They are doing Facebook Live videos multiple times a week.

Museums

• You and yours can browse the National Portrait Gallery
• or the British Museum.
• The close-ups of Van Gogh’s Starry Night are out of this world and not something your kids can do in a museum– unless they want to get in trouble for standing too close.
• The Metropolitan Opera is doing nightly live streams!
• You can sign up for a one month free trial of Broadway HD, so you all can watch all the Broadway shows that you couldn’t necessarily see before.

Animals

• The Georgia Aqurium webcams are maybe the best part of staying at home. You and your kids can choose which animals to watch, but we’re partial to the penguins.
• The Cincinnati Zoo is doing Home Safari Facebook Live Events! At 3 PM EST every day, you can watch live as they go on a safari in the zoo.
• Livestream the giant panda at the Smithsonian Zoo.
• The most soothing ever: watch the jellyfish at the Montery Bay Aquarium
• Baby goats.

Mostly: take a breath. Get ready to jam to Metallica Monday— where the band livestreams a full concert every. single. Monday. Curl up with your favorite Squishmallow and watch the Smithosian’s 24 hour live stream of giant pandas. Maybe even pick up Where the Crawdads Sing, which was widely agreed in our office to be the best book of 2019. You can do this. We can do this.

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