WAHM’s Easy Homeschooling Plan (With Free Online Education)

A simple, easy to follow homeschooling and working from home plan, with links to educational activities, free online learning resources, and a sample schedule.

If you’re struggling with school closures and suddenly being expected to be your child’s teacher, these free sites will help you keep your kids busy and learning, while you get your work done.  

Last Thursday the Ontario government announced our schools would be closed following March break, just like many other schools worldwide.

While I’ve figured out how to work at home with kids during school breaks and the summer, that only involves keeping them occupied while I get my work done, not teaching them.

But with three weeks off school, and a good possibility that it will end up being longer, I needed to come up with a plan for homeschooling while working from home. Preferably one that would allow the kids to do the majority of their school work without too much help from me.

Luckily for me, I’m not new to this whole homeschooling thing. 

A few years ago, I homeschooled my older daughter for half a school year, so I already had a bunch of resources and online education sites I knew she enjoyed and could use independently.

But figuring out how to homeschool and work from home at the same time is new to me.

For the last few days, I have been searching through all the old websites I still had bookmarked and checking out the many websites and free resources that have been posted on social media this week.

After two days of searching, I have come up with a simple list of websites to use and an easy to follow daily schedule that allows my kids to work independently long enough for me to get my work done.

Since all the time I spent coming up with our homeschool education plan cut into my work time this week, I figured I would make this week’s blog post about all the resources we will be using, and share our daily schedule, for all the other work at home moms trying to figure out how to balance work and homeschooling.

The best new resource I found online, which is 100% free, is Scholastics’ new Learn at Home curriculum.

So far, they have provided daily lessons for 5 days (with plans to update weekly and add 15 more days). 

Best of all it looks like it will be easy for kids to do the work independently, and there is easily two hours’ worth of schoolwork each day.   

Here is what is included in the grade 3-5 curriculum

• Four articles or stories each day.
• An option to change the reading level on most articles.
• Text to speech option on all articles.
• One math lesson in an article each day.
• Language, geography, history or science activities in each of the three other daily articles.
• A video, slide show or game in each article.
• A 25-minute virtual field trip, instead of one of the articles, on Day 3.

Dreamscape (free)

Dreamscape is a Clash of Clans style video game that uses reading and comprehension skills for kids in grades 2-8.  Here is a video that explains how the game works.

Squiggle Park (free)

Squiggle Park is a learn to read video game for kids ages 3-8.  You can watch a demo of it here to see what it’s all about. 

eBooks (free and $)

If your local library is closed (like mine is) check their website and see if they offer eBooks.

If not, you can try Epic! (which is what my kids use at school) for free for 30 days (the cost is $8/month after the trial).

For teenagers (and adults), there are tons of books available from Kindle Unlimited, and you can try it out first with a free 30-day trial (the cost is $9.99/month after the trial).  If you prefer audiobooks, try a 30-day free trial of Audible instead (cost is $14.95/month after the trail).

Khan Academy (free)

This website is good for teaching new math skills or going over ones your child is struggling with.  It uses videos to teach the lessons, followed by practice questions.  If you get the answer wrong, you can click “get help” for visual instructions on how to get the right answer.

Prodigy (free)

This math game is like Pokémon, so kids actually enjoy playing it.  In fact, it was the only one my daughter told me about (and said she would willingly play) when I asked her if there were any educational games she had accounts for through school.

Math Celebrity (free)

This is a great website if your child is playing another math game and can’t figure out the answer to the question.  Just type the question in and it will provide step by step instructions to solve it. 

American Chemical Society Science Experiment Lessons (free)

While you will likely need to do these experiments with your child, all the planning is done for you. Each lesson on this website provides instructions for the experiment, questions to ask your child before, during and after, and a question sheet for your child to fill out.

Zoom (free)

On zoom, you can either download a document with instructions for a science experiment or watch videos of kids doing science experiments.

KiwiCo (free and $)

The KiwiCo website has a good variety of hands-on science and arts and crafts activities with step by step instructions with pictures.

They also sell a variety of monthly subscription boxes for science, engineering, design, art, geography and culture activities, for all age groups from 0-2 to 14-104. The boxes for younger kids cost $15.50-$19.95US per month, depending on how many months you sign up for, and the ones for teens are $24.95-$29.95US.

Art Lesson Videos (free)

Each art project on Deep Space Sparkle has a short (2-5 minute) tutorial video to show you how to make the project, so all you need to do is set out all the materials for the kids and push play.

Drawing Lessons (free)

Art Projects for Kids gives you step by step visual instructions on how to draw things, including Pikachu. 

Ballet Nova Online Dance Class (free)

This company is offering their dance classes on Facebook live Monday to Friday.  Click on the “learn more” link to see the schedule on their Facebook post.

YouTube (free)

There are tons of kid’s fitness and yoga videos available on YouTube for free that are great for younger kids.  My kids (and the kids at the daycare center I used to work at) loved the Cosmic Kids Yoga.

Beach Body on Demand (Free trial then $)

While kids would likely enjoy Beach Body’s martial arts or dance workouts, there is also a section for kids and family videos with over 100 workouts. Try it out to see if you and your kids like it with a free two-week trial (the cost is $49/3 months, $69/6 months or $119/12 Months after the trial).

Choose Piano Lessons (free)

If you have a piano, or even a kid’s keyboard (like me), this website has 7 simple kid’s songs they can learn to play (without you having to teach them to read sheet music). 

Classics for Kids (free)

This website has several games, like creating your own song and copying a rhythm, and provides education on composers too (including short podcasts).  There are even lesson plans you can follow if you want to provide more formal music education for your kids.

Chrome Music Lab (free)

While this website looks like it is aimed at younger children, I am sure my kids will enjoy playing on it too.  There are 13 music activities kids can play, including making your own song.

Scratch (free)

Scratch is a free kid’s programing website where kids can make their own animations and games.  My kids use this one at school and sometimes chose to play it during their free time at home too.

Typing Lessons (free)

Typing Club provides typing lessons, followed by practice sessions, then a test.  Once you have finished the test it gives you your accuracy score and speed, then you can move onto the next lesson.

Typing game (free)

On Nitro Type kids can practice their typing skills to race cars.

Turtle Diary (free)

Turtle diary was a website that I used a lot when I was homeschooling to reinforcing the language or math lesson we had done that day.  They have games for math, language, and science, for up to grade 5.

Arcademics (free)

Arcademics has simple games with decent animations that are fun to play for grades 1 to 6.  There are games for math, language, spelling, typing, and geography.

PBS Kids (free)

PBS is a great website for younger kids, especially since the games involve their favorite TV characters.

K-5 Worksheets (free)

K-5 Learning has a great selection for free printable worksheets for math, reading comprehension, vocabulary, spelling, grammar and cursive writing for kids from kindergarten to grade 5.  This was my go-to site for both math and language worksheets when I homeschooled.

Workbooks

When I homeschooled, I also used these Canadian Curriculum books, but there are tons of other workbooks available online to buy too.

Virtual Field Trips

San Diego Zoo

This zoo offers live video footage of the following animals: baboons, penguins, polar bears, apes, koalas, giraffes, burrowing owls, elephants, and tigers. 

Georgia Aquarium Live Cameras

The Georgia Aquarium offers live cameras of their belugas, jellyfish, African penguins, sea lions, sea otters, and more.

Farm Foods 360 Virtual Tours 

This website lets you explore farms, as well as see how milk and cheese, eggs and oats are processed, through videos.

How It’s Made YouTube Channel

If you want to take a virtual field trip to a factory, this YouTube channel has hundreds of videos, each around 5 minutes long, showing kids how their favorite foods, toys, and other items are made. 

Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas

This website offers a half-hour video tour of the Johnson Space Center. 

Google Street View Museum Tours

Check out this website to take a virtual tour of your favorite museum (or one you have always wanted to visit).

There are 3,425 museums listed here that you can visit virtually.  I can’t wait to take my kids on a tour of the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.

More Fun Google Street View Tours

Here are some more fun place you can take a virtual walk through using google street view.

• Museo Lamborghini (Lamborghini museum), Italy
• Iwami Silver Mine, Japan 
• Eiffel Tower, Paris
• The White House, Washington
• Central Park, New York 
• Alcatraz, California 
• Boston Children’s Museum 
• San Diego Zoo, San Diego 
• Monterey Bay Aquarium, California
• Disney World, Florida (Check for YouTube video like this one of Splash Mountain if you want to do virtual rides too)

Planning Your Daily Schedule

I learned the hard way when I homeschooled my daughter that there wasn’t much incentive for her to do her math work when she knew that she would have to read afterward. 

Try to throw in some of those fun activities (like art, music, and technology) or recess and lunch breaks between the harder school work. 

Recess

Your kids are used to having recess time to take a break from the school work to run or play with friends.  Let them play in the back yard, go for a short walk, or even just let them go play with their toys for 20 minutes.

Snacks and Lunch

Do your best to stick with the same snack and lunch break times that your kids would have at school.  Not only will this help them stay in routine, but it will stop them from asking you for snacks all day long.

Rewards

Many teachers use some kind of reward system for good behavior to keep kids motivated. 

You could use an incentive like extra screen time after their school work is done, letting them stay up late, planning special activities at the end of the week, or even a special treat.

Homeschooling While Working from Home Tips

• Plan easier work tasks for yourself when your kids are doing school work they may need your help with.
• Plan to do work you need to be able to focus on (like writing for me) when your kids are doing fun school work, playing educational games or during their free time.
• Adjust your work hours so you can do some work once your spouse is home (or is done their work if they are also working from home).
• Be prepared for interruptions, even when your kids are doing the homeschool work they can do independently there may be times they need some help.
• Work on weekends when your spouse is home and the kids don’t have school work to do if you need more work time.
• Increase screen time if you need to. 
• Do work once the kids are in bed (if they stay up late consider letting them have TV in their rooms so you have a quiet house to work in).
• Decrease your workload as much as you can so you don’t overwhelm yourself.
• Give yourself breaks from work to have some fun and enjoy this extra time with your kids!
• Make sure you are taking time for yourself too with some daily stress relief activities or a self-care day if you can.

My School Closure Education Plan

In my house, we will be starting the day out with the Scholastic curriculum.  Since the kids will be working together on this it won’t be quiet enough for me to do any writing, so I will be doing easier work tasks then.

Next, I will be taking a break from work for a couple hours to make snack, check the kids morning school work, maybe go for a walk for “recess”, exercise with them for “gym”, make lunch, prepare the science or art activity, then help with the science project if needed (or work on easy tasks if they can do it independently).

If they don’t get the scholastic work done in the morning, I will have them work on finishing it in the afternoon. 

Otherwise, they will read for 20 minutes, then have the choice to play on the keyboard (in their bedroom with the door closed), play one of the music games, do a typing lesson or play the typing game, or play on scratch. 

They will finish the school day by playing a math or language game for half an hour for some extra practice.

I will be having them wear headphones while they are playing the games so it is quiet for me, and they will be using our visual timer so they can switch activities independently while I get in some focused work time.

Once they finish their school day, I will take a break to make them snack and give myself a short break too.  Then the kids will be free to do whatever they want (which will likely be screen time) until dinner, so I can get in two more hours of uninterrupted work.

To keep them motivated, Fridays after lunch I will be skipping my work time to do a virtual field trip or another special activity with them.  So far, I am thinking we will do an at-home spa day one week, and maybe do a PJ day and watch Frozen 2 on Disney+ another week.

Our evening routine will mostly be the same from dinner until bedtime, though I am going to try to plan for more family game nights, movie nights, and family walks to keep them from getting bored.

While I may let them stay up later on school nights, if they have done a good job getting their school work done, this time will be spent in their bedrooms watching TV or playing so I can get in some more focused work time.  

My School Closure Schedule

Since this week was supposed to be the kids’ March break, I haven’t started any school work with them yet.  I figured they still deserved the break they were expecting, plus I needed some time to come up with my working at home while homeschooling plan.  

But, as of Monday, March break is over and it’s time to start learning at home.

I’m sure in the coming weeks my plan will end up changing.  If the school closures get extended (which I expect they will), I may end up looking for a more comprehensive online curriculum or virtual school. 

But for now, the Scholastic curriculum will work to help get the kids into a homeschool routine, and keep them learning.

While I’m sure balancing working from home and homeschooling will have its challenges, I am thankful that I at least have that option.  I can’t imagine how hard this is for parents who have to work outside of the house all day.

How can you work and homeschool?  How can a single working mom homeschool? Can you homeschool at night?

While us work at home moms will have our own struggles with homeschooling and working full time, at least we don’t have to worry about finding childcare and schooling our kids after work.

How are you handling homeschooling while working from home?  Have you found any good resources for online schooling or any neat virtual field trips you can share with other WAHM’s? 

Let me know on my Facebook post, and follow me if you want to see any updates on how this homeschooling and working from home thing is going, and to see what online curriculum I find if this ends up lasting more than a few weeks.