200 Free Kids Educational Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Websites & More

This col­lec­tion pro­vides a list of free edu­ca­tion­al resources for K‑12 stu­dents (kinder­garten through high school stu­dents) and their par­ents and teach­ers. Please tell us if we’re miss­ing some­thing valu­able.

Below you will find free video lessons/tutorials; free mobile apps; free audio­books, ebooks and text­books; qual­i­ty YouTube chan­nels; free for­eign lan­guage lessons; test prep mate­ri­als; and free web resources in aca­d­e­m­ic sub­jects like lit­er­a­ture, his­to­ry, sci­ence and com­put­ing. 

Home School­ing Resources

• Free Zoom Artis­tic Back­grounds: If you would like to cus­tomize your Zoom back­ground, you can find free art from Hayao Miyaza­k­i’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li (the mak­ers of Princess Mononoke, Spir­it­ed Away, etc.) You can also get free art from world class muse­ums. Instruc­tions for cus­tomiz­ing the back­ground can be found here.
• Free Online Resources for Schools: A col­lec­tion of resources curat­ed by SchoolChoiceWeek.com. It cov­ers com­mu­ni­ca­tion plat­form resources, math and sci­ence resources, social stud­ies resources and more.
• School Kit: A New Zealand orga­ni­za­tion pro­vides free activ­i­ties to NZ teach­ers and class­rooms, using basic mate­ri­als.
• Khan Acad­e­my: Khan Acad­e­my has cre­at­ed guides designed to help par­ents and teach­ers nav­i­gate remote learn­ing.
• Google Teach From Home: A cen­tral hub of infor­ma­tion, tips, train­ing and tools from across Google for Edu­ca­tion to help teach­ers keep teach­ing, even when they aren’t in the class­room.
• Google Learn at Home: Google has part­nered with Khan Acad­e­my and oth­er learn­ing cre­ators to bring par­ents & fam­i­lies resources and activ­i­ties to make the com­ing days as edu­ca­tion­al and fun as pos­si­ble. These resources won’t replace any home­work assigned by teach­ers — but they can com­ple­ment that work.
• How Schools Can Start Teach­ing Online in a Short Peri­od of Time: Free Tuto­ri­als from the Stan­ford Online High School.
• Net­flix Edu­ca­tion­al Doc­u­men­taries: Dur­ing the COVID-19 cri­sis, Net­flix made some of its edu­ca­tion­al doc­u­men­taries free to stream online. The list notably includes David Attenborough’s nature series Our Plan­et and Abstract, which looks at the art of design. Many of these doc­u­men­taries are still free today.
• New York Pub­lic Library Resources: Need some good book rec­om­men­da­tions? Read aloud sug­ges­tions? NYPL has your read­ing needs cov­ered for kids of all ages. See sec­tions for Ages 0–5, Kids, Teens, and Adults.
• Scholas­tic Learn at Home: Day-to-day projects to keep kids read­ing, think­ing and learn­ing. Goes from PreK to 9th grade.
• Free Online Draw­ing Lessons for Kids, Led by Favorite Artists & Illus­tra­tors: Dur­ing the COVID-19 cri­sis, some well known illus­tra­tors (Mo Willems, Wendy McNaughton, Wendy, etc.) offered free draw­ing lessons for kids. These lessons are still free today.
• The Nation­al Con­sti­tu­tion Cen­ter: This orga­ni­za­tion is offer­ing dai­ly live con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ver­sa­tions for mid­dle school, high school, and col­lege stu­dents, avail­able through Zoom, and acces­si­ble on home com­put­er, lap­top, or phone.

Free Audio Books, eBooks and Text­books

• Free Audio Books: Our col­lec­tion of 450 free audio books includes many chil­dren’s clas­sics. The Wiz­ard of Oz, Grim­m’s Fairy Tales, The Adven­tures of Huck­le­ber­ry Finn and Mark Twain, The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia by C.S. Lewis, The Swiss Fam­i­ly Robin­son, Gul­liv­er’s Trav­els, Anne of Green Gables, Aesop’s Fables, The Wiz­ard of Oz series, and much more. You can down­load audio files straight to your com­put­er or mobile device.
• Free eBooks: This col­lec­tion includes many chil­dren’s clas­sics in ebook for­mat. You gen­er­al­ly have the option to down­load these texts to your Kin­dle, iPad, Nook or com­put­er. Video tuto­ri­als are includ­ed on the page. You may also want to vis­it our resource: Down­load 20 Pop­u­lar High School Books Avail­able as Free eBooks & Audio Books.
• Bartleby.com: Gives you access to free online clas­sics of ref­er­ence, lit­er­a­ture, and non­fic­tion, includ­ing Strunk & White’s Ele­ments of Style, The World Fact­book, The Oxford Shake­speare, and The King James Bible.
• Cal­i­bre: Down­load free e‑book soft­ware that will man­age your elec­tron­ic library, con­vert e‑books from one for­mat to anoth­er, and give you online access to free e‑books. We have more on it here.
• CK-12: This non-prof­it pro­vides “open text­books” for K‑12 stu­dents all over the world. It offers free high-qual­i­ty, stan­dards-aligned, open con­tent in the STEM sub­jects (sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, engi­neer­ing, and math­e­mat­ics).
• His­toric Chil­dren’s Books: The Uni­ver­si­ty of Florida’s Bald­win Library of His­tor­i­cal Children’s Lit­er­a­ture has dig­i­tized 6,000 books. They’re free to read online from cov­er to cov­er. You can find oth­er col­lec­tions by The Library of Con­gress and UCLA.
• Inter­na­tion­al Chil­dren’s Dig­i­tal Library: Pro­vides free access to high-qual­i­ty chil­dren’s books from around the world in dif­fer­ent lan­guages, includ­ing Ara­bic, Afrikaans, Dan­ish, Eng­lish, Far­si and beyond. Start brows­ing the library here.
• Lib­rivox: A favorite of ours, Lib­rivox pro­vides free audio books from the pub­lic domain. You will find 5000+ books in their cat­a­logue.
• OER Com­mons: Free, adapt­able, open­ly licensed text­books and sup­ple­men­tal resources.
• Project Guten­berg: The moth­er of all ebook sites hosts 40000 free ebooks, and makes them acces­si­ble for Kin­dle, Android, iPad, and iPhone.
• The Har­vard Clas­sics: Harvard’s influ­en­tial pres­i­dent, Charles W. Eliot, said that if you spent just 15 min­utes a day read­ing the right books, you could give your­self a prop­er lib­er­al edu­ca­tion. He pub­lished a 51-vol­ume series, now known as The Har­vard Clas­sics, and they’re avail­able free online. Ide­al for the old­er stu­dent.
• Free Text­book Col­lec­tion: Our site pro­vides a meta col­lec­tion of free text­books avail­able on the web. It cov­ers every­thing from Art His­to­ry to Biol­o­gy, Math, Physics, and Psy­chol­o­gy.
• Radi­o­Lab for Kids: Kid-friend­ly sto­ries curat­ed by Radi­o­lab. All in one binge­able spot.
• Watch Stars Read Clas­sic Children’s Books: Bet­ty White, James Earl Jones, Rita Moreno & Many More: Sto­ry­line Online streams imag­i­na­tive­ly pro­duced videos fea­tur­ing cel­e­brat­ed actors includ­ing Vio­la Davis, Alli­son Jan­ney, Chris Pine, Wan­da Sykes, Justin Ther­oux, and Bet­ty White read­ing children’s books along­side cre­ative­ly pro­duced illus­tra­tions.

For­eign Lan­guages 

• Open Cul­ture For­eign Lan­guage Col­lec­tion: This list cre­at­ed by Open Cul­ture offers free lessons in 40 dif­fer­ent lan­guages. You can gen­er­al­ly down­load the mp3/podcasts to your devices.
• Duolin­go — Learn 30+ lan­guages online with bite-size lessons based on sci­ence.
• Des­ti­nos: An Intro­duc­tion to Span­ish: This video instruc­tion­al series for high school and col­lege class­rooms teach­es Span­ish speak­ing and lis­ten­ing skills. Pro­duced by WGBH Boston.
• Deutsch – warum nicht?:  An exten­sive col­lec­tion of intro­duc­to­ry Ger­man lessons put togeth­er by Deutsche Welle. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.
• French in Action: Become flu­ent in French by explor­ing French cul­ture in this well-known video series for high school and col­lege class­rooms. Pro­duced by Yale Uni­ver­si­ty and WGBH Boston with Welles­ley Col­lege.
• Ma France: The BBC offers 24 video lessons that will teach you French.
• Real Chi­nese: Pre­sent­ed by the BBC. A live­ly intro­duc­tion to Man­darin Chi­nese pre­sent­ed in 10 short parts with video clips from the Real Chi­nese TV series.
• Talk Ital­ian: A live­ly intro­duc­tion to Ital­ian pre­sent­ed by the BBC.
• Watch­KnowL­earn: This site has aggre­gat­ed YouTube videos that will teach stu­dents new lan­guages.

Video Lessons/Tutorials

• Free Cours­es: Our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties, con­tains count­less video lec­tures from cours­es offered by top uni­ver­si­ties. Some mate­r­i­al can be use­ful for high school stu­dents, or their teach­ers.
• Khan Acad­e­my: The site famous­ly fea­tures K‑12 video tuto­ri­als cre­at­ed by Sal Khan and team. It cur­rent­ly gives stu­dents access to thou­sands of video tuto­ri­als that explain the ins-and-outs of alge­bra, geom­e­try, trigonom­e­try, cal­cu­lus, sta­tis­tics, finance, physics, eco­nom­ics and more. Videos can also be accessed via YouTube, or on the Khan Acad­e­my’s web­site.
• Crash Cours­es: Cre­at­ed by author John Green, this YouTube chan­nel pro­vides crash cours­es in physics, phi­los­o­phy, games, eco­nom­ics, U.S. gov­ern­ment and pol­i­tics, astron­o­my, anato­my & phys­i­ol­o­gy, world his­to­ry, com­put­er sci­ence, biol­o­gy, lit­er­a­ture, ecol­o­gy, chem­istry, psy­chol­o­gy, U.S. his­to­ry and more.
• Learner.org: Run by The Annen­berg Foun­da­tion, Learner.org hosts mul­ti­me­dia resources for teach­ers, stu­dents and life­long learn­ers. You can browse their gen­er­al col­lec­tion of edu­ca­tion­al videos here. Select­ed col­lec­tions are cat­a­loged below.
• MIT-K12: Tak­ing a page from Khan, MIT is now pro­duc­ing ”short videos teach­ing basic con­cepts in sci­ence and engi­neer­ing” for K‑12 stu­dents. The videos are gen­er­al­ly cre­at­ed by MIT stu­dents. You can sort the videos by top­ic and grade lev­el. Find ver­sions of these videos on iTunes.
• NeoK12: Des­ig­nat­ed a “Great Site for Kids” by the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion, this site pro­vides edu­ca­tion­al videos, lessons, quizzes and edu­ca­tion­al games for K‑12 stu­dents in var­i­ous sub­ject areas, such as sci­ence, math, health, social stud­ies and Eng­lish.
• The Kid Should See This: This blog aggre­gates inter­est­ing, kid-friend­ly videos focus­ing on sci­ence, art, tech­nol­o­gy, and more. The videos weren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly made for kids, but kids can get a lot out of them. That’s the premise of the site.
• TED-Ed: The mak­er of TED Talks now pro­vides care­ful­ly curat­ed edu­ca­tion­al videos or “lessons worth shar­ing.” Top­ics range from Lit­er­a­ture and Lan­guage, to Math­e­mat­ics, to Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy.
• School­house Rock: Ani­mat­ed musi­cal edu­ca­tion­al short films that aired dur­ing the Sat­ur­day morn­ing chil­dren’s pro­gram­ming on the U.S. tele­vi­sion net­work ABC. The top­ics cov­ered includ­ed gram­mar, sci­ence, eco­nom­ics, his­to­ry, math­e­mat­ics, and civics
• Watch­KnowL­earn: This site has indexed over 33,000 edu­ca­tion­al videos from YouTube and placed them into a direc­to­ry of over 3,000 cat­e­gories. The videos are avail­able with­out reg­is­tra­tion or fees to teach­ers in the class­room and to stu­dents at home 24/7.
• YouTube EDU: A curat­ed col­lec­tion of edu­ca­tion­al videos from sources rang­ing from Sesame Street to Har­vard. Cre­at­ed by YouTube itself.

Art & Visu­al Cul­ture (Web Resources)

• A Vir­tu­al Tour of 30 World Class Muse­ums and 2 Mil­lion Works of Art: The page gives you access to col­lec­tions of dig­i­tized art from 30 world class muse­ums. It fea­tures more than 2 mil­lion works of art.
• Google Art Project: A new tool that gives you access to more than 1,000 works of art appear­ing in 17 great muse­ums across the world. Using Google’s Street View tech­nol­o­gy, you can now tour col­lec­tions at 184 muse­ums world wide, includ­ing the MoMA and Met in New York City, the Uffizi Gallery in Flo­rence, the Her­mitage in St. Peters­burg, the Van Gogh Muse­um, and the Rijksmu­se­um in Ams­ter­dam.
• Art­Think: Cre­at­ed by the San Fran­cis­co Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, this site offers theme-based activ­i­ties in visu­al arts, lan­guage arts, his­to­ry and social stud­ies. The site lets stu­dents inves­ti­gate artists’ work, lives, and their his­tor­i­cal con­text.
• Free Col­or­ing Books from World-Class Libraries & Muse­ums:World class muse­ums and libraries have made free col­or­ing books avail­able for down­load.
• SmartHis­to­ry: Smarthis­to­ry pro­vides an exten­sive col­lec­tion of audio and video intro­duc­tions to works of art found in stan­dard art his­to­ry sur­vey texts. (See our post “An Intro­duc­tion to 100 Impor­tant Paint­ings with Videos Cre­at­ed by Smarthis­to­ry.”) You can find a com­plete col­lec­tion of their videos on YouTube