One of the things I love about homeschooling is that we are spared from paying exorbitant tuition and miscellaneous fees that the private schools seem to charge these days. Don’t get me wrong, I did not homeschool my kids because we were stingy. In fact, my eldest went to a private school for 6 years and we spent a large sum of money while he was enrolled there. But due to personal reasons, I quit my corporate job and thus, now have plenty of time to spend with my kids. After discussing everything with my partner, we decided that I will spend half day to mentor my kids, both of them at the same time. And if I may say so, it was the best decision we ever did as a family. Although we faced a lot of challenges during our first year, I can say that my kids have adjusted to me being around a lot and also being their teacher. I’d be lying if I say that it was easy for them. It was DEFINITELY not.
When pandemic hit early this year, we still continued our lesson until end of March. It was tough explaining to the kids that we wouldn’t be able push through with our planned trip this year which was a two-week vacation in Mindanao, sponsored by a friend of mine. My kids love the beach and we promised them that we will go to my eldest son’s birth place in Mindanao last summer. With the pandemic still looming over us, that didn’t happen of course. The good side (there’s always a good side to these things), is that we are healthy, none of us got the virus, and the best part, we got to discover card games and free online resources for homeschooling – which will be the focus of this article.
Without further ado, below is a short list of websites to help you with your homeschooling or remote schooling. The list is by no means complete, there are tons of free resources out there but the ones mentioned here are what we are using so far.
Every homeschooling family I know recommends Khan Academy. If you find that teaching math and science to be a tad, if not super, challenging, have your kids go to this site and take the lessons. What I love about Khan Academy is that you can choose which courses your kids can take that are appropriate to their grade level. You can also choose to give advance courses or remedial courses as you see fit. Then there are courses designed specifically to help the students review before taking entrance exams to college or high school. And the best part? It’s free! If your child is less than 7 years old, there’s a free app available for iOS and Android gadget that you can download. The app has so many activities for the kids to choose from that will help them learn English, solve puzzles by logic, draw, and learn how to read through “read-to-me” books. The app’s interface is immersive and so engaging, I’m still amazed that it’s free! Below are the links to download them according to your gadget:
This is the link to the desktop app:
This is the link to the iPad version of the app:
This is the link to the app for Android:
ABCYA is another source that your kids might also enjoy because of the tons of educational games and activities that the website offers for all grade levels. Do take note that when I say tons of activities, I do mean that. It can be a little too overwhelming to navigate through the website because of so many choices. So one way to navigate through the website is actually typing what you’re searching for in the “Search” field or by clicking the grade level of your child and choosing the topic from any of these five categories: Letters, Numbers, Holiday, Strategy, or Skill. If you find the website a little intimidating, here is a helpful blog article about how homeschoolers can maximize ABCYA:
Looking for science experiments, video lessons, and activities with teachers’ guide to boot? If so, you will love this website! This website was recommended by one of the science teachers at Peniel, our homeschool provider. I checked it out and fell in love with it instantly. Do take note that the core subject of these videos is Science. So if you want an alternative option to YouTube, this website is worth exploring too. 🙂
Okay parents, aren’t we lucky that Deped has leveled up by providing instructional materials (IMs) on their website? I’m just glad that Deped has made it easy for us. I searched for Araling Panlipunan learning materials and below is a screenshot of my search results. Peniel mentioned that Deped will continuously populate/update the list of learning materials this year since most families will be having classes at their home possibly until end of this year. Another important note is that this website is open only for those who are enrolled in Philippine schools since this is an initiative of the Philippine Department of Education. If you are OFWs with kids enrolled in a Philippine school, I think you can access this website. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
In order to download these materials, you need to create an account using your email address on the website. You will be asked for the name of the school your kid/s is/are enrolled at and then you will need to create a password. Please take note that you won’t be able to download unless you sign-up. Below is the website link that will bring you directly to the Learning Resource site of Deped:
Wouldn’t you like to have quizzes made ready for you for most topics and subjects? Just like GenerationGenius, this website came highly recommended from one of the teachers at Peniel. The website offers online quizzes, engaging contents and games for Math, English Language and Arts, Social Studies, World Languages, Science, Computer Science and Skills, Career and Technical Education, Creative Arts, and guess what, Health and Physical Education! With COVID-19 still around us, it can be bit challenging to teach PE to kids now. There’s Youtube videos of course but still, I’m happy that a free education platform like Quizizz offers some lessons and activities to help me teach PE to my kids.
Need videos but want your kids away from YouTube? Need books but you are on a tight budget? This website is for you! The website offers free e-books and videos for lessons in Math, English, Science, History and other alternative lessons. The best part about this website – both books and video lessons are downloadable for free! What I also love about this website is that it has free Filipino books which is a plus in my opinion. There aren’t a lot of website that give free Filipino books and lessons.
Just look at these titles! The books are free to download into your tablet so read anytime while stuck in traffic or on a long trip and you don’t even need to create an account in order to do that. I swear, I’m happy to have found this website. Thank you, Globe Telecom, for this website!
I know there are other free websites out there. If I haven’t mentioned them, that means, I know of them but haven’t explored them yet. I also wanted to keep this list short for now since I don’t want to overwhelm you with so much info. I’m pretty sure you and your kids will be busy going through the websites above anyway. I will make another list of resources in the future when I’m done exploring them. Enjoy!
If you enjoyed reading this blog, I bet you also want to know how we teach our kids piano lesson digitally through this blog post.
You’d also prolly want to teach Baybayin to your kids for “Buwan ng Wika” with my free downloadable worksheets.
The Fabulous Scientist 
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