Free online learning and ebooks for children during lockdown 

With Sheffield families firmly in the middle of a third national lockdown, parents and carers are once again finding themselves in the role of home teacher for their children.

Juggling working from home, giving your children a sense of daily structure, looking after the family and being responsible for home-schooling is no easy task and it can all feel overwhelming. However, it's important to remember that teachers will not expect parents and carers to have an in depth knowledge of the curriculum or the subjects being studied.

There are also some great online resources which can help.

We recently published this post with links to Thinkuknow's online home activity packs. Since then, we've become aware of a couple more online resources which we think will be helpful.
 

BBC Bitesize Lockdown Learning

The BBC website has lessons full of videos, quizzes and practice activities to help parents and carers with home learning. They've helpfully split the learning into categories to make it easier to find what you need:

• Primary: Age 3-11 
• Secondary: Age 11-16
• Post-16: Age 16+

It's really worth exploring the website as it's jam packed with resources specifically designed for different stages of learning and also has downloadable timetables to help with planning the day.

Link here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize
 

The Virtual School Library

Oak National Academy and the National Literacy Trust (an independent charity working with schools and communities) have created the Virtual School Library with popular children's authors and illustrators providing FREE books, exclusive videos and their top three recommended reads.

This authors change every week, giving you access to new books. At the time of writing this post, their featured author is the wonderful Jacqueline Wilson who writes the very popular Tracy Beaker stories. Her most popular book 'The Story of Tracy Beaker' has been made available to read free of charge.

The Virtual School Library website also has an online classroom with nearly 10,000 free video lessons, resources and activities which cover most subjects from Reception to Year 11.
 

Twinkl

The educational resources website Twinkl has some great resources aimed at parents and carers who are home schooling.

All their resources are made by teachers and aimed at being used by anyone, anywhere. The information has been collated into different age groups, making it easier to find what you need.
 

Sheffield libraries

Another great resource for online events and ebooks is the Sheffield libraries website.

Find out more via this link: https://www.sheffield.gov.uk/home/libraries-archives/events-children-families