Our favourite online educational resources for the holidays

Anthony really struggles with homework.  David is only interested in what he is interested in when he's interested in it and Jane is interested in learning about everything! Over the last school year we've found being able to access ideas for homework or about topics at a level my kids get and understand has been really helpful.  And we are heading for the holidays and summer projects.

These same resources will help us give added value to days out and new experiences by either thinking about things before we go or looking into them afterwards.  I've got a few go-to resources.  As I'm also working my way through a teaching assistant certificate, I reached out to a few teacher / homeschooler types and added to my list so hopefully you will find something that might work for you and your kids, like some have worked for ours:

Activity Village was recommended by Clares Little Tots and has over 23,000 resources - 1,000 for free.  It's definitely a 'keeping the kids busy' type resource that's would be great for the summer, full of crafts, printables, educational activities and games.  It's more that specifically educational, but then that's how many kids learn right?

BBC Bitesize is one of my favourites.  When my son needed to know about the Mayan's, Antarctica or about whatever else for his homework or holiday projects this is where I go.   It's free, broken down by country and key stage, and has a search facility.  Cartoons and interactive games explain the topics.  I love it.

Clever Tykes is an enterprise education resource.  It's based around three storybooks that provide positive role models to help children ages 6-9 be more resourceful and enterprising - something our lot could do with learning about.  There's Walk-it Willow, Change-it Cho and Code-it Cody, each with a different character and problem solving, enterprising story. The books themselves are lovely and well designed for kids this age to read.  Online there are things to buy but also a free online resource available for schools - which parents can then access once the school has registered.  Why not suggest it before the holidays start?

Enchanted Learning was recommended by Living Life Our Way.  It's obviously from the USA but has so many interesting topics.  From Astronomy and Botany through to Volcanos and Winter Crafts - all taken directly from it's handy topic list making it easy to see what you can look through.

Oxford Owl is at its heart a kids e-book resource for those learning to read and based around the Oxford Learning Tree levels.  You can join for free if you are a parent and you can access their eBook library plus you can access other advice, support and educational activities and games without registering.

Teach it was recommended by Someone's Mum and it specialises in secondary school resources - you can access all the resources as a PDF for free by registering on the site.  The subscription levels here are for collaborating and sharing content with departments so if it's just you at home looking to print out some things then it's as good as free.

TES Resources has over 1/2 million resources so whatever you are looking into at the moment there is probably something here.  There are free things, some for members and you can also buy resources through it as one-offs too. Popitha also pointed too Communication4All which links to the TES SEN resources and is home to the collection of inclusion resources created by Bev Evans.  Some of the Clever Tykes resources are on the TES too.

Twinkl - Has thousands of free resources on it from topic related mindfulness colouring sheets to cursive handwriting pages.  If you like the fidget spinner from Twinkl above, you may also like to enter our fidget spinner giveaway.  Twinkl is great and has it's own SEN section, but if you want access to all the resources you'll need to sign up for a monthly membership.  This is well worth it if you are in teaching or home educating (which they have a specific section for too) but might not be for everyone otherwise.

What do you think to these?  What other online resources do you know or would you recommend?  

We were sent a copy of the Clever Tykes books for purposes of review and thought they would be great to include in our list.  All opinion is my own.