Online learning resources to help parents

This means that parents are once again having to take on the difficult and challenging tasks of home-schooling during this already tough time.

Thankfully, there is a wide variety of online resources available to help parents and children learn as best as they can from home.

e-Sgoil

As part of the organisations online study support programmes already established, e-Sgoil has launched Lockdown Live. This includes both daytime and early evening study support classes on a variety of National 5, Higher and Advanced classes.

Students are welcome to join these free online classes, all students need to register with are a Glow account and a SCN required. The classes will be delivered through Microsoft teams, and full timetables of all dates, times and classes can be found on the timetable on www.esgoil.com.

BBC

For general education, the BBC is broadcasting curriculum content on TV every week going forward from 11 January 2021.

Primary school educational programmes will be on from 9am-12pm on CBBC, and you will be able to find at least hours of secondary school curriculum teaching on BBC Two.

There is also BBC Bitesize which provides online educational support from children aged 5-16 on a wide range of subjects. BBC Bitesize Daily has launched a 20 minute lesson covering different subjects, for example, English science and French for different age groups every day.

For a full list of online learning tools, visit BBC Scotland.

The British Museum

For anyone with a child particularly interested in history, this will be a good way to keep them occupied. Despite not being able to physically go and visit museums, The British Museum has created an interactive learning tool to allow children to explore history across the five continents looking at art, religion, trade and life across the world.

To explore the continents from the comfort of your own home, visit The British Museum.

National Geographic

National Geographic has an entire kids section specialising in primary school education resources, including lots of facts, games and quizzes to keep kids engaged. The resource list is filled of interesting topics from Rosa Parks, endangered tigers to how the British election system works – something for every child to be interested in learning about.

As well as lots of educational tools to help parents, there are great competitions and a kid’s club to ensure everyone is having fun while learning, for more check out National Geographic.

YouTube Free School

FreeSchool is a channel on Youtube dedicated to providing young children with fun and engaging learning tools. It’s a safe and friendly channel to allow children to get insight and explore interests in art, music, history, literature and science in an age-appropriate and accessible way to ensure they get the most out of the experience.

FreeSchool is available on both Facebook or YouTube, watch their content on whatever platform you prefer.

Draw with Rob

This is ideal for anyone with children who are artistic and will enjoy spending their time being creative. Author and illustrator, Rob Biddulph created a YouTube channel doing draw-along videos for children to follow during the first lockdown.

His videos became so popular in 2020, that alongside gaining millions of viewers all over the world he broke the Guinness World Record for largest online art session in May 2020 with over 45,000 participants.

New episodes will be uploaded to Rob’s channel every Saturday at 10am, check out his channel for new content and previous work.

PE with Joe

Joe Wicks is back again reclaiming his role as the nation’s PE teacher as he begins streaming his lessons from January 11 2021.

His lessons are popular with both children and adults which can be fun for everyone to take part in.

His lessons will be uploaded every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 9am on his channel.