If your kids are anything like mine, they love their screen time. And while I’m fine letting them watch the occasional TV show or movie, I’m not a huge fan of passive entertainment. This is why I love educational websites for kids. Kids enjoy them because they have games and other fun activities, and moms like me approve of them because we get to sneak in learning opportunities without our kids noticing. Scouring the internet for educational websites can be a daunting task, though. So I polled my friends, and together we’ve come up with this list of the best {totally free} educational websites for kids.
ABCya.com
ABCya says it is the leader in free educational games and mobile apps for kids, and that last year over 1 billion games were played on its site! The website has free games for kids ages PreK through 5th grade, separated by grade level. Games are divided into five categories: letters, numbers, holidays, strategy and skills. The website does feature ads, but you can go ad-free for a small monthly fee.
AnimalJam.com
AnimalJam is a website created in partnership with National Geographic. It’s the perfect game for kids who love animals. Kids get to customize their own animal character and den, go on adventures, and gather facts about animals. Kids can even download educational activities to complete when they’re offline.
FunBrain.com
FunBrain was created for kids ages preschool through 8th grade. The site boasts over 100 educational games, online books and comics, including Diary of a Wimpy Kid and The Cat That Broke the Internet’s Back.
Kids.NationalGeographic.com
Just like the kids’ magazine, the National Geographic Kids website centers around animals and nature. The website includes games, videos, photos and stories that your kids will love.
PBSKids.org
PBS Kids has tons of games centered around your child’s favorite PBS shows. But they’re more than just fun games. The educational categories include shapes, engineering, measurement, reading, adventure and spelling.
Starfall.com
Starfall is my absolute favorite educational website. Starfall, which is also a non-profit organization, has reading and math activities for kids from PreK through 2nd grade. From phonics games to help kids learn their ABCs to a complete library of books at different reading levels, Starfall is a great way to sneak in some extra reading time for your kiddos. If you really enjoy Starfall, you have the option to join the website for a small fee to gain access to even more material.
TeachYourMonstertoRead.com
Teach Your Monster to Read is a series of reading games that, according to its website, has helped over a half a million kids learn how to read. The site starts by teaching kids letters and phonics sounds and ends with teaching kids to read full sentences. Teach Your Monster to Read is provided free for desktop and laptop users thanks to the Usborne Foundation, the non-profit started by Usborne Publishing. If your kids love this website, there’s also a paid iPad version, too.
