Corona resources for parents

Parents are facing a special challenge right now because of Covid-19. Working from home, entertaining the kids and maybe squeezing in a bit of school work on top of that? That is pretty rough. The most important thing right now is: don’t try to be perfect. It is okay if your child doesn’t finish all of their homework. Try to create some free space for yourself.

With this long list full of inspiration I’ll try to give you a hand. It is grouped rather loosely, the line between preschoolers and schoolchildren is quite blurry anyway.

Feel free to share this list with everyone, and if you have more ideas, write to me. Most of the offers below are in German unless noted otherwise.

General information

• Deswegen bleiben wir zuhause - a short comic that explains in a child-friendly way why everybody is staying at home
• Another poster on the topic, available in several languages, can be found at mindheart.co
• You would like some tips on how to make working from home with kids work? @dieformgeberin posts a new article every day on her blog.
• For video chats with more than 4 people we recommend Jitsi.org. Apart from the Chrome browser no software needs to be installed, and there are free apps for iOS and Android devices. It works great for doing the morning circle with the daycare group and singing a song together anyway.

For daycare/preschool children

General offers

• ene-mene-bu is the preschool programme of Kika with lots of videos and play ideas.
• Die Maus of course also has a website with plenty of episodes
• Khan Academy Kids is a really great free English-language learning programme for children of preschool age.
• papamachtsachen liest vor - the Instagram account @papamachtsachen starts reading fairy tales on Tuesday, every day at 16:00.
• Damla Hekimoğlu reads selected stories on her YouTube channel.
• Polylino has opened up its collection of children’s books in several languages to parents free of charge.
• Löwenzähnchen is the Löwenzahn version for the little ones.
• Julia Miller-Lissner posts a new music video for children aged 0-5 every day, starting Monday the 16th.
• Sesame Workshop, the non-profit behind Sesame Street, has put together a lot of free content. Among it are some German-language eBooks on Apple and Google.
• DieKurzgeschichte.de has a great number of free audio plays.

Crafting/drawing/playing

• Illustratoren gegen Corona has a lot of colouring templates for you, completely free. Download, print, and your kids can start colouring.
• Play and learning designers Anne & Ruth give away a new play idea every day on geschwisterloewenstein.de.
• Beautiful colouring pages can also be found at Martina Hoffmann
• The blog of @newniqberlin also has lovely colouring templates for you every day.
• Besser Basteln has many free crafting instructions.
• Deutsche Bahn has plenty of crafting templates on their portal for kids.
• Liz Climo also has a wonderful colouring book on her blog.
• Papu also has free colouring pages

For schoolchildren

NDR has an article on how learning from home works best.

General offers

• ZDF Logo has the news for children, about Corona and more.
• Khan Academy is a free learning offer for children from first grade upwards.
• Sofatutor is a great learning programme for children from first grade upwards.
• ZDF has a digital classroom with videos for children of all ages.
• The portal of WDR can be found at schule digital.
• Wissen Macht Ah! is a lovely science show for kids by WDR.
• The offer of Bayerischer Rundfunk can be found at Schule Daheim
• Kakadu is a children’s podcast by Deutschlandfunk.
• Funk, the digital channel of ARD, runs several topic channels on YouTube under the name “musstewissen”, here for example musstewissen Deutsch.
• Lernattack, the learning platform of the Duden publishing house, is now free for 2 months
• Scoyo has many learning videos, now free for 2 weeks.
• Anton has many free learning games for German, maths, biology and music for children from 1st to 10th grade
• Homeschooling Corona has news and lists of offers around the topic of homeschooling.
• piqd now offers one to two lessons with experts on various topics every day.
• Ich-lerne-online is a new directory with all kinds of learning offers.

Reading/writing

• Plenty of writing exercises can be found at ABCund123.
• Antolino is a reading platform for primary and secondary school.
• On einfachvorlesen.de there is a new free bedtime story every week.
• Leseo by Cornelsen can be used free of charge for 3 months.
• Many libraries have digital offers that can be used despite the closures. The list of the Berlin libraries can be found here, then click on “Digitale Medien”.

Languages

• Duolingo has plenty of free and easily digestible language courses
• busuu is another free language learning offer

History

• Learning platform for open history lessons

Science/maths

• Bettermarks has courses for grades 4-10, free until 31.07.
• DLR has a great #ScienceAtHome portal. The equivalent portal of NASA can be found here.
• The YouTube channels of Dr. Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim and Lehrerschmidt have lots of great learning videos
• The Helmholtz Association has a portal with videos and a PDF with experiments for at home.
• More links can also be found at zdi
• Nabu has a lovely page with lots of information and little games.

Sports

• Alba Berlin now shows a daily PE lesson on their YouTube channel, split into daycare, primary school and secondary school children

Computer science

There are many offers for learning how to program, here just a small selection:

• Scratch
• Hopscotch
• Kodable

Do you have more? Then send them over.

Thanks also to the many people who sent me links! A special mention goes to the Anna Seghers Schule for their extensive list 💚.

You can find more links in our parenting resources.