As soon as the schools closed back in March, there was a whole plethora of organisations suddenly making their content free to parents who suddenly found themselves with children at home.
I think many people felt a little overwhelmed at first.
Being a home educator is hard work, and it can often be time-consuming crafting projects and ideas for children. There are a number of websites that I turn to time and time again for resources, so I thought it would be worth sharing my top three and best value subscription sites for home educators.
I chose these three sites as they offer the most complete range of resources and this saves me time when prepping work for the children. Yes, I could probably find for free elsewhere, but you can’t put a price on having quality items all in one place which in turn saves you heaps of time.
Twinkl
Most home educators have heard of Twinkl, and it’s one of those sites that I thought long and hard about before I bought my subscription. It’s isn’t the cheapest site to sign up to, but there are regular discounts made available via their Facebook group and the quality and range of resources is just superb. It’s rare that I can’t find what I need on there!
There is everything from formal lesson plans through the Plan It schemes. There are assessment guides and trackers and planners. I have a quick glance over these across the year (I’ve written about it here) but if you want a formal approach twinkl has everything you need. It labels stuff by school year group, so it gives you an idea of the age range of the material.
There’s now a dedicated Home Education hub which is great and it makes it easier to search for items. We really like the maths mysteries – the children actively ask for these! and the Newsroom is also great for getting short comprehension tasks. There’s a calendar of upcoming events which helps you to tie your work into anything that might be topical and there are also lots of fun craft ideas and other bits and pieces.
Twinkl remembers the items you’ve most recently viewed and you’re able to save and organise resources too (this is really useful).
Areas of Twinkl to explore:
- PlanIt – https://www.twinkl.co.uk/resources/planit-primary-teaching-resources
- Newsroom – https://www.twinkl.co.uk/newsroom
- Maths Mysteries – https://www.twinkl.co.uk/resources/parents-home-education-maths/parents-home-education-maths-problem-solving-challenges/maths-mysteries-problem-solving-challenges-maths-subject-resources-home-education
- Topic & Event Calendar – https://www.twinkl.co.uk/calendar
Twinkl has a range of membership options offering different levels of access to the site.
Mrs Mactivity
Mrs Mactivity is a relatively new site and is very affordable at around £20 for a year-long subscription. The materials are quirky and colourful and the children enjoy using them. There are handy curriculum overview cards if you want to check where your children are working at and there are some fun maths sheets too.
We are working on embedding knowledge at the moment in terms of multiplication and the such and I’ve found the sheets from Mrs Mactivity great fun for putting into their morning packs. There are a lot of great resources on the site, and there’s more being added all the time.
Areas of Mrs Mactivity to explore:
- Reading Lists – https://www.mrsmactivity.co.uk/downloads/category/premium-access/english/childrens-recommended-book-lists/
- Multiplication & Division – https://www.mrsmactivity.co.uk/downloads/category/premium-access/maths/multiplication-and-division/
- Colouring Sheets – https://www.mrsmactivity.co.uk/downloads/category/premium-access/colouring/
Membership is £24.97 per year.
Teaching Packs
The final site that I think is worth subscribing to (especially if you have slightly older children from KS2 up) is Teaching Packs. The resources are grouped into packs and I use this site a lot for topic work. We have used a few of the history packs which I think are superb.
Within the packs are a range of things including e-books, powerpoints, activities such as wordsearches or crosswords and other related information.
The detail included is superb and we have all learnt a lot from using some of these packs. There is an active forum where members can interact as well as a small facebook group and a weekly email with details of new packs. It’s a fantastic site with some really great resources.
The packs we have most enjoyed so far are:
- Tudors https://www.teachingpacks.co.uk/the-tudors-pack/
- Vikings https://www.teachingpacks.co.uk/the-vikings-pack/
- Spelling Games – https://www.teachingpacks.co.uk/the-spelling-games-pack/
Subscription costs £22.50 and members can renew at a lower price each year.
