Free Homeschooling Resources for Isolating Families

Hey, people who read Sci/Why website! We've got new resources added to this post.

With the coronavirus pandemic, nearly all the schools, libraries and museums are closed for most of our readers. Here are some free online resources that will be useful for families who are doing some homeschooling, or just want to have interesting things to do. If you have more free online resources to recommend, please share them in the comments below.

Due to the outbreak of the novel Coronavirus, Binogi will open up its content to all Canadian teachers, students, and parents to provide remote teaching and learning throughout spring 2020. This platform looks terrific! We learned about it from this article at Sooke Pocket News. The article explains more about Binogi and their learning program, with links to Binogi's website, so check it out.

There's a page of resources for educators at the website for Lesser Slave Lake Bird Observatory, which you can find at this link.

Remember, if you're a family with kids home from school, you might have no need to set up formal homeschooling lessons! It's probably best to start with a wander through these amazing books and videos, to find what is interesting for you. Maybe you will read through an entire unit and learn a formal lesson, or maybe you'll find that it's animal webcams that make your family happy about science. There's no wrong answer.

Our own LE Carmichael has just launched a new book, The Boreal Forest. Check out our Sci/Why blog at this link for the post she wrote about her event  If you're missing the public library or bookstore, she says: "Click over to Youtube to enjoy this video of me reading from The Boreal Forest on #IntlForestDay" 
Here's the link for that reading! 

Here are some great comments on writing about science for young people, from Sci/Why's own Joan Marie Galat, who wrote on this topic for Edmonton Public Library. Click here for a link to read what she and several other Canadian writers have to say about researching and writing our books!

Now that we're all practising social distancing, we can't go to libraries or museums. Though many of us can go for a walk to a park or beach or hiking trail, some people don't have that option for a field trip. Here's a link found by Sci/Why's own Margriet Ruurs, which leads to over THIRTY virtual field trips you can take on a computer. You and your kids can visit animal webcams, the Louvre and other museums, or even Mars! Just click on this link:
https://abdodigital.com/?tk=414F33301B8E136DEE3F0A93BF1795E1

If you're into the space program or astronomy, the NASA website at http://nasa.gov will lead you to an amazing amount of science and space program resources you can read, download, and more. NASA also has a Kids' Club (click here for the link) with games, stories, calendars, and more.

Remember that Canada's National Film Board has over 400 Canadian films in English and in French available for anyone to watch online at http://nfb.ca .

If you or your child are a high school student in Canada, do not panic about school credits for graduation! Every province in Canada is working on this issue, and there will be a way to ensure students can finish school credits. E-mail your school and your province's Ministry of Education to learn what is being done in your area.

There is particularly good news from Alberta on this matter, from Alberta Distance Learning Centre which has resources used by many Canadians across the country and around the world. Their website is http://adlc.ca and they have 300 courses being used, 200 of which are online. They advise other distance learning programs nationally. They are used to hearing from parents and school boards.
Click here for a link to an article by CBC News about this amazing distance learning centre, and what they're doing to help students who had not planned to need to study at home.

I'll add right now the particularly bad news that the Alberta government had JUST announced they were reducing funding this year for the Alberta Distance Learning Centre and CANCELLING it entirely. If you're living in Alberta, let your government know what you think of cancelling this excellent and cost-effective education program, which is a major employer for the town of Barrhead as well as employing many teachers and tutors who work online.

Scholastic Books is promoting their Learn At Home website (click here for the link) which has learning content for children from pre-Kindergarten to Grade 6. There are five days' worth of materials, with more on the way.

Abdo Digital Publishing has sent out word that they are making their digital library FREE for people to download and use from their website, http://abdodigital.com. This American publisher has resources including books in Spanish as well as English.
They have both an Elementary Digital Bookshelf for pre-Kindergarten thru Grade 8 at this link
https://abdodigital.com/?tk=414F33301B8E136DEE3F0A93BF1795E1
and a Secondary Digital Bookshelf for Grades 5 through 12 at this link
https://abdodigital.com/?tk=840BC558E6676AB1F4C9FA29D8EC6D69 

As their note today said:

To help stop the spread of COVID-19, schools and libraries are closing across the country. ABDO wants to ensure that readers everywhere continue to have the opportunity to learn and grow during this unprecedented event. Our digital products are available for free now through June 2020.

Retro Shows on Science from the CBC, and more!

By Paula Johanson

Summer is here, and a lot of people are out of school for months. Though it's time to be outdoors doing fun things like gardening and kayaking, nobody wants to turn their brains off for an entire summer. There's plenty of science to learn -- but where?

One of the things that works for science learning in the summer is finding free videos and audio recordings and podcasts to play when needed. Quiet evenings after vigorous activity, or during long rides in buses or cars -- those are good times to play these recordings. I find it good exercise for my brain, which complements all the good exercise for my body I get in summertime! Here are some of the science resources that might be handy for students and families this summer:

Hosted at the University of Victoria's archives website is an amazing profile of a citizen scientist extraordinaire!

Ian McTaggart Cowan was a true citizen scientist who was committed to sharing scientific knowledge with all Canadians. Click here for a link to the profile, with plenty of info on this man and the science he loved. He hosted three popular television series on the CBC: The Web of Life, The Living Sea, and Fur & Feather. All of his episodes  are available at this link -- and there's enough episodes to watch one every day till September or binge a series over a weekend! This profile could be a good resource for home learning projects or for students who just want to keep their science brains revving.

On CBC radio, the IDEAS program presents interesting ideas in just under an hour of thoughtful talk. Often these episodes are on science topics. On their website you can see links to recent broadcasts or scroll down to the link  "Browse Past Episodes" and find links to many episodes which you can play right away or download onto your phone, computer, or MP3 player. Some of these talks will inspire teenagers to discuss the topics with their parents and teachers or find books at the public library!

As well, IDEAS hosts the Massey Lectures every fall (five talks by a celebrated speaker), and the past lectures are available at this link. If you like listening to lectures and discussions and finding books on the same topics, you'll enjoy looking through the list of past lectures and picking out some to hear. In 2009, the Massey Lecturer was Wade Davis, speaking as a field anthropologist on "The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World." The traditional knowledge he discusses include practical science studies such as navigation and sustainable agriculture.

Canada's National Film Board has made most of their videos available online for free! (They have materials in French as well as English, y'know.) Check out their Subjects page on the Sciences at this link and pick out some videos both classic and recent for your summer viewing. There's also some teaching aids and material for younger children.

Visiting Hoodoos and Royal Tyrrell Museum

Say hello to my little friend! This is Morgan and her auntie, among the hoodoos near Drumheller where she was having fun with science. Seventy million years ago, this area was a shoreline plain and shallow sea where lots of plants and animals lived. Now it's dry and not much grows except scrubby grass and bushes near the streams.

It's al lot easier to learn about geology and paleontology when you run around the hoodoos like Morgan has done, and you're able to see all the layers in the ground that have built up day by day over millions of years. In the Alberta Badlands, there are plenty of places where there's no recent accumulation of soil and plants to hide the layers in the ground. A hoodoo forms when there's a tougher layer that resists eroding. The tough layer makes a cap, and as the softer layers wear away on the sides a pillar can get quite high. Some of the hoodoos are interestingly shaped!

You can see the clay and bits of stone all around Morgan. As the ground is weathering away here, new bits of stone start to show from where they have been buried for millions of years in the layers of sediments. Some of these bits of stone are the bones of dinosaurs and other long-ago animals that have been in the ground so long, they have turned to stone. I've always liked that these bones are called fossils, from an old word for something dug out of the ground. It isn't an everyday thing to find fossils (unless you live near Drumheller!) so it's nice to have a non-ordinary word to name them.

At the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, many of these fossil bones have been prepared for display. Some of the displays use carefully-made replicas of the bones, which are lighter and easier to arrange in the shape of the animal when it was alive. There's an active website for this museum which is as fun to explore as the building. The museum even hosts short courses for distance learning, and it hosts a course for homeschools on paleontology! It's one of my favourite museums.

While some fossil bones are from small animals, people are particularly interested in the animals larger than ourselves. I like to look at this picture, and see how Morgan's little hands and feet have bones like the ones in this dinosaur's foot!

It's easy to tell that Morgan enjoyed her day at the museum, learning about science and the animals of the past! I'll have to find her some books now she's growing old enough to read them and ask questions.