Describe the best home education tools you have tried for young children

[Jthan]

Having tried many approaches to help my kids academically (they are 3 and 6 year old boys. Also they do go to school but I also try to support their learning at home), I figured it would be fun to share my best discoveries here and invite you to do the same. Here they are:

Reading: Alphablocks cartoons which can be found on YouTube. These are really, really clever. Pause the videos and cover the characters from time to time so that just the letters/words are showing and ask your child to try to read it before unpausing.

Also The Alphablocks Reading Programme, which can be ordered from the Alphablocks website for £30. It's a fun set of magazines and toys which both my kids have loved and wanted to do just for the fun of it. It covers all the EYFS requirements and more.

Numbers: An app for phones and tablets called Dragonbox Numbers. It's an incredibly fun game where they get to play around with living numbers, combine and divide them to solve puzzles, and get a hands-on intuitive feel for what numbers mean as well as adding and subtracting.

I also make sure to use an abacus or other real life example to explain how what my kids have done in the game translates into real life.

Fractions: For my 6 year old, an app called "Slice Fractions" is another ingenious game where the kid hardly feels like they're being taught. Covers a lot of areas of fractions, but if like my son your child hasn't learned about fractions before, you do need to explain it to them as they go. Otherwise they might just complete the puzzles through trial and error instead of using the proper logic.

General maths: Math Seeds is an online game for a wide range of ages with many different games and a clear progression path. It's also only £30 per year which is quite reasonable. Dreambox is another game for kids from about 5 years old. A little pricier and covers less areas of maths. But it's more thoughtfully made ane the way it teaches is more intuitive and tailored to individuals.

Science: Besides helping them learn through general discussion, experiments and books, there's also an awesome cartoon series from the 90s called "The Magic School Bus". Some can be found on YouTube and all of them are on Netflix. A class of school kids have all kinds magical adventures which are fun to watch and cover a great many scientific topics.

So those are probably the things I would recommend most highly. I'd love to hear what's worked best for other members here :)