Best Educational Resource Websites: Free & Paid Teaching Materials for Kids (2024 Guide)

TL;DR

Looking for teaching resources? The sites on our list offer a plethora of options, from printables and educational games to 3D models (if you can get them to work). So go ahead and jump straight to our comprehensive list of sites where English resources dominate.

If you're looking for resources in other languages, check out our post on creating printable worksheets in any language.

Why?

Why Would You Want Teaching Materials?

Children's natural curiosity is a powerful engine for learning. Unfortunately, the structured curriculum of most school systems can't always keep pace with a child's rapidly shifting interests. One week, a child might be fascinated by planets; the next, ants. Meanwhile, the school curriculum plods along at its own pace. This mismatch between a child's immediate enthusiasm and the school's timetable presents a valuable opportunity for parents to step in and nurture that curiosity. With a good pool of teaching materials at your fingertips, you can have a relevant, engaging activity ready just in time for when that moment of curiosity strikes.

Types of Resources

Printables and Beyond

The digital age offers a wide range of learning resources tailored to diverse ages and interests. These resources come in three main forms:

• Printables: Downloadable worksheets and activities offer a flexible, hands-on approach to learning.
• Audio-only: Podcasts, audiobooks, and songs can be difficult to find, especially if you're targeting a specific language or topic.
• Screen-based activities: Videos, games, guided study sessions, etc. While these can provide rich learning experiences, they come with their own set of risks. This is a topic for another blog post, but briefly, short videos can offer captivating windows into other cultures and environments, while streaming services often provide multilingual audio options. This allows children to engage with popular shows and build vocabulary in their home language while enjoying the same cultural references as their peers.

Comparison Table

Here is a comprehensive list of sites that offer various types of teaching resources. After exploring them all, I can sum it up like this:

1. Ease of Navigation: I found all of these sites (including the popular Twinkl) to be quite cluttered and difficult to navigate. That's why most of my time creating resources is spent searching. 😔

2. Language and Cultural Representation: Most resources are in English with Western cultural references. Twinkl stands out for its wider range of language and cultural materials compared to other sites, though it remains predominantly English. Many resources only require text translation to work in another language — for example, a butterfly life cycle or a simple car engine diagram — the images stay the same regardless of language or culture. However, others are trickier. A "spot the difference" activity is likely to depict North American references (think buildings, landmarks, attire, activities, etc.). While you can translate the text "Spot the difference," if you prefer a representation of a different part of the world, you'd need to regenerate the images. Some resources require a complete overhaul to be usable: an alphabet colouring book, for example, would be useless if you only translated the text — the pictures need changing too.

Special Mentions Canva and Adobe Express deserve special recognition. These are not places to find ready-made teaching materials. On Canva, the variety of teaching materials is extremely limited — Canva wasn't built for that. You will find some materials, but they are generally behind a paywall (either pay per item or with a subscription). On Adobe Express, there are no teaching materials. However, you have a plethora of tools to generate your own from scratch.

Here it is

Although still a work-in-progress, this draft is a solid overview of the options out there.