Homeschooling Resources – Science

AI-Enhanced Resources (AER)

SciSummary: Paste scientific abstracts and get simplified AI summaries.

Explainpaper: Upload PDFs and click on difficult sections for plain-English AI explanations.

Consensus: AI search engine that gives evidence-based answers from real science papers.

Perplexity AI: Ask science questions and receive cited, conversational answers.

ChatGPT: Ask complex science concepts and get grade-level appropriate answers (GPT-3.5 is free).

Elicit: AI assistant for literature reviews—find and analyze academic sources by topic.

Scite: Tracks how academic papers are cited—supporting or contrasting—great for evaluating evidence.

Open Educational Resources (OER)

SciGen from Serpmedia.org: 24 free science curriculum units, each featuring from 13-41 activities.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA): NASA offers a wide array of unique experiences for educators and students designed to engage K-12th graders. Here is NASA’s STEM Resources search page, their Space to Learn page, and STEM Activities from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab. They also offer NASA Kids’ Club for kids interested in science and space exploration.

Complete Science Curriculum from HandsomeScienceTeacher: Complete science lesson modules for grades 4-8 from a former teacher of the year.

Smithsonian Fun Stuff for Kids and Teens: Entertaining activities, games, and fun stuff to do online from the Smithsonian’s museums, research centers, and zoo. Also, here is the Smithsonian Learning Lab with their newest teaching collections for all subjects and their Science Lessons for Grades K–5.

K12 Science: This is a collection of science lessons and activities through SERC websites aimed at the K-12 teacher community. Here is their high school earth science course.

Science Bob: This website is full of science experiments and activities that kids can do at home.

STEM K-12 Curriculum: K-12 curricula for educators and content for students, developed by Stanford researchers.

STEM Lesson Plans for K-12: Oak Ridge Institute provides a wealth of STEM curricula and classroom resources to assist in developing in students thinking, reasoning, teamwork, investigative and creative skills.

STEM Teaching Resources: The National Institutes of Health (NIH) institutes and centers offer these free K-12 STEM teaching and learning materials.

OpenSciEd: Elementary through high school science curriculum that fosters engaged science learning it’s freely available to anyone.

Free K-12 Course Materials from NJCTL: Many courses, lessons, assignments and assessments for many areas science and math. For use by teachers and students, comprehensive and aligned to National Standards. You can register as a home school teacher to download the assessments.

Ecosystem for Kids: Free, interactive science games, worksheets and multiple choice questions for grades 1-5, aligned with curriculum & science topics.

Science Worksheets: Science worksheets for grades 1-7 covering topics such as living and non-living things, five senses, states of matter, parts of a plant and many more.

ScratchJr: Introduces young children (ages 5-7) to programming and coding through interactive stories and games.

Google CS First: A computer science curriculum for middle and high school that makes coding easy to teach and fun to learn.

Code.org: Provides learning resources for computer science and programming, including Computer Science (CS) Fundamentals for K-5 and online courses and labs for middle and high school.

ACS (Chemistry): Free elementary and middle school chemistry lessons and resources.

Open Physics: The OpenPhys project contains mobile web pages with physics lessons.

The Concord Consortium: Free and interactive STEM learning activities (Science, Technologym Engineering and Math).

Open Textbooks from Siyavula: Free math and science textbooks for middle and high school students.

National Geographic: You can search National Geographic’s educational resources to engage with live events, free maps, videos, interactives, and other resources. Here is their Kids page.

National Park Service: Offers free educational materials online and in print. Here is their Learn and Explore page.

EPA Educator Resources: The EPA, other federal agencies, and outside organizations have provided a variety of science and environmental lesson plans, activities, and ideas that you can find below.

Center For Science Education: Curriculum units, activities, and lessons on weather and Earth system science.

Ology: The science website for kids from the American Museum of Natural History. Also see their curriculum units, lessons, videos and games and interactives.

PhET Online Simulations: A library of online simulations by grade level that students can play with and explore to investigate scientific and mathematical models.