Mom Types - Homeschool Moms

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Educational videos are great to keep on hand when the phone rings, the repairman comes early, or simply to enhance the curriculum.  Kids love videos and tend to find it easy to memorize material presented in good videos.  Watching videos with your child can be a great way to introduce material, or present new information.  Sharing videos with your child doesn't have to be a deer-in-the-headlights  experience, grab some popcorn and your laptop, and check out one of several sites offering free full length movies and videos to watch online.

Educational Videos Online

There are several websites that offer free  movies and children's shows.  If you're using one of the many

programs that stress the use of classical children's literature, then you might want to find Hulu (there's probably an ad on this page somewhere) because they have Shelly Duvall's episodes of Mrs Piggle Wiggle, which are all part of the Sonlight Curriculum, and also mentioned in the Ambleside online free internet-based curriculum.

Watching educational videos should never replace reading the books, but seeing a visual interpretation of a familiar story opens up great discussions.   How many times have you read a book, then seen the movie and ended up disappointed?  A lot of story elements that were important in the book end up completely ignored in the movie.  On the other hand, seeing something on the screen can be a powerful experience, and each media deserves to be appreciated for what it offers.  TV and videos aren't bad.

Free Educational Videos

The Discovery Channel offers some free videos on their site, you can often watch one episode of many of their shows.  For a fee, they also offer streaming educational videos in several topic areas with downloadable teachers guides, related website activities and study guides.  Some kids learn and remember things better when they see them, in full moving color, rather than reading them or being read to.  

Fancast (again, there may be a link on this page) offers a few documentaries, suitable for high school level and older.  Many of these are from the Biography Channel and National Geographic.  There are a few racy titles, so use discretions and explore the site before deciding how you will use them with your children.

Free Videos Online

Another fun thing about watching videos online for free is sharing your favorite childhood shows with your children.  You can watch the Jetsons, WKRP in Cincinatti, Fat Albert, Flipper, Growing Pains,Gilligan's Island and several more vintage viewing favorites. 

While these shows certainly weren't intended to be educational, watching them with your children can surely open your eyes to how much the world has changed.  You might end up feeling old afterward!  The misconceptions that the collective culture had about the future, and the ideas people had about technology are comical now.  For example, in the jetsons, they scooted around on hovercrafts, but Elroy's report card was delivered via a "futuristic" giant casette tape, they hadn't even thought about email.  

Watching educational videos online is a great way to enhance your child's education, whether it's the subject of pop culture, history or math.  Explore the sites that offer free videos and free movies online.  Try sharing some of your childhood favorites with your children.  Sure, they might make fun of you for it later.  but they'll do that anyway.  Have fun.

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