STEM at home
Numberblocks
Ages: 3-6 years
It is a story of friends who can always count on each other, and also a sequenced math curriculum. Numberblocks is an animated series where stacked-block characters join, split, and rearrange to show how numbers work, covering number recognition, counting, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division across 90 episodes in five levels. Developed with the UK National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics, the progression is real. The companion website organizes episodes by level and adds printable activities. US families can watch on YouTube or Netflix. A paid app adds offline access and quizzes.
Awards: BAFTA, Children's Preschool Animation (2019); DfE recommended for home learning.
Why we like it: Most early math content teaches children to count. This one teaches them to see how numbers are built. A parent in the room asking questions is the difference between a good show and a real math lesson.
OLogy
by American Museum of Natural History
Ages: 8+ years
OLogy is a free science site built by the American Museum of Natural History, covering 14 disciplines including paleontology, genetics, marine biology, astronomy, and climate change. Content is organized by topic and activity type, spanning reading, games, hands-on offline projects, and short videos. A companion iPad app offers a curated selection of the same activities offline, with no ads. The website has been a classroom and home resource for over two decades, developed alongside working scientists. New material is added infrequently, but the existing library is deep enough that most curious kids won't exhaust it quickly.
Why we like it: OLogy works well as a follow-up to something your child already encountered, a dinosaur exhibit, a nature documentary, a question that came up at dinner. It builds the habit of going deeper: reading past the headline, meeting the scientists behind the work, and connecting a topic like genetics or archaeology to the real researchers who study it.
PhET Interactive Simulations
by University of Colorado Boulder
Ages: 6+years
The Physics Education Technology Project (PhET) is a free library of more than 150 research-based simulations covering physics, chemistry, biology, earth science, and mathematics, built by University of Colorado scientists and available on any browser or as a low-cost app. Each simulation puts your child in control of something normally invisible: molecular motion, electrical circuits, wave behavior, probability. Change a variable and watch the system respond, instantly.
Awards: WISE Award, World Innovation Summit for Education; APS Excellence in Physics Education Award; NSF & Science Magazine Visual Challenge in Science & Engineering
Why we like it: Every sim is built around cause-and-effect reasoning: predict, adjust, observe. That is how scientific thinking develops. These sims reward a parent who asks what happens if we change this and stays for 20 minutes. Left to click alone, kids drift. Co-explore and something genuinely interesting happens.
Ask a Scientist: Superhuman Science Series
Ages: 10+ years
Short videos featuring named working scientists, including bioengineers, oncologists, and computational researchers, explaining their actual work in plain language. Topics span mRNA vaccine technology, gene therapy, bionic limbs, precision medicine, synthetic biology, and AI-assisted disease diagnosis. Each clip centers on a credentialed researcher, making the science feel like something real people pursue rather than a subject kids study in school. The companion educator guide on the same site is NGSS-aligned and includes hands-on family activities worth downloading alongside these videos.
Why we like it: These videos do something specific: they put a face and a research story on fields kids often encounter only as vocabulary words. Watching a biomedical engineer explain how a prosthetic limb restores sensation builds science identity in a way no worksheet can. A strong fit for curious older kids starting to ask who does this work and why.
3M Young Scientist Lab: Science at Home
Ages: 8-14 years
Science at Home is a free video series produced by 3M scientists and special guests, built around a straightforward premise: real science happens with whatever is in front of you. Each short experiment uses common household materials, from spaghetti and marshmallows, milk and dish soap, baking soda and vinegar, to explore concepts like structural engineering, chemical reactions, surface tension, the Bernoulli principle, and kinetic energy. The experiments are taught on camera by working scientists, which means kids aren't just watching a trick. They're watching someone who actually does this work explain why it happens.
Why we like it: Each experiment is anchored to a specific scientific concept, and the scientists explain the underlying reasoning, not just the steps. That's the difference between a demo and a learning moment. Kids build real scientific vocabulary while testing cause and effect with materials already in your kitchen.
Mathblog.com
Ages: 13+ years
MathBlog.com is a long-running site dedicated to the idea that math is genuinely worth being interested in — not a hurdle to clear, but a body of thinking with its own beauty. Started in 2007 by software developer Antonio Cangiano and now run with contributions from a range of educators and writers, it pairs in-depth book reviews (think A Mind for Numbers, The Princeton Companion to Mathematics) with a deep reference library covering arithmetic, geometry, algebra, trigonometry, calculus, statistics, and the theorems that hold it all together. For parents trying to help with elementary math vocabulary, brush up on order of operations before homework hour, or find a book that turns math from a chore into a curiosity, it's a quiet, no-frills resource that respects the reader's intelligence.
Why we like it: It treats math as something to fall in love with, not survive. The reference pages are clear enough to help in the moment, and the book reviews point families toward titles that build real understanding — the slow, sturdy kind that lasts.
Little Bins for Little Hands
Ages: 5-10 years
Little Bins for Little Hands is one of the most useful hands-on STEM libraries on the internet, a deep collection of low-prep science, engineering, and art activities organized by season, holiday, theme, and concept. Slime chemistry, simple machines, density experiments, magnetic builds, weather projects, the kind of activities that turn a rainy Saturday into something better than another screen. Most use materials already in the kitchen or junk drawer, and each activity walks parents through the why behind the what. The free site is the entry point. From there, a Library Club and a Little Bins Club add deeper access with fresh monthly content, printable activity packs, themed bundles, and member-only resources for families who want the planning already done. A separate shop offers stand-alone printable packs and unit plans for one-time purchase.
Why we like it: It hands kids a question, not a recipe. Predict, try, watch what happens, try it again. That's the loop every strong STEM foundation is built on.
Maths and Sports
by University of Cambridge Millenium Math Project
Ages: 5+ years
Maths and Sport is a free collection of activities and articles from the University of Cambridge's Millennium Mathematics Project, built to explore real maths through real sport. Should the staggered start lines on a 400m track be where they are? Which country actually had the most athletic population at the 2012 Olympics? The activities span more than twenty Olympic and Paralympic sports and open the door to real problem-solving: data analysis, proportional reasoning, statistics, geometry, and logic. Older kids can dig in on their own; with younger ones, walk through a scenario together on the way to practice or at the dinner table.
Awards: London 2012 Inspire Mark · Part of the award-winning Millennium Mathematics Project, University of Cambridge
Why we like it: It shows kids that math isn't just something that lives in a workbook — it's how athletes train, how races are designed, and how performance gets measured. For a child who loves sport, that's the moment math starts to click.
Exploratorium Science Snacks
Ages: 8+ years
Some of the best science moments happen in ten minutes with stuff you already own.
Science Snacks is a free resource from San Francisco's Exploratorium — over 150 short, hands-on experiments designed to explore real scientific phenomena using common household materials. Each "snack" comes with illustrated instructions, a video, and a clear explanation of the science behind what just happened. No kits, no prep lists, no special equipment.
Why we like it: It removes every excuse to not just try something. Low barrier, high payoff — exactly what a weekend afternoon needs.
NASA Science Space Place
Ages: 8-12 years
When your child asks a question you can't answer — this is a good place to send them.
NASA Space Place is a free, bilingual (English and Spanish) website from NASA designed for upper-elementary kids, packed with games, hands-on activities, short videos, and articles covering Earth science, space, and everything in between. It's been around since 1998, which in internet years makes it practically ancient — and the fact that it's still standing says something about how well it's built.
Why we like it: It's NASA. The credibility is built in — and the content is genuinely engaging, not just accurate.