News & Notes – Coronavirus Closures Edition (3/14/2020)

March 14, 2020 News & Notes 7


News & Notes is a weekly Saturday post featuring book- and publishing-related news, links to interesting articles and opinion pieces, and other cool stuff

Bookish News

Worth Reading/Viewing

Free Resources for Families

As school closures escalate due to coronavirus concerns, many parents are wondering how to keep their kids learning and constructively entertained during the hiatus. While some schools are providing online resources or packets of work, it may not be enough to keep students occupied and engaged. Of course, it’s a great time to encourage your kids to read, and an opportunity for a family read-aloud book (or several.) But here are some sites where you can find free online resources:

  • Amazing Educational Resources has a spreadsheet with a huge number of links to free educational sites. It’s arranged alphabetically by site, so be prepared to read through a lot of site descriptions to find what you want or need.
  • Khan Academy offers free lessons and courses in math, science, computing, history, and economics, many at the high school and AP level. Their math curriculum runs from K-12 and higher math.
  • Ever Clever Mom has a “COVID-19 Camp” post that lists some online resources
  • Manybooks.net and Project Gutenberg offer free public-domain ebooks you can download and read on a variety of devices and apps. The transcriptions aren’t always perfect (many were scanned and OCR’ed) but you can find classics like The Secret Garden, Anne of Green Gables, Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz, Tom Sawyer, Black Beauty, Five Children and It, and many others. I find ManyBooks more user-friendly than Project Gutenberg.
  • The Metropolitan Opera will be streaming one opera per day, beginning on Monday, March 16. (source: Broadway World)
  • YouTube has craft tutorials, cooking videos, science videos, and more (parental supervision strongly encouraged). If you need supplies or tools, you may be able to order them online.

Lists

7 Responses to “News & Notes – Coronavirus Closures Edition (3/14/2020)”

  1. Anne - Books of My Heart

    You always do such a great job of listing interesting things happening. Staying home is a joy to me if I wasn’t worried about others getting ill. I can just read, or do craft projects, or yard projects. I couldn’t possibly get bored. My mind is going all the time with things I want to do.
    Anne – Books of My Heart recently posted…Smoke Bitten by Patricia BriggsMy Profile

  2. Nicole @ BookWyrmKnits

    Great list of links! And I’m glad it’s not just me who noticed the Goodreads librarian’s deletion of Audible Originals. (I’m also glad that the book I noticed has been re-added.) I figured that there was a reason, but it wasn’t a a good time for me to research why, and I’d forgotten to go back and look into it.

    Here’s hoping we can all stay home and safe and get lots of reading done. 😉
    Nicole @ BookWyrmKnits recently posted…Meatless Meals — Vegan CurryMy Profile

    • Lark_Bookwyrm

      I’m guessing that the librarian in question either misunderstood the rules or never read them. Or has a bee in their bonnet. I’m glad it seems to be getting sorted out.