As teachers, we know how important it can be to keep your students motivated by providing engaging projects. With distance learning becoming more prevalent, online educational games and learning websites for kids can be a great way for your students to focus and some fun while still learning.
There are a vast number of online educational games out there. It can be a challenge to know where to start so we have rounded up some of the industry top picks.
Below you can find our absolute favorite online educational games for kids.
1. ABCmouse
ABCmouse is an excellent choice for children who are anywhere between the ages of two and eight. This online learning game offers more than 10,000 individual learning activities spread across over 850 lessons and ten levels.
This staggering amount of content covers a wide range of topics, including, but not limited to, math, reading, science and art. As students progress further into the game they are motivated to continue learning by a built-in reward system.
ABCmouse has received rave reviews from both parents and teachers and has won several awards including the Mom’s Choice GOLD Award, Teachers’ Choice Award and Parents’ Choice GOLD Award.
2. Adventure Academy
Adventure Academy is brought to you by the same creators of ABCmouse, but is geared towards kids who are ages nine to thirteen years old.
Adventure Academy takes inspiration from massive multiplayer online (MMO) video games but puts an educational spin on things.
For the uninitiated, MMOs are set inside giant, open, explorable worlds populated by a vast number of players who can all interact with each other or just choose to hangout by themselves and pursue their own personal goals.
Adventure Academy is heavily customizable and takes students on an epic educational journey that features hundreds of hours of learning experiences to help children develop skills in math, language arts, social studies and science.
It is available on multiple platforms, including tablets, smartphones and desktop computers.
3. Buzzmath
Buzzmath, as the name implies, is an educational website that features games and activities specifically focused on mathematics and arithmetic. You can customize the difficulty to target entire grade levels or a specific student’s individual skill level.
Buzzmath even features a unique storyline gameplay mode that is set in the futuristic land known as Buzzcity. In order to solve Buzzcity’s problems, students must use a time machine to travel back into the past and locate historic mathematicians from the last 2,000 years.
Featuring tons of fun and unique characters set across a variety of time periods, Buzzmath will keep your students engaged and entertained while testing their math stills at the same time.
Get started on Buzzmath by selecting your curriculum and grade level and try it for free to see if it is the right program for your students’ needs.
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4. Carmen Sandiego
Carmen Sandiego is unique when it comes to online games because it works hand in hand with Google Earth and Google Expeditions to take children on an interactive journey across the virtual globe.
Carmen Sandiego is a master thief, and students must track her down and prevent her heists by searching for clues and interviewing people from a wide variety of famous locations such as Tokyo, London, Moscow, among many others.
These missions test students’ deductive reasoning skills, as well as their knowledge of geography and cultural traditions. Plus, they get to feel like super spies while they’re at it!
This game is completely free and features several different scenarios that will teach kids lots of important and interesting information about many locations from around the world.
5. Gamestar Mechanic
Love them or hate them, there’s simply no denying that the video game industry is more popular than ever before with video games rising as one of the premiere entertainment mediums.
You’re probably tired of hearing your students talk about Fortnite in the middle of class, so why not give your video game-loving students a chance to express their creativity using Gamestar Mechanic?
Gamestar Mechanic is a video game that lets you design your own video games. Compared to the more robust game creation software that is available, Gamestar Mechanic keeps things relatively simple so that young kids don’t get too confused or burnt out.
Video game development is becoming an increasingly popular career path and your students will love to test their creations with their peers whenever they get some free time during the school day.
Plus, it will give them something to discuss besides Fortnite for a change!
6. Little Alchemy 2
Little Alchemy 2 is a fun and quirky little game that is completely free and can act as a fun time sink for your students to relax and recharge for a little bit. The game is incredibly simple.
Students start out with four or five basic objects like water, lava, wind and earth and they combine these objects to create more complex materials like volcanoes and sand. Eventually, by combining enough materials, students can create tools like plows and glasses.
There are over seven hundred combinations, so your kids can spend tons of time trying to find every last one. Try letting your students play the game, and then have them collaborate to see how many combinations they can discover.
7. Minecraft: Education Edition
You’ve probably heard about Minecraft from your students at least once or twice or a million times. There’s a reason for that. Minecraft is the best-selling video game in history, having sold over 200 million copies and featuring around 126 million active users every month.
It’s likely that at least some of your students have Minecraft-fever and the recently released Minecraft: Education Edition can help to satiate their craving for the ultra-popular game while they are in the classroom.
Minecraft has always had some educational applications. It encourages kids to let their creative powers take over and create intricate buildings and structures, while also teaching them how to be self-sustaining with the game’s incredibly deep survival mode.
Education Edition embraces this facet that has always been a part of the core experience and takes it to the next level. It offers students the ability to interact with each other and work together to solve problems in a virtual play space.
With hundreds of lessons available that teach a wide range of topics including computer basics, coding and both practical and problem-solving skills, Minecraft: Education Edition is an incredibly versatile learning tool that promotes creativity and collaboration.
Learn more about all of the different features that Minecraft: Education Edition has to offer with its STEM curriculum.
8. National Geographic Kids
The kids section of National Geographic’s website is filled with fun educational games and activities for students to sink their teeth into.
Nearly every single topic is covered here in one way or another. There are games about animals, recycling, Greek mythology, code-breaking, personalities, as well as several quizzes and mad-lib style activities.
Letting your students run wild on this website is a great way to spend recess if there is a thunderstorm or if your kids are rewarded with some personal quiet time.
9. Poptropica
Originally created by Jeff Kinney, the author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, back in 2007, Poptropica has come a long way in the last thirteen years.
While it is less focused on curriculum than some of the other online games that we have talked about, Poptropica is an excellent learning tool nonetheless.
It emphasizes critical thinking and problem solving skills by placing students in dozens of unique scenarios where they often have to solve a mystery and help non-player characters (NPCs) figure out their problems.
Students will have a ton of fun exploring the ins and outs of over thirty different islands while sailing on a pirate ship, saving the world as a secret agent, and putting a stop to an evil bunny rabbit who plans to steal all the world’s carrots and fly off into space.
The game offers players plenty of wacky scenarios and can even be pretty challenging at certain points, really testing kids’ deductive reasoning skills.
10. Prodigy
Prodigy is an online math game that places students in a magical fantasy setting that is heavily inspired by typical role-playing games (RPGs) but features a unique twist.
When battling monsters and other crazy creatures, in order to execute magical attacks, students must solve math and arithmetic problems. If they fail to answer correctly the attack fails and they are left open to a counter from the monster.
The game is simple enough so that any age level can dive right in and have a good time, but the difficulty can be customized so that the math problems become more difficult for higher grade levels.
Students get to create their own character and customize them in whatever way they want, both cosmetically and functionally. As students win battles, their character levels up and gains more skills and money to buy extra items and cosmetic enhancements.
This sense of growth that Prodigy provides really encourages students to press onwards in the story and enhance their math skills more and more.
There is a free version if you want your kids to dive in right away, or a membership that includes every bit of content that the game has to offer, including extra worlds and customization options.
11. Type to Learn
Trusted and utilized by thousands of schools across the United States, Type to Learn trains students in typing technique and accuracy. It has multiple versions and difficulty levels that target specific areas of the keyboard and are catered to specific age ranges. Offering lots of fun games that incorporate typing, students will love to use Type to Learn as a way of unwinding during the school day, while continuing to learn practical skills as well.
There you have it! Eleven of our favorite online educational games for kids. Not only will kids enjoy these games in the classroom, but they’ll probably want to continue the learning by playing at home, too.
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