My kiddos are similar to many kids in that they spend A LOT of time on YouTube. I try to monitor their content – and thankfully most of their content revolves around Fortnite and other games, and the current craze, Skibbidy Toilet.

Each week as I put together together Power Point slides to use in our History, Science and Geography lessons, I have been adding various video links on whatever topics we are covering, and my kids have really enjoyed the addition of video content to our lessons. And there is so much good content available!

I’ll be posting some topic specific video playlists we are using later, but today I wanted to share some general resources that we’ve been enjoying on YouTube. These are wonderful channels with hosts that are knowledgeable and engaging.

Crash Course – Crash Course Kids

These channels contains a wealth of videos on a variety of subjects. Crash Course covers a lot of subjects and are more suitable for late middle school high school and beyond, while Crash Course Kids covers elementary and early middle school topics. I think younger kids can certainly get a lot out of Crash Course content, however, even if some of the content goes over their heads.

Professor Dave Explains

Professor Dave Explains has large selection of playlists covering science, mathematics, social science topics. We’ve loved watching the Geology playlist as part of our Geography lessons.

Science Max

Science Max has fun (and funny!) skits to explain basic science concepts. My kids have had a lot of fun watching this channel.

SciShow Kids

SciShow Kids have fun interactive videos – including animation. I think these videos are great for elementary and middle grades.

Mark Rober at Crunch Labs

Mark Rober has a unique channel that kids will enjoy. Lots of science topics explained in an engaging way. My first experience with this channel was a video on making the world’s smallest NERF gun – which went way beyond what I had expected and was a real delight. My kids were captivated! This YouTuber is also known for making glitter bombs for stopping mailbox thieves and designing backyard mazes for his resident squirrels – so the channel content is diverse and entertaining.

Bill Nye the Science Guy

Bill Nye is a classic that the kids love to watch. This channel has short topic-specific clips from his science shows Bill Nye the Science Guy, Bill Nye Saves the World, and The End is Nye.

TedEd

TED-Ed is a TED Talk channel for educators and lesson building. Animated and diverse in content, this channel is a wonderful resource for including in lessons.

National Geographic

National Geographic has a YouTube channel filled with wonderful and engaging content, as you would expect if you are familiar with NatGeoKids or even their magazine content. If you have a Disney+ subscription you may recognize some of the content available on their YouTube channel.

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How to Get the Most Out of YouTube

A lot of these channels have a lot of content available and it can sometimes be overwhelming, so one suggestion I would make if you are exploring YouTube content to include in your curriculum planning is to make good use of the PLAYLISTS. A good channel will organize their content into playlists – some are also set up as episodes in a series of video for a single topic.

If you find a video or channel you like – SUBSCRIBE. It helps the content creators know that what they are doing is appreciated and it also helps you find their content in the future. The channels you are subscribed to are listed to the left of your screen and it’s easy to scroll through and explore the channels you are following for new content. Subscribers also usually get notifications if new content is released.

One very cool feature that is available is SAVE. If you are watching a video, you can save it to your own playlist. There is a default playlist called Watch Later, but you can actually set up multiple playlists of your own. You can set up an unlimited number of playlists – with each playlist having a max of 5000 videos allowed – so this allows for a lot of organizing of the videos you want to watch.