We don’t have cable and haven’t found it necessary to our home schooling.  However, we do have a Wii with wireless internet, meaning we get and can watch Youtube on our tv.  (We also get Netflix–we find that to be an excellent educational investment but that is another whole post.)

As willing as my children are to sit and watch cats do all sorts of crazy back flips and flush the toilet, Youtube is full of interesting educational resources if you know where to look.  For instance my son adores marbles.  Really.  He has a huge collection that is constantly under foot, in corners, in my vases, cupboards, every conceivable spot has at least one marble if you look hard enough.  One day he asked me how they made them, which led to several hours browsing Youtube watching videos about marble making, glass making, leading to how they make everything under the sun. If you remember the old Mr. Rogers/Mr. McFeely how they make that videos you know what I mean.

The problem with that is that you have to be careful–not every one of those how they make it movies on Youtube is child friendly–in fact, many have language I prefer not to share with my children.  We usually preview them on my computer where I make a queue of suitable movies for the kids to watch on the Wii.  The other trick we have found is to go to this site. The Erskines have done a wonderful job putting together a slew of educational Youtube videos.  My kids will sit and watch videos on their site for hours, learning all sorts of interesting thigns–and then, usually, they go out and try the experiments themselves and elaborate on them (like they did with Eepy Bird’s Mentos and coke experiments.)

*The Erskines also run Home School Radio Shows which has free downloadable mp3′s of old radio shows each week, plus lots of little interesting tidbits to go with it.  My oldest adores old radio shows and loves getting the latest from this site.

Former teacher turned Christian unschooling mom, artist, geek wife of a work -at-home geek with 3 geeklings. Our lives are full of gaming, reading, writing, baking, and making lots of messes. I blog about our daily life at An Untraditional Home and share my creative endeavors at Elasah.com.