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.
Prodigy Math
by Prodigy Education
Ages: 6-14 years
Prodigy turns math practice into a full-on adventure game — the kind your child actually asks to play. Students build and battle their way through a fantasy world where every move requires answering a math question. More than 50 million kids worldwide use it, and over a million teachers have brought it into their classrooms. The math adapts as your child progresses, so it's always working at the right level.
Awards: Gold Medal — Howtolearn.com Parent and Teacher Choice Awards | Winner — National Parenting Product Awards (NAPPA)
Why we like it: It meets kids where resistance to math usually lives — in boredom — and replaces it with genuine motivation. When your child is asking to do math, that's the whole ballgame.