We have an exciting new update to share with you all. We recently launched our new parent app! Parents can now track their child’s progress from a dashboard.

Parent Accounts

Connect your account to your child’s. Students who create their accounts at school or at home can now be connected to a parent account. You can view your child’s entire progress through their Awakening game play.

You will need to know your child’s username and password or they can sign in using their google accounts. If you or your child doesn’t remember their username and password, please ask your child’s teacher! We can also assist you at support@legendsoflearning.com.

Track your child’s progress. Parents can view their child’s topic mastery by unit. You can view how they’ve performed at the unit level and dive deeper into each unit to view each topic.

This tracks your child’s progress through Awakening gameplay. Legends of Learning Awakening is an at-home educational experience and you can find out more here.

Small Updates

You may have noticed, but we’ve updated our sign-up and log-in pages! We hope that this new look provides a simpler log-in or sign-up experience.

And as always, this update includes other small bug fixes and improvements.

And we have more coming soon! Let us know if you have any questions or feedback at support@legendsoflearning.com.

It’s been a busy month at Legends of Learning and we have new features to share with you all!

Multi-Standard Assignments

Premium users can now combine multiple standards in an assignment. This feature is perfect for end of year tests or beginning of the school year review sessions. Switch between Math/Science and Elementary/Middle School content from directly within the playlist builder.

If you have a free account and would like to have access to this feature, please email us at heroes@legendsoflearning.com and we can provide more information on our licenses.

New Assignment Live View

We redesigned our live view. Teachers can now easily track student progress, edit the assignment information, view data, and share to Google Classroom all from one place!

Report Questions

Students can now report wrong questions. Our questions are written and verified by teachers across the country. But sometimes an incorrect question or wrong image slips through and we’d like your help in finding them! Students can click the icon in the top right corner and the question will be reported and fixed immediately by our content team.

Small Updates

As always, this update includes other small bug fixes and improvements.

And we have more coming soon! Let us know if you have any questions or feedback at support@legendsoflearning.com.

We’re always working to improve your Legends of Learning experience. Here’s a summary of recent updates!

Student Passwords

You can now set your students’ passwords. If your students are having trouble logging in, you can reset their password or set the password to something you’ll remember!

Student Log In

We updated our student log in to show off some of our favorite avatars!  Students can create and customize their avatars through our new game, Awakening. You can launch Awakening for the classroom from your dashboard!

Timezone Setting

You can now change your timezone from account settings. We know during this time many of you are working from locations across the country, near or far from your students. To make things easier, update your timezone to fit your location!

Game Reviews

We improved our game review feature to make it easier for game developers to receive your feedback. Game developers directly address your feedback to continuously improve our games. We appreciate any chance to improve our educational capabilities, so please review games as often as you can! 

To learn more about our review process, click here.

National Geographic Games

Did you know we partner with educational organizations such as National Geographic? National Geographic uses our games throughout its site. We improved our player experience to fit the range of devices and screens that students are using! Check out a game here.

Small Updates

As always, this update includes other small bug fixes and improvements.

And we have more coming soon! Let us know if you have any questions or feedback at support@legendsoflearning.com.

You may have gotten the news this week that summer camp is canceled for your kids. Before you freak out about having your kids home for the ENTIRE summer (or maybe after you let yourself freak out for a minute), we’ve got some ideas to help you survive the next few months! 

All hope is not lost! 

Some organizations, like the Girl Scouts of America, are moving quickly to bring virtual summer camp to millions of kids across America. Check to see if your summer camp is offering something similar!  

Host your own science or space camp for your kids

It might sound like a lot of work, but you can challenge your kids to set their own schedule. Give them a long list of activities to choose them and ask them to design the schedule for the week. Activities can range from online games to watching documentaries. Some suggestions of things to include are: 

• Legends of Learning online science games
• Science experiments your kids can do with common kitchen ingredients
• Virtual visits to the U.S. National Parks

Go camping in your backyard! 

We’ve suggested this before, but it’s always a hit! Set up a campsite in your backyard or your living room. Feed your kids hot dogs and s’mores. Have them compete to write the best ghost story. 

Watch the best camp-themed movies

Pick a night each week for a family movie night and work your way down a list of the best camp-themed movies ever made. A few of our favorites: Heavyweights, The Parent Trap, Moonrise Kingdom, and It Takes Two!

Let your kids design their own video game! Legends of Learning is currently running a competition that asks K-12 students to design their own video games. No technology is required, making this an amazing at-home project for all students while schools and summer camps are closed. The winning teams will each win a $500 Amazon gift card! Learn more here.

Join us to celebrate Earth Day at home! Despite the stress, uncertainty, and inconvenience of COVID-19 quarantine measures, an undeniable benefit has been the impact on planet Earth. All over the world, people are reporting clearer skies and cleaner water due to global lockdowns. This drastic shift is sparking a larger conversation around how to handle pollution and climate change in the future,  and what better time to start talking to your kids about it than Earth Day?

Here are 5 ways you can get your kids excited about Earth Day (which is this Wednesday, April 22, 2020):

1) Play educational Earth Day games online

Legends of Learning has six free online Earth Day games to help you educate your children about the environment on Earth Day. These six games are part of our larger library of over one hundred Earth and Space, Life, and Physical science games for elementary and middle school grades 3-8. They’ll keep your kids engaged for hours and they’re completely free!

2) Plant a garden

What better way to get your kids excited about saving the planet than having them grow their own garden? Many studies have said gardening is a great way to alleviate the anxiety that’s building up from being quarantined at home. It’s also a great way to get your family outdoors for a few hours. Give your kids a dedicated area to plant their seeds, and assign them watering and weeding duty over the coming weeks. 

3) Watch Planet Earth

We could watch this series a hundred times over, and it’s sure to entertain the entire family, regardless of age. Planet Earth is a great way to expose your kids to the different ecosystems and animals impacted by climate change around the world. It’s no longer on Netflix, but you can find the series on Discovery Channel’s streaming service.  

4) Virtually visit Yosemite National Park

Google Earth launched virtual tours of 31 of the world’s most incredible national parks. From Yosemite to Yellowstone, you and your kids can take a much-needed escape from the comfort of your home. The tours even include can’t-miss sights, like the famous erupting Old Faithful geysers.

5) Teach them how to recycle 

What better time to teach your kids about recycling? Set up a recycling system within your home and label each bin with the items that go in it. Challenge your kids to be mindful about recycling throughout the week. You can even challenge your kids to pick up litter (with gloves, of course!) in your neighborhood or parks as you go for your daily family walks.

Like every other parent we know, we’re sure you’ve spent the past month adjusting to the reality of working, living, and caring for kids all under one roof. 

If you’ve got curious kids on your hands, you’ve probably been getting loads of questions like “what is coronavirus?” and “how does it spread?”. Like all of us, you look to Google for answers to those questions, as we learn more about this new virus each day. 

But, what do you say when your kids ask “mom, how can I help?” or “dad, how can I make things better?” We think one of the most important things you can do right now is to raise awareness with your kids about the doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers fighting on the frontlines everyday to keep us safe. 

Here are some ways you can talk to your kids about this:

Make DIY face masks for the entire family

Getting your kids excited about designing their own face masks is a great way to ensure they wear one whenever they go outside, and a great time to remind them why we are staying home and healthcare workers are not. It’s also a fun project that allows them to show their personality and keeps them occupied for hours (a win-win if you ask us!). 

Teach your kids about the human body

It’s never been a better time to get your kids interested in science. Legends of Learning has an entire curriculum about the human body, including how viruses work. Let your kids work through that curriculum as they play Awakening, and that might help you get some of their tougher science questions answered. We’ve even updated Awakening so that your kids can dress up their avatar as a first responder Healthcare Hero – complete with a bad, at-home haircut from mom!

Write letters to healthcare workers 

Are there any healthcare workers in your family or circle of friends? Now would be a great time to ask your kids to write an uplifting letter to that person. It may seem like a small gesture, but our healthcare workers need all the bright spots they can find!

Take part in the 7pm collective cheer

It’s become a tradition in cities like New York for everyone to stop what they’re doing at 7pm each night and participate in a collective cheer for our healthcare workers. For a couple of minutes each night, people come outside on their porches or balconies and make noise to celebrate all the first responders out there. Many doctors and nurses have claimed this has helped them stay positive and keep going. Even if you’re quarantined in your home, this is a great way to keep your kids engaged and thinking about our first responders. Each night at 7pm, encourage your entire family to stop and cheer or dance for a minute. 

Looking for more ways to keep your kids occupied while your entire family is learning and working from home? We’ve pulled together our 5 favorite science activities with kitchen ingredients and we’ve mapped each one to a science subject matter that’s covered in Legends of Learning.

5 Science Activities With Kitchen Ingredients

These activities will keep your kids busy for hours, and most of the materials are already in your kitchen pantry. 

1 – Make a Potato Powered Light Bulb

Legends of Learning subject: Electricity

All you’ll need for this experiment is a potato, a small light bulb, a few copper pennies, some copper wire, and a couple of zinc-plated nails. What will it teach your kids? How chemical reactions take place between two dissimilar metals and how to create electricity. Learn more here. 

2 – Make Your Own Ocean Zones In a Jar

Legends of Learning subject: Density of Liquid, Ocean Zones

This activity teaches your kids not one, but two science lessons: liquid density and the ocean zones. Here’s what you’ll need: a clear jar, food coloring, corn syrup, oil, dish soap, water, rubbing alcohol and funnels. Following these instructions, you’ll create the five ocean zones (sunlight, twilight, midnight, abyss, trench) and add them to the jar. Then, talk to your kids about why they think the liquids separated and why certain ones rose to the top. 

3 – Make Your Own Invisible Ink

Legends of Learning subject: Chemical Reactions

Can you think of anything more fun than creating your own invisible ink to write and reveal secret messages? Even adults love this activity! All you need is a well-thought chemical combination. You can select yours here. 

4 – Growing Crystals

Legends of Learning subject: The Scientific Method

Did you know you can actually grow your own crystals with simple kitchen ingredients like salt and sugar? This super fun experiment not only teaches your kids how crystals form, but is also a great way to introduce your kids to the scientific method. Together you can make a hypothesis, set up your experiment, test, and observe.

5 – Edible Marshmallow Play Dough

Legends of Learning subject: Solids

Less a science experiment, more just a fun activity. Make edible marshmallow play dough with your kids. All you’ll need is large marshmallows, corn starch, coconut oil, and neon food coloring. 

With schools closed and vacations postponed because of COVID-19, you may be wondering what the heck you’re going to do with your kids during their spring break. We’ve pulled together some family-friendly suggestions to keep your kids busy during spring break, so you’ll have some spare time to get your own work done. 

1) Go camping in your backyard

Depending on the weather, set up a campsite in your backyard or your living room. Feed your kids hot dogs and s’mores. Have them compete to write the best ghost story. If you’re outdoors, search for stars or constellations in the sky. 

2) Plan a cultural theme night

Are your kids interested in learning about other cultures? Bring a new culture to them in the form of a theme night! Pick a far off place in the world that you’ve always wanted to visit (like the Philippines or South Africa) and challenge your kids to plan out a themed night celebrating that country’s culture. Their theme night could include finding and preparing recipes from that culture, creating a playlist of local music, queuing up a documentary on Netflix that features that country, or taking a beginner’s language lesson. 

3) Remote space camp

Is there anything more exciting than space camp? We think not! Let your kids plan out their own schedule for a week of space camp at home! Activities could include a virtual visit to NASA’s International Space Station, playing space science games on Legends of Learning, building your own rocket ship, or making an astronaut costume. 

4) Take your kids on a grand tour of New York City

With much of New York City shut down, almost everything has gone virtual. You can take your kids on a grand tour of New York City without having to leave your couch. Get front row seats at a Broadway show, check in on the animals at the Bronx Zoo, climb to the top of the Empire State Building, explore the Natural History Museum, and take a virtual pizza making class.

5) Organize a board game competition

Are your kids missing their friends? Plan a spring break activity that allows them to socialize with their friends from a distance. Organize a board game competition where all the kids join virtually. Online game sites like Pogo allow your kids to play some of their favorite board games, like Monopoly and Yahtzee, remotely with friends. 

6) Plant a garden

You might not be able to go on a hike through a national park right now, but you can get your kids outside for the day. Have them work together to plant a vegetable or an herb garden in your backyard. Task them with watering, weeding, and checking for sproutlings in the weeks to come!

With schools closed for an extended period of time, parents need resources to keep their kids learning from home. It can be stressful for parents to be in charge of their kids’ curriculum on top of balancing their family’s health and their own workloads. 

To help parents like you, we’ve pulled together some of our favorite ways to keep your kids engaged and learning at home. We recommend incorporating each of these activities into your child’s daily schedule while they’re home school. 

Good, old fashioned reading time

Ask your kids to make a list of 5-10 books they’d like to read over the next couple of months. Set aside dedicated reading time each day in your family’s schedule, so that your kids can start to check those books off their reading list.  

Online educational games

Did you know? Studies have proven that kids stay engaged and retain information longer when they play online educational games. Platforms like Legends of Learning keep your kids engaged by offering thousands of curriculum-aligned math and science games for elementary and middle school students. Online educational games also allow you as a parent to step away from having to play the role of your child’s substitute teacher – a win-win for everyone.

Get creative 

While your kids are cooped up at home, it’s important that you give them an outlet to release some of their creative energy. Give your kids dedicated time to create things, but let them decide what they want to create. They can spend this time practicing artistic skills like drawing, writing, and painting, or learn a new skill like cooking or baking. 

It’s okay to Netflix and chill 

Allow your kids to spend some time watching things like Netflix, as long as they’re watching educational content or documentaries. Scientific shows like Planet Earth can keep them engaged for hours at a time. This also gives the entire family something to discuss at the dinner table each night. 

Learn a new language

Has your kid shown an interest in learning other languages? Now may be the perfect time to get them started learning a new one, like Spanish, French or Mandarin. Try apps like Duolingo allow your kids to learn and progress on their own as they master language skills related to vocabulary, grammar and more. 

With many families quarantined at home because of the global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, parents are now struggling with the daunting task of juggling full-time jobs and full-time parenting – quite literally – all under one roof.  

One of the most proactive things you can do for your family right now is to create a routine that everyone in your household can follow. 

In general, routines help people maintain a sense of calm and order. Under these extremely stressful circumstances, they also help provide a sense of normalcy in the face of so much uncertainty. Your children are used to a having a predictable schedule set for them in school, and they will likely adapt to an at-home schedule easier than you might think. 

You can work together with your children to create a daily routine for your family. Once agreed upon, it’s important that this schedule be visible to everyone in your family. Write it down on paper and pin it to the fridge, or on a chalk board in your house where everyone can see it.

Your family’s schedule might look something like this:

8:30am – Start

Wake up. Eat breakfast together as a family. Shower and get dressed in normal clothes (it’s important for everyone to not stay in pajamas all day). 

9:15am – Exercise

Encourage some exercise in the morning. If you can, go outside for a walk, play a sport, or ride a bike. If it’s raining, do yoga in the living room.

10:00am – Chores

Ask everyone to help with chores around the house. Having a clean house will make everyone more productive throughout the day, and it’s an opportunity to teach your kids some “adult skills” like making a grocery list or folding the laundry. 

10:30am – Learning/Working Block

Your first of three 2-hour learning/working blocks. Your kids can use this time to work on assigned school assignments or homework. You can use this as a concentrated work block to start your workday. 

12:30pm – Lunch

Break for a 30 minute lunch as a family. 

1pm – Learning/Working Block

Your second 2-hour work block of the day. Encourage your kids to play online educational games (like Legends of Learning) that are already teacher approved and curriculum aligned. 

3pm – Exercise

If you can, go for another walk outside. If you’re stuck indoors, try yoga, dance parties, or indoor challenges like how many times everyone and climb up and down the stairs. 

4pm – Learning/Working Block

Your last 2-hour work block of the day. Make this one “quiet time” for your kids. They can use the time to read, make art, or take photos. As a parent, use this quiet time to wrap up your workday and plan out your to do list for tomorrow. 

6pm – Dinner

Have dinner together as a family.

7pm – Free Time

Save 2 hours after dinner for “free time”. You can watch a movie as a family, FaceTime with family or friends, or play a board game. 

9pm – Bedtime

Encourage your children to try journaling or meditating as a way to relieve some of the anxiety they may be feeling due to so much uncertainty.

The best way to keep your kids on track? Develop a rewards system that celebrates your kids when they stick to the above schedule. An example: perhaps they earn 5 minutes of screen-time for each learning block they complete without interrupting your work schedule.