What Educational YouTube Channels Are Actually Good for Kids? A Teacher Parent’s Tested Recommendations
Rain tapped the kitchen window last Saturday, I was grading 30 stacks of 4th grade spelling tests at the table, my 8-year-old son leaned against the counter, cereal crumbs on his dinosaur sweatshirt, and asked for 20 minutes of YouTube before we tackled his weekly reading log. I used to just open the main page and let him scroll, until a couple of months ago when I looked over and saw he’d spent 15 minutes watching a guy ramble about broken fidget spinners that he didn’t even end up buying. I realized I was wasting the only extra screen time we allow on stuff that didn’t even hold his attention that well. As a 4th grade teacher, I’ve dug up dozens of educational channels for my classroom over the years, so I started sorting through them to build a playlist for home, and tested a bunch of new ones too.
Art for Kids Hub was the first I added, and it’s still the most used. We got COVID last winter, and we were stuck inside for three straight days, both of us grumpy and tired of board games. I pulled up their how-to-draw-a-penguin video, and we sat at the table together, pencils in hand. I can’t draw a stick figure that looks even close to right, but Rob, the host, goes so slow, he laughs off mistakes, and every drawing ends up looking recognizable enough that my son felt proud to hang his on the fridge. I’ve had three different parents mention it to me at back-to-school night as their go-to no-prep rainy day activity, and it works for everything from 5-year-olds to middle schoolers who want to draw more complex characters.
Next up is SciShow Kids, which got us through our mandatory elementary school science project on bees last month. My son groaned when I said we had to take notes, and I was fully prepared to fight him for an hour until I remembered the channel. The 12-minute episode covered everything from how bees make honey to the weird fact that bumblebees can recognize human faces. Ten minutes in, my son was scribbling notes on his notebook without me reminding him. He added that face fact to his poster, and his teacher asked him to present it to the whole class. The channel is made specifically for younger kids, no off-color jokes, ads are minimal on YouTube Kids, and they answer all the weird off-the-wall questions kids actually ask, instead of just reciting dry textbook facts.
For middle and high schoolers, I recommend Oversimplified and Crash Course. I tutor a 10th grader who was failing world history last semester, and she told me all the dates and names just blur together into one big mess. I told her to try Oversimplified, whose 10 to 15 minute videos break down big events like the French Revolution or World War I with silly cartoons and dumb, kid-friendly jokes. A month later she got a C+ on her midterm, the first passing grade she’d had all year. It doesn’t go super in depth, but it gives kids a clear framework to hang all the extra facts on, which is half the battle for history. Crash Course is my go-to for high school test review — I use their biology and literature clips in tutoring all the time, when a kid needs a different explanation than what their teacher gave them, and it’s faster than re-reading a whole chapter.
Numberphile is a random favorite that my son latched onto after I showed him a video. It’s all about weird, cool math questions, like why we have leap years or what makes a number prime, and it works for every age. Little kids love the cool patterns, older kids get into the more complex problems. My son sat through a 20 minute video on why 1 isn’t a prime number last month, then spent 10 minutes explaining it to my mom over dinner. For toddlers and early elementary kids who are working on reading confidence, CBeebies Bedtime Stories is unbeatable. I have a student in my after-school program who refuses to read out loud, won’t even open a book in front of other people. One day I put on a Tom Hiddleston episode of We’re Going On A Bear Hunt while we waited for pickup, and she sat down and watched the whole thing. Now she asks for one every Wednesday, and she’s started mimicking the voices when she reads her own easy readers, which has helped her get over her fear of messing up.
I used to feel guilty for letting my kid watch any YouTube at all. Like, as an educator, I should be filling all his free time with books or outdoor play or fancy hands-on science experiments. But the truth is, some days I need 20 minutes to grade papers or fold laundry or just drink my coffee while it’s hot. And I’d rather he watch something that sparks his curiosity than mindless unboxing videos. The biggest trick I’ve found is to pre-make a playlist. I add all the channels and videos I approve of to it, set it so he can only watch what’s in there, and I don’t have to monitor every second. I turn on restricted mode, use YouTube Kids for anyone under 10, and limit it to 25 minutes on school days, an hour on weekends. It takes 10 minutes to set up once, and I just add new videos every couple of weeks when I find something good.
Last Saturday, after my son finished his 20 minutes of SciShow Kids about volcanoes, he closed the laptop and dragged out the old baking soda volcano kit that’s been sitting in the back of his closet for a year. He asked if we could build it after we finished his reading log. That’s the thing I didn’t expect: the best educational channels don’t just teach kids facts, they make them want to go do something with that curiosity. I still say no more often than I say yes, and some weekends we don’t watch any YouTube at all. I’m still weeding out channels that start getting too clickbaity, and testing new ones when other parents recommend them. It’s not a perfect system, and I’m still figuring it out, like most things with parenting and teaching. But right now, these channels work for us, and they beat broken fidget spinner reviews by a mile.
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