E-Learning for Kids

What E-Learning for Kids is

E-Learning for Kids is a free library of interactive math and science lessons for primary school children, run by a nonprofit. The footer of every page says "E-learning for kids is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization," and the home page states its vision as being "the source for childhood learning on the internet available from anywhere and without charge." Its strapline is "Free and fun digital education for all children worldwide."

It serves three readers at once. A child plays through the lessons. A parent picks the right level and lets the child work at home. A teacher uses the lessons in class, sends students a direct link to one module, or installs the whole library on school computers that have no internet. Nobody pays, and nobody signs up.

What a child gets

The Parents & Teachers page describes the offer as "free, best-in-class curriculum based learning for children ages 5-12 in Math & Science, including Environmental skills, Health, and Life skills." The organization says it currently offers 550+ e-lessons and keeps developing new ones, covering "the entire primary education grade KG to 6 in math and science." The two main collections are named: the Math World curriculum has 336 e-lessons and the Science World curriculum has 213.

The lessons are built as games. The site says the courseware "integrates gaming and learning to make our courseware more effective," and frames each course as a trip: while acquiring their new skills, "the children travel around the world learning more about the 7 continents, countries, cities, oceans and cultures." A child working on multiplication is also visiting places, which gives younger learners a reason to keep clicking.

Children start from the home page with a "Kids - Start Here" button and then choose a topic (Math, Science, Environmental skills, Computer skills, Health, Language and Life skills) and/or a grade (K, 0 and 1 to 6). The site maps those grades to ages: Grade K is age 4-5, Grade 1 is age 6-7, and so on up to Grade 6 at age 11-12. Math courses run from the Math World portal and science from Science World.

All lessons are currently in English. The site says it has started translating Math World and Science World into Spanish. The website's own menus already switch between English, Spanish, French and Portuguese, but the lessons have not caught up with that yet.

Where the curriculum comes from

The design of the courses, according to the site, is "guided by learning topics that are part of the International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum which is internationally recognized and used in 138 countries." The FAQ adds that the organization has also built courses that supplement a typical primary school curriculum, and that "Many topics are universal in nature (e.g. multiplication) and fit in any primary school curriculum around the world." That makes the library usable alongside a national syllabus without claiming to replace it.

For finding the right lesson, the site offers PDFs of learning goals for Math World and Science World, listed per lesson. A teacher planning a unit on fractions, or a parent checking what Grade 3 science covers, can read the goals before sending the child in.

Picking the right grade

The site puts real weight on starting at the right level: "It's very important children start at the right level, have fun in learning and work at their own pace." It gives two ways to do it. An adult can check the learning goals and choose the level, or let the child try several lessons to find it. The site's example is a 6-year-old taking one lesson in grade K, one in grade 1 and one in grade 2 to see where they belong. That is sensible advice for a library where age and ability often do not match.

Online, offline and in class

Online use is as simple as it gets. "All the e-learning for kids lessons are available online via internet at no cost! There is no need to sign-up." The FAQ confirms that "A username and password are not needed for the courses." There is no preferred browser, and it does not matter whether the child uses a PC or a Mac; the site says the HTML lessons "can be used in any of the more recent browsers."

Offline use is the feature that matters most for schools. For a home or school without internet "for all workstations," the organization offers its lessons free "for offline local access via a download link." A school fills in a request form that sets out the terms of use, the organization reviews it, and then sends the download packages. Installation guides for Windows and for Mac are published as PDFs, and the FAQ points Mac users who hit setup problems to a contact form for help.

For teachers, there is a useful shortcut. Asked whether a teacher can send students straight to one module, the FAQ answers "Absolutely": open the module online and share the URL for that lesson. The site lists four ways to use the courseware: "Support an existing classroom curriculum," "Provide additional practice," "Supplement an existing curriculum" and "Support homeschooling."

Privacy, standards and history

Because there are no accounts, the platform knows almost nothing about individual children. To the FAQ question "Can EFK track or contact the students who are taking the courses?" the answer is: "No, our tracking only tells us the country information, the number of unique users, and similar generic information about our website visits." For a parent, that means the site keeps only generic visit data; it also means there is no saved progress or report for the child.

The FAQ is direct about school systems: "No. The EFK courses are not SCORM compliant." It adds that "At the moment EFK is working on the introduction of an LMS integrated with the EFK courseware."

The library was larger once. The FAQ says that "In 2020 we had about 750 courses online," mostly in English with some in Spanish, French and Portuguese, and that about 200 of them were built in Flash. When browsers dropped Flash in 2020, those courses were taken offline. The organization says it first checked their learning goals and found most were already covered in Math World and Science World. The exception is Computer Skills, which it hopes to rebuild with new courses soon.

The organization runs on donations and volunteers. Every page carries a donation button with the line "Support us bringing free & fun education to all children worldwide with a donation," the footers invite visitors to sign up as volunteers, and an Info for Partners page addresses organizations. A feedback form lets anyone report an error or a bug in a lesson.

Who it suits and who it does not

E-Learning for Kids suits parents who want free, safe practice for a child aged roughly 5 to 12, with no account to create. It suits teachers who want to send a class to a specific lesson by link, and it especially suits schools with weak or no internet, since the whole library can be installed locally at no cost. Homeschooling families get a structured math and science sequence from kindergarten to grade 6, with learning goals to plan from.

It fits less well where a school needs reporting. There are no accounts, no progress records and no SCORM packages, so lesson results stay on the screen. Lessons are in English for now, which limits younger children who do not read it. And it is a self-paced library rather than a course with a teacher, so it works best with an adult nearby to choose the level and help when a child gets stuck.