Best Free Reading Websites to Share with Parents

Looking for some great resources to send to parents for reading at home? Here are my top 6 favorite reading websites and why I love them.

What is it

A huge collection of story books read by some of our favorite actors. Best of all, students can hear great examples of fluency as they listen to these entertaining books - for free.

Why I love it

Students get to hear a wide variety of readers and gain exposure to different ways a story can be read aloud. The actors do a great job of making the stories come alive for the listeners. 

I also love this website because they have many, many of my favorite read alouds. This means I can easily find the book I want and assign it to families at home and know that it is a safe, kid-friendly website to share.

What is it

A free website started by a teacher that boasts a large variety of fun, award-winning educational games and videos.

Why I love it

Parents can feel confident allowing their child to play these fun educational games as the website is marked as a KidSafe site.  The website has many games for pre-K through 5^th grade students on skills that align to classroom standards. This means it’s perfect for enrichment or remediation practice at home. As a teacher you can recommend a category to the parents specific to the needs of a particular child. 

I also love that it's a great website to recommend for math or reading and it's organized in a skills-based way. As a teacher I can assign the website and say work on second grade word games, journey to the past tense and parents can easily find the right game. There are also great how-to videos that are fantastic for listening and following directions to create a fun craft.

What is it

A free website with a collection of standards based skill questions specifically for pre-K through high school students.

Why I love it

IXL makes it easy to assign skills that are aligned to your standards. The questions also provide immediate feedback and even re-teach if a wrong answer is entered.  

Teachers can search by topics or skills and the site includes thousands of skills for practice. Because this site goes through high school it's easy to different for all your learners.

Why I love it

Games also include downloadable worksheets to further reinforce the skills. Also, due the guided reading stories include discussion questions for before and after the story.  Perfect for parents to know the right questions to ask to improve comprehension skills.

What is it

A collection of a PBS series called Between the Lions that features videos on literacy skills for preschool through first grade.

Videos in this collection cover the "Big 5" (fluency, comprehension, phonics, phonemic awareness, and vocabulary). Perhaps the best reason I love this website is that it has a google classroom sharing button making it incredibly easy to assign particular videos to your students.

What is it

Interactive online games geared towards preschoolers through first graders. Cookie offers games for language arts, math, science, and social studies with a variety of downloadable worksheets.

Why I love it

The games are engaging and interactive while covering a wide range of important language arts skills such as adjectives. I like that the website is completely free - even if you sign up for an account. But you do not need an account to play. 

This site is easy for kids to navigate and parents can feel comfortable allowing their child to play freely. Parents can even get a free account that will allow children to find and play against their friends.

These are just a few of the many, many websites online that are geared towards kids' learning. I know it's impossible to cover all the amazing sites out there but I hope your parents will appreciate these suggestions.

Have a favorite FREE reading webiste I didn't mention? Give it a shout out by commenting and linking it below.