200 Amazing Educational YouTube Channels

From art to electronics to zoo channels - all our favorite YouTube channels in 34 subjects

During the pandemic, we watched a LOT of Youtube at Modulo. A parent pointed out to me that as long as we were going to be teaching on-screen anyway, we may as well enlist the best teachers in the world (e.g. the Nasa engineers, poet laureates, graphic designers of Youtube) to teach our kids. We found that by combining live, online teachers with exceptional YouTube videos, pausing and interacting with the videos, asking questions and modeling learning to children, we were able to keep children highly engaged and learning. Most mornings started out with a Headspace Kids meditation, followed by a Cosmic Kids Yoga and Art for Kids Hub video of the children’s choosing, then Language Arts and Math with adaptive learning apps, followed by what we called YouTube tunnels, where kids got to ask a question, which we solved by searching YouTube, or browsed great STEAM channels (Science, Tech, Engineering, Arts and Robotics). The Live Animal Cams were a particular favorite.

How we built this list

When I started out trying to determine the best educational YouTube channels, I noticed there were a couple very long posts in secular homeschooling groups where someone asked “what are your favorite YouTube channels,” and hundreds of people shared their top channels. I compiled all these comments and made a list of over 1,0000 recommendations. Every day at the end of class, I chose a new channel we’d never seen before, we watched and rated it. If kids were immediately intrigued, we kept the channel. If it was poorly designed or kids were bored, we took it off the list. During this time, we also found new channels we loved. And from this exercise, we developed this list of our favorites.

How to use Youtube as an educational tool

Our approach to learning with YouTube worked well because we engaged with the children as they watched the channels. There’s a big difference between passive screen time and screen time with an engaged parent, tutor or caregiver. Especially if your child is young, we recommend not using YouTube as a form of passive entertainment. It’s natural to imagine that educational entertainment is superior to non-educational entertainment. And while there may be some truth to this, there are many other great ways to keep kids engaged while you’re working besides sitting them in front of a screen. We discuss this in our posts on self-directed learning and childcare. Ask questions, discuss, pause, use the YouTube search to answer questions. Obviously, don’t be an annoying interrupting cow, but just be there with them watching, and engage organically.

Language immersion: Another tip, if you’re child is learning a foreign language, YouTube is a wonderful tool for language immersion. Try watching as many videos as possible in the language they are learning, and keep the closed captions on in the original language. Children can keep a notebook and write down new words they learn. Learning language is a natural process, and your children will absorb a tremendous amount, especially if they’re under age 8.

Playlists: To get the best experience out of the channel, and make sure your child’s learning is scaffolded (follows an order that makes sense for learning), check out the playlists many channels provide, that are organized by arc or topic area.

Not all these channels are created for kids

Not all these channels are designed for children. As always, viewer discretion is advised. While we do have a preschool section, otherwise we did not parse this list for different age groups. And that’s because every child is different and every family has different values in terms of what they think their child is ready to hear or see. Some kids are born as little adults. Others are very sensitive. I loved to listen to NPR as a child. That’s not for every family or every kids. There are also videos here that are great for teens, but not so much for young children. Many children are capable of watching and engaging well with videos designed for grownups (such as PBS rather than PBS kids). We strongly advise parents to review the videos before sharing them with their kids. Some of the videos include physical activities (such as a grownup yoga channel) and it’s critical an adult is present so children don’t get injured.

Youtube Schooling Groups

If you want to take your Youtube schooling to the next level, consider joining some of the wonderful YouTube schooling groups such as “Homeschooling with YouTube.”

And without further ado, here are our favorite 200 YouTube channels for kids ages PreK-12th grades in 33 subjects. If you have any others to recommend, please add them to the comments so everyone can benefit!

The categories

🦁 1. Animals and Wildlife

🎨 2. Art

👩🏿‍💻 3. Coding

📰 4. Current Events

🩰 5. Dance

📚 6. Early Literacy

🎮 7. Electronics

♻️ 8. Environmental Literacy

🥳 9. General: A little bit of everything!

💰 10. Financial Literacy

🇫🇷 11. Foreign Language

🩺 12. Health

💾 13. History

🧮 14. Math

🪷 15. Meditation

🖼️ 16. Museums and Cultural Organizations

🎶 17. Music

🦖 18. Paleontology (Dinosaurs)

🤸🏽‍♀️ 19. Physical Education

🐣 20. Preschool

🗣️ 21. Public Speaking

🤖 22. Robotics

🧬 23. Science

🍌 24. Sex Education

🌎 25. Social Studies

🥰 26. Social Emotional Learning (SEL)

🇪🇸 27. Spanish

📖 28. Storytime

🏗️ 29. Technology and Engineering

🤰🏽 30. For Parents and Caregivers

🎤 31. Voice

✏️ 32. Writing

🧘🏾‍♀️ 33. Yoga

🐢 34. Zoo Channels

Along with the channels we embedded a favorite video recommendation. They may take a little time to load, so please forgive us if you see a black box - or a big grey box with a frownie face under a recommendation. The video image should pop up within a few minutes.

200 YouTube Channels

In most cases, the descriptions here are written by the people or organizations who develop the channel. We tried to include a favorite video with each channel.

Animals and Wildlife