How to Use BrainPop as your Low Cost Homeschool Curriculum

BrainPop is a website that will allow your homeschooler to have side-splitting fun while learning. The site consists of funny animated movies that teaches children numerous subjects. There is enough information on this website to provide a complete education for homeschoolers. This guide will help you provide a complete curriculum for your child using BrainPop.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• Internet connection
• Brainpop or BrainPop Jr. membership

Sign up for a BrainPop.com Membership

1. Decide what kind of membership you need. Brainpop has yearly membership plans for Pre-K through grade 3, for grades 3 through 12, for Spanish speaking users and family plans for both age groups.
2. Purchase a Brainpop membership. Be aware that Brainpop will do yearly automatic renewals, so if you decide to not renew your membership, you will have to let them know in advance.
3. Choose a membername and password that will be easy for you and your family members to remember.

Using BrainPop Jr.

4. Click the "Standards" button on the main page. This will allow you to choose the state, subject and grade so that your child will meet local standards.
5. After doing the standards search, you can click on a highlighted video title.
6. Play the educational video for your student.
7. Next to the video, you will notice a window with lesson ideas for the topic. Click on the lesson page and follow the different suggested activities.

For Grades 3 Through 12

8. Click on the state standards page. It allows you to select your state, your child’s grade, and the subject you plan to study. Hit "Submit," and the program will list what a student needs to study for that subject and grade and the correlating video. It will be a bit repetitive because one video will meet numerous standards for several reasons.
9. Organize your child’s BrainPop Curriculum. Copy and paste each video link into a word or other word processing program organized by subject matter. You can then have your student follow each link and use the video until all the videos have been viewed for that grade.
10. Have the student view each individual video in order of difficulty with the easiest lessons for each subject to be viewed first. Once the video has been viewed, your homeschooler can take the attached pop quiz, and then if necessary find related worksheets and lessons on the Internet to further practice what they have learned.

Tips & Warnings

• Another approach for using BrainPop is to follow a basic curriculum outline for your child’s grade level and view the appropriate BrainPop video for each lesson.
• Children should be monitored when using online learning websites.