Exploratorium

The Exploratorium is a museum of science, art, and human perception in San Francisco, and it has spent decades publishing its hands-on approach online for free. For homeschooling families who cannot visit in person, the website is the useful part: a large, well-organized library of science activities designed to be done with ordinary household materials.

The heart of the site for home educators is the Science Snacks collection, which contains hundreds of scaled-down versions of museum exhibits. Each activity is written as a standalone lesson with a materials list, step-by-step assembly instructions, photographs, and, importantly, a clear explanation of the underlying science. Most use things already in a kitchen or junk drawer, such as cardboard, string, paper cups, magnets, and batteries. Topics span light and optics, sound, electricity and magnetism, motion, heat, biology, and perception.

The Teach and Learn section organizes material for educators rather than for browsing. It includes activity collections grouped by subject, professional-development material on inquiry-based teaching, and video demonstrations that model how to run an investigation and what questions to ask along the way. For a parent who is comfortable with the content but unsure how to teach it as inquiry rather than as a demonstration, that framing is the most valuable part of the site.

There are also long-running observation projects worth following, including live and archived coverage of eclipses, seasonal astronomy events, and environmental monitoring, which give a science course a real event to anchor to.

Everything described here is free to use, with no account required. The Exploratorium does sell tickets and memberships for the physical museum, and some newer material is offered through paid professional-development programs, but the online activity library itself is open and has been for years.