As a parent with four young children – aged 10,cindy starfall a wave of eroticism 7, 5 and 3 – based in London, we’ve had our share of lockdown high points - and rock-bottom low ones.

We didn’t manage to turn our backyard into a Mr. McGregor-worthy veggie patch, or bake banana bread weekly. Like a lot of families fortunate enough to be working remotely throughout the lockdowns, my husband and I often struggled to manage the most basic homeschooling assignments for the kids.

However, we did discover a learning tool we can’t get enough of: Outschool. In fact, we’re so enamored of this ed-tech platform, our kids are still taking classes online - even though London schools are back in session in person, full-time.

What is Outschool?

Outschool is an online learning platform - a marketplace of online classes for kids - with over 50,000 classes on offer and 7,000 teachers. It’s been around since 2017, and we - along with thousands of other parents desperately trying to motivate their kids via distance learning - discovered it at the end of March.

In February 2020, Outschool had 80,000 learners; as of August 2020, there were 1.6 million new sign-ups. The platform expanded to the UK, New Zealand and Australia in spring 2020, just as parents were looking for ways to make homeschooling more interesting, structured and feasible.

My kids’ school wasn’t able to offer any video classes, and it quickly became apparent that while I could engage them on some subjects, I was a pretty chaotic and disorganized teacher. To ensure they were doing a little something every day, we enlisted their grandpa to conduct math lessons with the older two and some early reading with my kindergartner, all via WhatsApp.

I was particularly worried about my seven-year-old, who refused to pick up a book, and my 10-year-old, who needed some writing practice. The bitter irony of having a mother who’s a writer is that you can’t teach your children anything English-related without ending up in a shouting match. We needed help.

Outschool was launched by tech entrepreneur Amir Nathoo, and it originally catered to homeschooling parents and their needs. Parents of traditionally schooled children started picking up the classes as extracurriculars after school and on weekends - popular choices at the moment include cooking classes, musical instruments, dance, martial arts and STEM classes.

Outschool appealed to me off the bat for a few different reasons: I loved that the classes connected my children to others in a virtual Zoom classroom during a time when they weren’t able to see their friends. They could sit at home in London and chat to a child in San Diego and another one in Spain. Learning about where their classmates came from was almost as exciting as the class that would follow.

In addition, the creativity in the classes shone through. As a parent who believes in passion-based learning, especially when kids can’t physically be at school, I knew that mine wouldn’t be inspired by dry subject matter. Playing stock market games to get interested in math, however? That, I could get behind.

Finally, I wanted us to have some form of remote learning in place in case schools wouldn’t be able to reopen in the autumn. Outschool ticked every box for us. From a financial standpoint, I felt I could justify the additional expense since we weren’t spending on any extracurricular activities.

How does Outschool work?

Part of the beauty of Outschool is the flexibility, whether you’re looking for a 10-week course or need to fill an hour this coming Friday afternoon so you can schedule a work call. Parents and kids can choose from over 50,000 live classes in small groups (up from just 15,000 classes on offer a few months ago).

There are a few different types of live Zoom classes you can sign the kids up for:

• Ongoing courses: These meet once a week via live video, and you can join any week.

• Multi-day/semester long courses: These typically run for up to eight weeks and involve longer-term assignments and projects.

• Camps: These tend to meet multiple times across a few weeks

• One-time classes:These meet once at a prescribed time

You can also enroll your child in Flexible Schedule classes, which are ideal if they would prefer to follow the course in their own timeframe, or would rather not take part in the live Zoom sessions.

How much does Outschool cost?

Outschool classes range in price from $4 for a 25-minute class on all things Spiderman - through to $100+ for classes that run once a week for a couple of months. The average cost is $10-$15 dollars per class.

In our experience, while classes that meet on several occasions are more expensive upfront, they tend to be a better value in the long run, since the children become more involved in the topics they’re studying.

In addition to the class fees, you'll also have to supply the materials for the classes. These could be Lego bricks, a certain book, or crafts and baking supplies, so factor that into the cost.

SEE ALSO: The best online learning platforms for kids

How do I find classes I want to take?

Outschool is very much an “interest-led” platform. Type in whatever your child enjoys – chickens, Jane Austen, Roblox, Hamilton- and find a class that relates to it.

Some super in-demand classes at the moment include Metrocraft(creating and governing a Minecraft city), Introduction to Mindfulnessand Beginning Piano.

You can also search by class teacher. If you find one whose classes you enjoy you can add them to your favorites (just “heart” them) and you’ll be emailed when they next have a class available.

Parents leave reviews for classes and teachers so you can get a sense of the overall experience and expectations. Teachers with five-star reviews tend to see their classes book up quickly, however, you can request additional times or modules if your child is desperate to take a particular class that doesn’t currently fit your schedule. You can also request new classes that aren’t on the current curriculum via email.

Meagan Tauber is a mother of three based in Austin, Texas, who has been an Outschool parent for the past three years and teaches classes on the site, too. She jokes that her children’s favourite teachers, Tammy Wenhame and David Salch, are other parental figures for her children since her kids insist on taking every class they offer.

Tauber uses Outschool as the “spine of our formal/structured learning experience,” since she homeschools her kids, preferring the multi-week and ongoing classes for the repetition and because they allow her kids to build relationships with other learners.

In addition to being a fan of the “interest-led” approach that Outschool offers, which allows kids to explore their favorite subjects from every angle, Tauber notes the convenience factor as a positive for big families.

“The area we last lived in for my husband’s job was a bit more remote and most activities involved a 30-45 minutes drive each way. How do I pull that off with three kids of different ages and different interests? We aren’t a family that overschedules, but even if each child just has one ‘thing’ they’re into… that’s a lot of driving!” she says.

Inspiring kids academically through creative outlets

My kids have spent the past seven months taking various classes on Outschool, and we’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s on offer.

No matter how obscure of a query we typed into the search bar, there seemed to be a class on that topic. My oldest child was keen to do something Harry Potter-related and we found class after class on everything from Harry Potter potions (aka chemistry) to Harry Potter coding. We settled on a Harry Potter-themed creative writing class based around The Chamber of Secrets,taught by Professor Oyo, which met flexibly for 10 weeks.

Outschool’s Flexible classes don’t have live Zoom sessions but encourage student feedback and participation. My daughter submitted creative writing assignments twice a week and enjoyed the class, but begged me to put her in a live one when she finished the course.

She’s now done everything from a Percy Jackson-themed Greek gods course to a class on feminism through the lens of pop culture. In that class, taught by university professor Liz Boltz Ranfeld, she learned about agency and objectification in The Babysitter’s Cluband Hamilton. As the youngest student in the class, a lot of it went over her head but she loved it and I can see her starting to analyze movies and TV with a critical gaze. Score!

We also had amazing success finding classes for my seven-year-old, enrolling her on a month-long course called U.S. History through the Eyes of the American Girl Dolls, taught by an inspiring, creative and nurturing teacher, Monica Kelly.

We didn’t own any of the American Girl dolls ahead of taking the class, but it turned out that didn’t matter. My daughter – the one who wouldn’t pick up a book prior to Outschool – was suddenly reading daily, absorbing the world of Felicity, a nine-year-old living during the time of the American Revolution (she can also tell you all about Josefina, a girl in New Mexico in the 1850s). While libraries were closed, we ordered the books online, although we also got lucky when American Girl started posting free books online throughout lockdown.

I have never seen my seven-year-old so engaged or passionate. She is continuing to enjoy reading, as well as learning about a new period in history, the Victorian era, through American Girl Samantha’s eyes, in her third class with Ms. Monica, which started in August (my daughter spent last weekend writing up her project on children working in factories, which she’s been researching independently). I often catch myself listening in on the classes, which combine literature, history and hands-on projects, like bread-making and weaving with other interesting anecdotes - like a photo of a shark egg Ms. Monica found on the beach near her home that week.

Social interaction via Zoom

For us, there was an added bonus to signing up for Outschool: While the platform serves kids in over 200 countries, since it’s US-based, there are a lot of children from across the States enrolled.

I’m American, and we haven’t been able to visit the States in a while, so it’s important to me that my kids are exposed to other American and international children where possible.

What ages are Outschool classes good for?

The success of Outschool with my older children prompted me to try a couple of classes with my five-year-old. We enrolled in a couple of Lego workshops, but with less success. While she’ll usually play with Lego independently for hours, she needed a lot of help from me as soon as we got online, which wasn’t ideal when I needed to work.

Outschool classes are available for kids aged three and up, but based on our experiences I would recommend them for kids who are six or older, unless you want to be participating throughout. For teens up to the age of 18, there are a variety of classes on offer, covering everything from SAT prep to prom makeup.

While Outschool hasn’t been quite so amazing for our little ones, it’s made such an impact that I can’t imagine it not being part of our future educational experience, pandemic or not.

My family isn’t alone in this obsession: another London-based friend, Nicola, enrolled her 10-year-old daughter in an ongoing creative writing class which met once a week, and was impressed by her daughter’s enthusiasm for the course - she’s normally tepid about writing - as well as her improvement and enhanced confidence after a few weeks.

Can I log into a conference call next door while my child is on Outschool?

Outschool is a helpful solution for working parents who want their children to be engaged in learning, but who can’t supervise them when they need to get some work done themselves. Younger kids will likely need parental help in certain classes, especially if they have props of some kind, and we have occasionally had to assist with art projects the older kids were doing.

Also, you really need to be comfortable with having your child on Zoom; children can’t access the Zoom class until their teacher has entered the virtual classroom, but, depending on the class and teacher’s discretion, they can send messages via Zoom chat.