Best YouTube Channels for English Teaching Videos for Kids
Teaching English at a bilingual primary school in Spain, I’ve found short YouTube videos to be a fantastic way to get students engaged about learning. Looking back on my experience as a student, I’d say I always looked forward to the parts of class where the teacher played videos.
My lessons always incorporate some sort of YouTube video to give students a visual representation of the material or vocabulary. I particularly like to use songs (to help students memorize the English vocab words) and dances (to bring in Total Physical Response methods). I find that my students get especially excited about learning when I tell them I’ll be playing a song or other video later.
Perhaps since videos can be so helpful for young English language learners, there are a myriad of channels on YouTube that cater to this demographic. It’s great to have so many options and resources available for teaching English, but at times, it can feel a bit overwhelming to comb through all of these videos on a given topic.
That’s why I’m listing my favorite YouTube channels for teaching English to kids!
British Council Learn English Kids
This educational YouTube channel offers some outstanding resources to use with young English language learners. This channel has a wide variety of videos for teaching English to children.
British Council Learn English Kids has a series of songs, put to cartoons, that incorporate common phrases and basic English vocabulary. The channel also offers videos with common English nursery rhymes, songs, and children’s stories.
Besides the channel’s song-based videos, British Council Learn English Kids has a series of videos that teach students how to do various things, from crafts to basic actions and chores. These videos are great for showing simple but full English conversations to your students.
Fun Kids English
Fun Kids English is a YouTube channel with tons of educational videos for English-language-learning children. Their videos include lots of cartoons and songs, which make learning English more engaging for kids.
Fun Kids English offers repeat-after-me style videos to teach kids a variety of basic concepts in English. They also have videos focusing on phonics to help students with English pronunciation.
Fun Kids English is self-described as geared towards kindergarten, preschool, ESL, and EFL students. So keep in mind that this channel mostly provides content for younger English language learners, perhaps up to the first two or three years of primary school.
Hopscotch
Hopscotch is an educational YouTube channel for kids. Although it’s not explicitly aimed towards teaching English, I’ve found their videos very helpful for my lessons on basic concepts in English. I’ve found that their videos work particularly well for second and third grade primary school students in the bilingual school in Spain where I teach. And while I don’t teach grades above third, I think many of the videos on the Hopscotch channel would work well for teaching English to older elementary school students, too.
In particular, I think Hopscotch shines when it comes to their science songs. They have simple but intentional lyrics that can help students memorize key concepts in English. I also think their songs have some pleasant melodies.
Check out my personal favorite Hopscotch science song on vertebrate animals:
Danny Go!
Danny Go! has lots of helpful educational videos for kids. In my view, the channel shines the most in its movement- and dance-oriented videos.
The channel’s educational topics are not as varied as some of the other channels on this list. But by incorporating songs and movement, Danny Go! videos engage students in my classes like no other activity.
My favorite Danny Go! video to use in class has been “The Gingerbread Cookie Dance!” The dance engages students in movement while teaching vocabulary related to building gingerbread houses. Take a look:
musicwithnancy
Through her YouTube channel, @musicwithnancy, Nancy Kopman shares educational music videos for kids. I find her videos to include English vocabulary helpful for my natural and social sciences lessons, and personally, I enjoy her music. Her videos also tend to include cartoons or illustrations to help engage students a little extra.
When creating lesson plans about plants for first, second, and third grade primary school students, I came across the video below, which first sparked my interest in this YouTube channel.
Super Simple Songs
Super Simple Songs delivers on the promises of its name: this YouTube channel has lots of simple songs for kids. The songs might be a bit too simple for older primary school students, but I think many of the songs work well for teaching English to younger elementary schoolers.
The channel includes songs related to common English phrases, the alphabet, counting, holidays, and many more topics. The videos are accompanied with cartoons or other visual elements to keep students engaged.
I hope this list of my favorite YouTube channels for teaching English to kids saves you some time when looking for resources for your own lessons. If you’re looking for a more specific list of my favorite YouTube songs for children’s English language learning, click the button below!
