Homeschooling with Netflix – 40+ Documentaries Edition

I found some amazing documentaries on Netflix to help teach kids about many subjects. I’ve also included links to lesson plans you can use along with the documentaries. Most of them are free. Homeschooling with Netflix is fun and entertaining!

 

Homeschooling with Netflix

First we will check out some subjects you could use for Homeschooling with Netflix, along with lesson plans. Most of the lesson plans that I found are free! If you don’t want to bother with lesson plans, just watch any of these documentaries that suit your fancy.

Geography

These will give children a chance to learn about the land, people, and animals that live in places around the world. Like a virtual field trip. Plus, check out my blog post of free geography resources.

Africa’s Deadliest – Go to Africa, stream your very own safari! by Nat GEO WILD

Africa – This one is from BBC, and is Narrated by: Benedict Cumberbatch & Mike Rowe | You can use free this curriculum to help children learn more about Africa. Pbs also has lessons on Africa. Also, check out How big is Africa?

South Pacific – Explore the South Pacific, along with the statues on Easter Island. Bookrags has a lesson plan for the South Pacific.

The Blue Planet – Explore the ocean, in one of my all time favorites The Blue Planet! Scholastic has a lesson plan on Oceans, and so does the Smithsonian.

Wild Europe – There are still places in Europe that are hardly touched by people. Explore the rawness of the Wild Europe. National Geographic, has more great (free) ways to learn more about Europe.

Wild China  and Born 2 China– Check out the Ancient China lesson plans, and check out PBS for more learning about China.

Wild Alaska – Take the AK history lesson plan, or use Quest Connect’s lesson plans on Alaska.

Bermuda Triangle – The mysteries surrounding the Bermuda triangle still baffle scientists today. Explore the strange with this documentary. Check out a lesson plan here on this.

YellowStone Thaw – Check out this lesson plan to learn how geysers erupt. There used to be a documentary about the wolves in Yellowstone but last time I checked Netflix pulled it and I don’t remember what it was called. It was very interesting. However here is a lesson plan on the Wolves of Yellowstone.

Egypt – I always loved learned about the pyramids. Not sure why they are quite fascinating. Free lesson plans by Discovery Education.

India’s Lost World  & India Nature’s Wonderland– Great mountains, deserts, and jungles. Explore India today! Check out a free lesson plan on India.

Columbia – Explore the exoctic ecosystem of Columbia.

Perú – Take a beautiful virtual field trip to Perú. Check out Homeschool Creations for a great free lesson on Perú.

Meru – an epic mountain route.

Madagascar – Check out the lesson plan from PBS.

National Parks Adventure – Scholastic has some lessons about National Parks, and so does US Mint

 

Other Free Geography Lesson Plans

Spanish Culture lesson plans

French Lesson Plans

Amazing Race – Has children create their own amazing race game!

Virtual Field Trip to Mexico!

German Culture Lesson

 

History

The Civil War  – Check out Civil War (dot org) to see lesson plans for all ages.

Tesla – it’s not just a brand. Learn more about the brilliant and clever man without whom we would not have wifi. Thank you Tesla! PBS has lesson on Tesla!

The Roosevelts – PBS has a lesson plan made for this very documentary! How awesome is that?

The Great Raids Of World War II – Scholastic has a lesson plan on World War II.

Lesson plan for Back in Time Travel Brochure  – Using travel brochures and a lesson plan, to learn about World History.

The Eighties – Big hair, crazy colors, and MTV actually played music.

There are plenty of other documentaries but I tried to include ones that were TV-14 at most. Many others are rated TV-MA, and NR.

 

Science

Orbit – Earth’s Extraordinary Journey

Magic of Mushrooms –

The Mars Generation –

Forces of Nature –

The New Frontier –

The Real Death Star –

Food Science –

Deadliest Tornadoes –

Megastorm Aftermath –

Catching the Sun – 

Earth’s Natural Wonders –

Into the Inferno –

Natural Disaster lesson plans – Teach Engineering has a lesson plan on Natural Disasters.

Space lesson plans – When I started homeschooling I found several awesome ways to teach about space, check out some of those free homeschool resources here. Teacher Vision has some pretty amazing lesson plans on SPACE. Also, check out Geology(dot com) to see more free lesson plans on space.

Math

The Story of Maths 

 

Art

Abstract The Art of Design –

Architecture – 

Moving Art – Art found in the world we live in.

Art Lesson Plan by Age

More documentaries available for streaming as of 02/22/18

1. Wings of Life (SERIES) – The first part of this series is narrated by a flower. I thought it was really funny at first but then I fell in love with the concept. This series was so interesting, and the images were so clear and beautiful. There’s a lot of great information in this series. It teaches you how pollination happens, and the importance of all of our pollinators! The flower does speak about mating, and then shows how flowers “mate.”
2. Chasing Ice – Icebergs, they look so small until a person stands on one, and then you realize they are bigger than the tallest buildings. This movie is basically about global warming. It is interesting though, it follows around a photographer who decided to tell the story of global warming through his pictures. The photographer thought a great way to get people to believe is to see. No matter what side you fall on this controversial subject, this movie is captivating. The icebergs are simply gorgeous.
3. Brain Games (SERIES) – This series is very interesting. In the first episode it shows people how the brain uses shadows to help understand the world around us. It is really very interesting and educational.
4. Planet Earth: The Complete Collection – I bought this on dvd when it came out many years ago. It is so good. I have not watched it in a long time though, so I don’t remember specifics like nudity, or violent content. Sorry.
5. Life – Discover life on Earth. Not watched.
6. Life Story – Following wild animals in their natural habitat. Not watched.
7. The Last Man on the Moon – Not watched.
8. The Great Alone – a journey about a man attempting to win the Alaskan Iditarod race.
9. Lions: Spy in the Den –  Not watched.
10. Virunga: Gorillas in Peril – Ranger risk their lives to save endangered gorillas. Not watched.
11. Nature’s Great Events – Weather patterns, and seasonal events that create awesome wildlife events. Not watched.
12. Race of Life. Prey or predator, they all fight to win. Not watched.
13. Treasures of the Earth – Uncover the treasures that are right under the Earth’s surface. Not watched.
14. The Pyramid Code – The truth about the pyramids have arrived. Not watched.
15. Shark – They are quick, and hungry. Not watched.
16. Blackfish – Animal slaves for entertainment are dying in their own prisons, due to lack of food, space, and quality nutrition. Countless animals die each year for the sake of human curiosity. Boycott zoos, and marine shows who are just trying to make money off these poor animals.
17. Baby Animals in the Wild. Not watched.
18. Tales by Light – Check out the physical extremes photographers go through to get that shot. What’s it really like to be one of the world’s top photographers? Not watched.
19. Killer Landslides – Entire neighborhoods are knocked out. Not watched.
20. Forces of Nature –  Explaining complex natural forces like shape, color, motion and more. Not watched.
21. Colombia Wild Magic – The amazing wildlife, and fragile ecosystem of Colombia. Not watched.
22. Galapagos  – Interesting wildlife, and unlike most of the planet. Check out the weird and beautiful Galapagos Islands. Not watched.

Available on DVD only as of

02/22/18

1. Maiden Trip – A 14 year old Dutch girl sets sail for a trip around the world. She is 16 when this journey is completed. This awe inspiring movie will ignite passion in your soul to seize the day!

Title not available 🙁 – last time I checked 02/22/18

1. Ireland’s Wild River – A little boring, not sure if the kids will sit through it, but the images are spectacular. Ireland is one of the most beautiful places.
2. Microcomos – See all kinds insects up close and personal. There are no words but a lot of nature sounds and music. There is a little bit of mating going on as well as births and deaths, well murders…GASP! Just kidding, but really a spider killed a grasshopper, well it wrapped it in a cocoon. Nothing to pushy, as long as you don’t mind the “what are they doing questions” if you have not already had to answer those already. Otherwise, I think the kids will enjoy it very much. I did.
3. The life of the birds  (series) – It is really cool to see birds up close and personal. They are so fast sometimes, it is hard to get a good look sometimes.
4. Saving Otter 501 – This is about the 501 otter to be rescued. They are trying to rehabilitate 501. It is a very sweet story. They use a surrogate mother to help rehabilitate this orphan 501 otter pup.
5. Raccoon Nation – Mainly focuses on the urban survival and behavior.
6. Great Zebra Exodus – The stories portrayed may ask for an older audience. It seemed that it was much less gory than ones I have seen previously, but close to the end a dominant zebra kills a baby zebra,  just because it is not his baby. It belonged to a previous dominant zebra. It did show all of that. It did not show up close shots, where you could see the wounds, but you could see it biting neck and legs and picking it up off the ground. Oh I really hated that part. So sad!
7. China’s Terracotta Warriors – We learned about this in our homeschooling. I thought it would be cool to watch. It is a little slow and boring to be honest. They try to build one in the movie which proves to be very hard. Trying to figure out how it was done many years ago proves to be harder than originally thought.
8. Building Pharaoh’s Chariot – This guy studies the chariots for a long time and then decides to build some of them. It was interesting but slow, and hard to keep my attention. If you have a kid who likes to see how things work, and especially wood working it does shows some of that. It is neat how they curve the wood.
9. The National Parks- America’s Best Idea – Talks a bit about history and how National Parks started. It does mention in the beginning that some of the men, were killing Native Americans, and wiping out their houses or villages.
10. Parrot Confidential – I learned some very interesting things from this documentary. Some of the parrots have their own language like a regional speak, and some of them are even bilingual it is believed. How cool is that. They are so smart. They have big brains for birds. I did not know that they live to be 80 or 90 years old. It does capture something close to my heart, which is adopting animals, but this is a lot different than a dog or cat. These are not domesticated animals. They are loud, they bite, and the clean up is not fun. Adopting these birds is not for everybody. The have serious attachments, that if broken will affect them negatively for the rest of their lives. So before adopting one of these wonderful birds, please ask yourself if you are ready for the responsibility of a life long companion (remember they live for 80 or 90 years). This would be a great show for kids. It will teach them a lot of stuff about parrots, and about having a pet!
11. Secrets of the tower of London – I am not sure if children would find this interesting. I enjoyed some of it. There were some very interesting stories and facts in this that I did not know. I definitely learned some new things!
12. China Revealed (series) – The first installment is about The Wall of China. If you are studying it, this would be a great way to add visuals to your learning experience. It is not super interesting but it does contain a lot of information.
    
13. Nature: The Private Life of Deer – An interesting look into the life of deer, how they interact with their environment, and humans. There is some talk about mating, but I don’t think it showed any.
14. Siberian Tiger Quest – I like the story behind this, but a quest it is. It is a quest to find Tigers in the wild, which is very difficult to do apparently. If you would like to learn how to track a Tiger, then this movie is for you!
15. Modern Marvels (series) – The first in the series is all about food trucks. My boys love watching this show. There is lots of cool information in this collection.
    
16. Happy People: A Year in Taiga – Set in Taiga, Russia, following a couple different stories of craftsmen. The narrator speaks English, but the hunters are speaking Russian. If your kids can read captions it is highly educational. One of the hunters does call the female dogs bitches, just so you are aware. It is highly interesting to see how they bend wood, set up traps, fish, survive winter, raise hunting dogs, store food and more. I almost turned it off in the beginning, but I am so glad that I watch the whole thing. It has so much information. An animal (A weasel I think) gets killed by a hunting dog. The hunter tells a story about a bear killing two of his dogs, and then killing the bear.
    
17. Untamed Americas (series) – Sea lions brutally attack baby sea lions. It shows them tossing them about, but it is not terribly bloody. Grizzly bears eat a washed up humpback whale. “Chasing tail” was used as context for penguins mating. Ahem…Oh my! Also, steps…find a female, see if she is single, and bring her a pretty rock. Well, boys there you have it, all you need to know on how to get a girl. 😉 Sea lion kills a penguin in a bloody mess but in the water. You could see a small wound on its back. Dolphins have sex, and a lot of it apparently “they also mate with several males in one day”, creating an unconventional family because they never know who the daddy is”. For some reason they described what the penis of a dolphin looks like and even joke about how the females do not care about size. Yep, I think this one will not be one that I let my children watch. It does not seem very child friendly, and also this was only the first episode!
18. Animal House- No Kill shelter (SERIES) – I watched the first episode in the series. It was very heartwarming. I am a little bias because I got my dog from a rescue, and I truly believe in the cause! It did follow a couple of dogs as they went through the system. It was neat to see there story. I totally cried at the happy ending. I am such a sap!
19. Storm Surfers – This is an interesting look into the world of surfing. Displays some of the biggest waves that are surfed by some of the top surfers. They are stunning to look at.
20. Leave it to Beavers – This is a very interesting and informative video on beavers. It is very interesting to see the ways the beavers affect their surroundings. Both negative and positive impacts are made on the land that surrounds them. There is a beaver that is getting rehabilitated after some teenage boys throwing it around like a football. Geesh, boys get it together.
21. Snow Monkeys – Narrated by Liam Neeson. It is ever so apparent by the voice, and a very good voice for it! This video follows a family of snow monkeys. One of the baby monkeys dies, how sad it is! The last 20 minutes of the video is mostly about mating and shows them mating twice. In all it was a great informative video on monkeys I have never seen before.
22. World’s Wildest City (series) – The first episode is located in Manaus a city in Northern Brazil. It is a wild city because it is slap in the middle of a rainforest. We follow along a troop of monkeys adapting to life in the city. One monkey gets run over by a car. It does not really show the dramatics, but does show the monkey on the side of the road.
    
23. Dawn of the Maya – Archaeologists find new ancient Mayan pyramids, and they explore them. If you are studying the Mayans, this would be a great way to see some of the things that existed in that era. It is not particularly interesting, little kids would probably not care about this, but the older children could learn from it.
24. Secret Yellowstone – Very fascinating video. It does show some animals getting killed. They also show dead carcass’ and do gross things like pull out the teeth and look at the rotting carcass’ to determine a reason for death of bison for instance. They also shot a wolf with a tranquilizer to take measurements and place a tracking collar on it.  It was very informative though.
    
25. Super Carrier – If I had watched this as a child I would have said I have found what I want to do when I grow up. This is a super cool video on what it is like to work on a super carrier, and a look into the pilot’s job too. It does talk about some crew members dying in accidents.
26. Ultimate Tut – This is a very in depth look into King Tut. They explore what it would have been like in his life, his father dies and is made king around nine years old he marries his older sister, and they explore why he may have died. If you are studying King Tut this is a very detailed look into this subject. Way more information here than when we studied it.
    
27. Animal Superpowers – I did not find this interesting. I thought it would be really cool, but I was not impressed. They did some things to show you how snakes use thermal energy to find their pray at night, but the experiment was a little lame. If I had fangs and you bumped a warm balloon into my face I would sink my teeth into it too. Even in the dark I am pretty sure I can find something that just bumped me in the face. They did this to show that the snake knew where the balloon was even in the pitch black. Not. impressed. at. all. It was slow moving also, I don’t think it was active enough to keep the interest of most kids.
28. The Universe (series) – The first in the series talks about comets and asteroids. They have some interesting tests and information.
29. Meet the Coywolf – A new hybrid has formed. Scientist say it is a mix between coyote and wolf, hence the name coywolf. An interesting look into the life of the coywolf, and how it has adapted into being able to live in a city life. It may be good to learn about these animals as a family because they are starting to run into our cities.
30. Mysteries of the Unseen World – I really like this one! It is another microscopic movie. This time you get a chance to see more of the world under the microscope. I am not sure that a toddler would be interested to watch this, but there is nothing that I saw that was inappropriate. I found it interesting, educational & entertaining.
31. More than honey – Very interesting. I definitely learned a lot from this documentary. I thought I knew most of the basics, but surprisingly this went into great detail. They do speak about flowers having sex. It shows bees mating. Also, there are lots of subtitles. Some of the bees farmers in this video are not English speaking, but there is also a narrator that does speak English. There is one English speaking “corporate” kind of bee farmer I am not a fan of. His operation is less than desirable to me. If you are studying about bees this would be a great addition to your lessons. I am not sure all kids will be totally excited to watch this but it is a great learning opportunity!
32. Wildest Latin America (SERIES) –  The first series is about the Amazon rainforest. A big beautiful Harpy Eagle kills a monkey. You get to see a couple different kinds of monkeys. Sloths, ants, and tadpoles oh my! It is neat to see the ecosystem of the rainforest. Great if you are studying the Amazon! It seems fairly kid friendly if you can get through the monkey part.
33. Wildest India (SERIES) –  Interesting look into how the people worship monkeys and rats. There is mention of how these male monkeys take over a troop of monkeys they will kill the babies. Later on in a fight a baby monkey dies and the mom carries it around. It is so sad. A tiger kills a monkey. India has so much amazing and beautiful wildlife.
34. Street Food – Learn about food that is served around the world! Not watched.
35. Farmland – Not watched.
36. Secrets: The Sphinx – Not watched.
37. A Sloth Named Velcro – Sloths are adorable. Not watched.
38. The life of Mammals  (series) – Expect some live births, if you have a weak stomach don’t watch while eating! Very interesting overall it covers many different animals. I only watched a part of the series, so there may be more than what I saw that would not be suitable for some audiences.
39. Wildest Middle East (SERIES) –  Video clips are repeated more than once, just watch the goats. Also, there are some mating scenes. You do get to see a wide variety of animals, and bugs!
40. Wildest Africa – There is some nudity.  Also, shows a couple of dead animals, one was a little gruesome with it’s eyeball gone. This may be better suited for some bigger kids.  Also, it shows some predatory hunts that are gruesome. Very informational. I liked that it will show the true nature of how other people live. It shows a lot of animals, and there is a big focus on how the water affects all living things on this land.
41. Wildest IndoChina (SERIES) – This is a great look into the wild side of China. They have so much wildlife. The narrator teases that an alligator will eat a monkey. I looks dramatized, the monkey lives. Praying mantis’ are master hunters, they eat several bugs. If you see anything look at the biggest flower in the world called Rafflesia, beautiful but apparently it stinks really bad!. It is spectacular! It talk a little about mating but it is not overbearing.
42. Born to Explore – He’s got a passion for adventure. Not watched.

Other cool Homeschooling links

Make a transportation Museum

Free homeschooling resources 101

Free homeschooling resources 102

Free homeschooling resources 103

free geography resources

I found so many great titles on Netflix under documentaries! Many of these subjects we are either interested in or we have studied in school or plan to study very soon. Homeschooling with Netflix is great! I love using visual learning to back up what we have read online and in books. It really helps tie in the whole picture together!

Some of these are series and in most occasions, I only watched the first episode in order to write the commentary. The other series may have scenes or unappropriated language for young children. View all of these at your own discretion. Also, videos come and go on Netflix, if you come across one that is not available on Netflix anymore please drop me a comment below to let me know. I will keep the commentary just in case it comes back, but I will mark it as unavailable at this time.

I will try to continue to add to this list. I feel this is a good start. If you find that a movie is not available anymore please leave me a comment so that I can put a note on there. I will keep the commentary up just in case it comes back! We all have different views and opinions, so please do your own research before taking my word for it, especially if you are easily offended or have very small children. Thanks so much for reading. Happy homeschooling!

 

Thank you for joining us for homeschooling with Netflix. Check out homeschooling 101, 102, 103, and my free geography resources, for fun games, cool websites that are all free and fun learning!

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