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Being a mom has always been hard work. That said, these days it can feel more challenging than ever. Surveys show moms are still generally expected to handle most chores around the home, even when both spouses have full-time jobs.

With so much to do, moms often put their own needs last, but it’s not okay to neglect self-care. On the contrary, attending to your own needs is essential. If you don’t take care of yourself, you won’t be able to take care of others in the long run.

That’s why busy moms should keep the following self-care tips in mind. From saving time by having meals delivered for kids to combining self-care activities, even if you have a packed schedule, they’ll help you find time for yourself.

Make it a Priority

Odds are good there are certain tasks throughout the week that, if you don’t literally enter them into a schedule, are at least prioritized in your mental to-do list. Self-care needs to be one of them. 

Passively telling yourself you’ll make room for a rewarding or relaxing experience isn’t enough to make yourself actually follow through on your plans. When you’re in the middle of a busy week, it becomes easy to forget about self-care if it’s not treated with the same priority as your other major responsibilities.

Make a point of scheduling self-care activities every week. Doing so makes you more likely to actually find time for them.

Exercise with Friends

Staying fit is key to self-care. Experts consistently find that working out is simply one of the healthiest and most effective ways to reduce stress in your life. So is spending time with friends.

If you don’t think you have time for both activities in a typical week, you can combine them by working out with a friend or family member. This is a simple way to optimize your self-care routine when you have a busy schedule.

Choose Playlists Wisely

You probably have many weekly tasks that give you the opportunity to listen to music, podcasts, or audiobooks. Whether you’re driving or prepping a meal, use this time wisely.

Studies show that listening to music you enjoy helps reduce stress. Additionally, learning about interesting topics can also yield major mental health benefits. The main point to remember is that you shouldn’t choose what you listen to randomly. Put together a few playlists featuring your favorite tunes, podcasts, or books, and listen to them when you’re completing regular chores.

Get Enough Sleep

Don’t fall prey to the idea that you need to skip sleep to get everything done!

Yes, it’s easy to think you’re being more productive by going to bed later or getting up earlier, but in the long run, lack of sleep will prevent you from being your best self. You’re much better off getting a full eight hours every night.

Ask for Help

You also shouldn’t give in to the urge to be Supermom. You’re human, and that means you may need some help from time to time. Getting comfortable with asking for help will make it easier to find more time for self-care. Whether it’s a spouse, friend, or another family member, there’s a good chance someone in your life can take on a few of your responsibilities when you’re simply too busy to handle everything on your plate. You can also look for ways to reduce your workload, such as having meals delivered instead of prepping them yourself all of the time.

If you want to be a good mother, partner, and employee, you need to be as mentally and physically healthy as possible. These tips will help you reach that goal.

Rae Steinbach is a graduate of Tufts University with a combined International Relations and Chinese degree. After spending time living and working abroad in China, she returned to NYC to pursue her career and continue curating quality content. Rae is passionate about travel, food, and writing for Yumble. 

Learning doesn’t have to take place in a traditional classroom setting. With the help of the Internet, teens and adults can gain a wealth of information and build new skills on their own. From free textbooks to courses from top universities, HelpTeaching.com has gathered the best free online resources to help you learn online for free. Whether you’re 16 or 96, there’s no excuse to not learn something new today.

We’ve organized our resources by category and have noted whether each resource is best for teens (T), college (C), or everyone (E) to help you find exactly what you need.

Books

Reading is one of the best ways to gain new information. These resources provide free access to some of the best-known books in history and high-quality academic textbooks. Rather than spending hundreds of dollars on these books, teens and adults can learn from them for free.

Spectra, a comic book series from The American Physical Society, helps teens learn about physics in a very engaging format. At least eight different volumes can be accessed for free on Physics Central and will help teens learn how physics applies to every day and superhero life. T

Textbooks

Bookboon delivers textbooks on subjects such as IT, language, technology, and career advice in a free PDF format. These books are ideal for adult and community college learners. C

Textbook Revolution contains a database of free textbooks for many different subject areas. Books are organized by subject and searchable by title. C

Free Tech Books is a list of links to free technology-based books. Many books cover advanced topics related to engineering, computers, and mathematics. C

Open Stax provides college students with free, open source textbooks designed to meet their course standards and objectives. Books focus on science and math courses. C

Open Textbook Library was created to draw attention to the open textbook movement. Its collection includes a selection of free textbooks covering different subject areas, including some appropriate for high school. E

Classic Texts and Literature

The Harvard Classics are a collection of fifty books designed to cover the major areas of philosophy, religion, history, and literature. Many organizations, including Bartleby, offer access to them for free. E

Project Gutenberg has thousands of free eBooks featuring texts in the public domain. Books include classic literature and non-fiction pieces. E

Bookstacks is a free collection of literature that features titles from authors such as Agatha Christie, Charles Dickens, and Leo Tolstoy. E

Google Books allows users to look up published books by title and preview many of those books for free. It’s a great resource for research. E

BookRix offers a large selection of free eBooks for download. Many books are works of fiction published by Indie authors. E

Free Booksy helps users find free eBooks for Nook and Kindle. Sign up for the free e-mail list or read the blog to see which books are available for free on certain days of the week. E

Read Any Book allows users to read a variety of eBooks by both Indie and well-known authors for free in their free online e-reader. E

Audio

Free audio learning resources make it easy for teens and adults to learn on the go. Audio books and podcasts are great to listen to while running or riding in the car. They can also be more entertaining than learning from a more traditional text.

Gutenberg Audio has a large collection of audio versions of public domain books. Many of the books are in English, but the site also has a huge selection of audio books in other languages, such as Chinese, Spanish, Hungarian, Tagalog, and more. E

Loyal Books, formerly Books Should be Free, features thousands of free audio books for download. Many books are fiction, but there’s also a large selection of non-fiction books to choose from. E

Internet Archive: Audio isn’t just limited to eBooks. It also features recordings of famous speeches and popular songs throughout history. E

Librivox is a site full of public domain audio books. All books are read by volunteers. You can download one to listen to or volunteer to record books yourself. C

Learn Out Loud offers a collection of free audio books, audio courses, and other learning materials. Be sure to search under the “Free Stuff” tab because the site does offer some books for sale. C

Podcasts are more popular than ever these days and many educational podcasts are still going strong. Browse the available podcasts on iTunes to learn something new. E

Podbean offers a platform for hosting and listening to free podcasts. You’ll find podcasts on a range of topics. E

Videos

Videos offer a wide range of learning opportunities. Many video series help teens and adults build practical skills, such as how to fix flat tire or how to cook an omelet. Other videos feature lectures and narration from experts in the field.

Top Documentary Films makes many fascinating documentaries available for free. Documentaries are available on topics such as health, politics, human rights, and religion. E

DIY Network helps you spruce up your home by providing free online episodes of its most popular shows and video-based blogs with tips and tricks. C

Ted Talks have become well-known for the expert advice they contain. Watch as experts in their fields share their wisdom with you. E

BrightTalk focuses on providing free business and webinars to those interested in the business world. Find resources in areas such as finance, human resources, marketing, and information technology. C

All Things Science has transferred its wealth of science-based videos to Daily Motion. There teens and adults can learn about scientific innovations and see how science connects to daily life. E

CosmoLearning combines free online courses with videos and documentaries to help students learn about a variety of subjects. E

MIT Video brings the quality of MIT lectures to your computer. The videos all focus on science and technology-related content with over 100 channels of specific topics to choose from. C

@Google Talks are similar to Ted Talks and feature many professionals sharing their knowledge. This includes talks with celebrities and musicians too. E

Videolectures.net takes college lectures, academic talks, and conference videos, and organizes them into a free video site. The site has over 20,000 videos in many different languages. C

Courses/Lessons

Finding the time and the money to take college courses can be expensive. Through the MOOC and Open Course movements, teens and adults can access courses from the top universities for free. These resources help people reap the benefits from experts in the field and make it easier to explore topics of interest.

HelpTeaching.com’s own collection of math, science, and English lessons combines entertaining video and text-based lessons with short, interactive quizzes. Teachers and parents can choose lessons for kids to complee on their own or can incorporate them into whole class and small group based lessons. Lessons are organized by subject, grade-level, and length. Teachers and parents can also create their own tests and quizzes to accompany the lessons, and then administer them using our Test Room feature.

Subject-Specific Courses

OER Commons is a large collection of free open education resources designed for students in primary school through adult learners. Best of all, you can combine resources to create your own textbook or course and then share it with others or save it for future reference. E

iCivics features a collection of free lesson plans and games decided to help teens learn about civics. T

A Crash Course in World History teaches you the history of the world in 42 episodes. E

My Own Business, Inc. helps adults by providing them with all the information they need to start their own business. C

SBA Learning Center is designed to teach wanna-be business owners the ins and outs of owning a small business. There’s even a section geared towards young entrepreneurs. E

Excel Easy contains a large selection of lessons designed to help computer users learn how to navigate through the various features of Excel. This is a quality resource for teachers, students, and even those in the business world. E

College Courses

MIT Open Courseware allows you to access the content of MIT courses from the comfort of your own home. Search by topic, course number, or department. C

Open Culture has collected links to thousands of free courses, movies, and other educational materials available online. Their resources include free certificate courses. E

iTunes U is a collection of courses, audio files, and video designed to help you learn on your computer or any of your Apple devices. E

Wikiversity is a collection of educational photos, projects, and lesson ideas designed to help people learn from one another. E

Course Buffet finds open courses, tags them, and makes them easier for users to access. You’ll find top courses from many universities. C

Coursera partners with over 100 universities and other educational organizations to provide over 1,000 free online courses. E

EdX is another site that makes it easy to find free open courses from top universities. While all courses are free, you can also earn college credit for some courses by paying a small fee. C

OEDB offers free open courses from many top universities. It also includes information on financial aid and scholarships to help those who want to go back to school. E

Reference Materials

Looking up a random piece of information doesn’t have to require pulling out a dictionary or buying an entire set of encyclopedias. Free online reference materials make it easy for teens and adults to look up information such as the definition of a word, stats on a particular country, or the peak growing season in a region.

Almanac.com is a go-to resource for all things nature and weather-related. It also offers resources on cooking, baking, home, and health. Just as people used to use the paper-based version of the Farmer’s Almanac for information in the past, you will find this website to be a handy reference. E

Dictionaries

Dictionary.com offers a free, online dictionary. You can also learn by checking out the word of the day. E

RhymeZone is a great resource for budding poets and others who like to rhyme. Simply type in a word and find a list of words that rhyme. E

Freelang provides free foreign language dictionaries which can be useful when attempting to learn a foreign language. E

Encyclopedias

Encyclopedia.com allows you to search over 100 different encyclopedias and other reference books to get the best information. E

Wikipedia is definitely one of the most popular encyclopedias online. It’s a great source for initial research, but facts should always be double-checked. E

Other Reference Sources

Goodreads contains reviews of books and also has a search feature that allows users to find quotes from popular books. It’s a great resource, particularly when writing a paper. E

Internet Public Library for teens helps teens finds books, websites, and other resources for learning. It’s also a great site for homework help. T

Ref Desk highlights some of the best reference websites and organizes different reference resources into categories to make it easy to find whatever you need. E

World Atlas offers maps from around the world, along with articles about where to travel and key information about different countries. E

General Knowledge/Trivia

Life-long learners aren’t always focused on taking a course or learning about a specific topic. Many times, they simply enjoy gathering random information. The Internet is full of many free resources designed to provide them with just that. Not all of the information is useful, but it is certainly interesting, and you never know when a piece of information, like 10 different ways to use a gumball, could come in handy.

Mental Floss is a magazine and a website dedicated to providing readers with random facts and information. You can learn all about history, literature, and science, as well as fun facts about pop culture topics, such as television shows and movies. E

How-To

HowStuffWorks explains just what you think it would – how stuff works. Search by keyword or category. E

WikiHow is a how-to website that teaches you how to do almost anything you want to do with step-by-step instructions, pictures, and videos. E

Instructables offers instructions for all sorts of DIY projects. They range from home projects to crafts and science experiments. E

LearnThat.com focuses on helping you learn new information related to business, personal finance, and technology. It does so through a series of blogs and video tutorials. C

Questions and Answers

Whyzz is focused on providing answers to questions. Type in a question to search the Whyzz database for answers. E

Quora bills itself as the best answer to any question. On this site, you can search for answers to a question that has already been asked or post your own question and wait for others to answer. C

Trivia

Buzzfeed is known for its funny videos and slideshows. While a lot of its content is humorous, it’s also a great place to learn something new. C

Bored.com encourages you to end boredom by learning something new. It is full of fun articles and activities. E

Daily Infographic highlights an infographic each day, making it a good way to learn a large amount of information at once. E

Homework Help

Shmoop offers a series of online courses and study guides designed to help high school students. Each comes with a dose of Shmoop-style humor. T

SparkNotes is known for its literature guides, but also offers many study guides for other subjects and major standardized tests. T

CPM Homework Help offers help with math homework at the high school level, focusing on courses such as algebra and calculus. T

No matter how old you are, you’re never too old to learn. For more free educational resources, check out the Ultimate Guide to Free Online Self-Learning for Kids. Don’t forget to check out our Ultimate Guide to Teaching Science and Top 100 Free Education Sites too.

What are some of your favorite resources for self-learning? We’d love to hear them!

It might start by simply hiding behind their mother as a toddler and progress into a sense of anxiety so strong it inhibits everything from classroom instruction to proper socialization.

While many children are boisterous and creative through imaginative play, some struggle deeply with shyness.

Shyness has positive points, but when it is so extreme that it affects their daily life in a negative way, then there may be ways to help.

Group activities for shy kids can be very beneficial when executed correctly. Timid kids can learn to find strength in numbers and to be accepted in ways they previously feared.

It might seem the worst thing you could do is put a shy child in the middle of a team or arranged social circle – but in many instances it can also help.

Classroom Structure

While some kids may never be the spokesperson of the group, they may contribute ideas to a more outgoing member of the team and feel proud where they otherwise would’ve just been silent.

An attentive teacher will recognize a shy student who is struggling, and will often try to help.

One way to help is to arrange the classroom so that desks are in pairs or small clusters rather than individual rows. This promotes teamwork in the classroom – the various clusters of desks work together to come up with an answer, or they brainstorm together for an activity.

Leading the Way

Many shy children tend to be excellent students or independent workers.

Why not tap into these positives by asking them to mentor younger children?

Whether in the classroom or on the soccer field, the opportunity to build relationships with younger kids can make the shy child feel more comfortable and able to speak up more in other life situations.

This works even better if they can be paired with another to assist a handful of younger ones. This mentorship system is the core of the Montessori school structure – it has been known to raise confident and capable children, and in some instances, abolish shyness.

Get Active in the Classroom

Although it may seem a recipe for disaster, one of the best activities for shy kids is group physical activities or sports. They experience victories without having everything rest on their shoulders, but also learn the important lesson of other people counting on them to be confident and do well.

Team activities have proven time and again to be effective in bringing children out of their shell, and don’t include the pressure of individual sports like gymnastics or figure skating.

When Shyness is a Problem

If a child is so shy that they are experiencing anxiety attacks, problems even walking into the schoolyard or signs of depression, encourage the child’s parents to seek the help of a health care provider right away.

While many kids are shy and go through life in a simpler, quieter way, shyness can sometimes lead to more serious issues. Sometimes even a one-time therapy session with a quality counselor can get to the bottom of the situation and help the little one to feel more confident and secure in who they are.

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Sarah Antrim is a blogger and social media manager for ActivityHero, a website that helps parents find, plan and book kids classes and summer camps. She blogs extensively about kids activities, providing parents fun and time-saving tips on how to engage kids. As a mother of two, Sarah firmly believes in the company’s mission to keep kids active & healthy.

Math month is celebrated in April each year. Why? Math has an image problem, a negative reputation of sorts. If math teachers received a nickel for every time a student asked, “When will I ever need to use this after I graduate?” – well, do the math.

At it’s heart, math is a critical tool in solving many problems in the real world. On the face of it, students probably don’t realize that math and statistics are central in ensuring our messaging and internet are secure, that modelling climate change, trends, and other big data is all math-based, and that genetic advancements and medical research has math at their heart. And everyday, the applications of math is widening into ever more sectors, such as biotechnology, energy, business, sustainability, medicine, transport and AI, to name just some. 

Without math, we simply lack a driver of innovation and the ability to either increase or decrease complexity.

Mathematics Awareness Week was established in 1986 with the hope of increasing public appreciation of math. It was later changed to a month-long celebration of math. Take advantage of this math month and explore the wonder of the world of numbers by engaging your students or child with one of the following activities that we think they’ll love.

Math Month Activity #1: Math Poetry

As it happens, the month of April is also Poetry Month, so why not combine the two themes and create some fun math poetry? This can take a number of forms:

• You can create poetry about math
• A poem can be created around a mathematical concept like the Fibonacci sequence
• Or you can use actual math to create a poem or limeric, like this example
  

Math Month Activity #2: Ask Fermi Questions

Quick! How many drops of water are in a gallon? No calculator allowed! Nobel Prize winning physicist Enrico Fermi was known for his capacity to perform rapid mental estimations. The goal of answering a Fermi question is to find an answer on the correct order of magnitude instead of an exact number. For example, I would estimate there are about 20 drops of water in a teaspoon and 768 teaspoons in a gallon. To make it easier, I can round 768 to 800 and guess that a gallon has around 16,000 drops of water. Whether the precise answer is 10,000 or 90,000 does not matter for a Fermi question, what matters is the answer is on the correct order of magnitude (10⁴ in this case). To get started, visit fermiquestions.com.

Another fun variation of this is to have an estimation jar. Fill it with jelly beans, or any other filling like dried beans, buttons, or marbles, and students can take turns estimating (or guessing!) what the answer is. The closest answer wins the prize – or if it’s something like buttons or beans, a better prize 🙂

Math Month Activity #3: Write to Manufacturers about Metric Misuse

Ask your students to make a list of products at home and record the metric labeling for volume or mass printed on the labels exactly as they appear on the products. Then have students compare the labels with the U.S. Metric Association’s guide to “Correct SI-Metric Usage.” Chances are, at least one of the products will be metrically mislabeled. Next, have each student write to a manufacturer and either point out incorrect metric usage (politely!) or thank them for promoting good metric usage. As a bonus, many manufacturers will kindly respond to student letters.

Math Month Activity #4: Explore Math in the Workplace

Dispel the myth that students will never use math once they leave school by inviting professionals to your class to share how they use math in their careers. Take a field trip a local business willing to give a tour and discuss the importance of math in the workplace. Students may be surprised to learn how often math is used outside the classroom. For more information, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics offers a Periodic Table of Stem Careers.

Math Month Activity #5: Watch a Math Movie

What student doesn’t love a movie? From The Theory of Everything to Stand and Deliver to Moneyball to Good Will Hunting, finding a movie featuring math content isn’t difficult. Get started by checking out this list of movies featuring positive math themes. Also, read Test Designer’s article on using movies in the classroom.

Bonus Math Month Activities: Read a Math Book

Who doesn’t love a good book? And if you can get one about math that isn’t  a textbook, all the better. We suggest Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi by Wayne Geehan (or you can check out a reading of it YouTube). Characters with fun names like Sir Cumference and Lady Di Ameter, bring light-hearted fun on an adventure that see’s our hero turned into a fire-breathing dragon and solving riddles and math puzzles to change him back.

Further Reading

Read our articles, “How to Write Higher-Order Math Questions” and “Top STEM Competitions – Could Your Student Be the Next Winner?” for more math education ideas.

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Joe Pizzuto-Pomaco is an educator, writer, and editor who has taught in public and private schools 15 years.