What are some awesome science YouTube channels for preteens?
cross-posted from: https://retrofed.com/c/[email protected]/p/2196841/what-are-some-awesome-science-youtube-channels-for-preteens
I have a younger sibling who watches YouTube all day, and I have just installed (among other things, including Fedora KDE!) FreeTube on their laptop, and it has a convenient profiles feature to separate, for instance, educational and not so educational content.
What are some good sciencey channels that are easy to follow and are run be nice people (rather than bots or similar)? I've got SciShow, Clint's Reptiles, and a few others already, but what are some good ones that you all know? They are currently interested in animals, particularly sea creatures and reptiles, but other topics are fun too (history, chemistry, CS, whatever are all good!)
21 replies
I don't know if these will appeal to someone that young, but you can have my short list of good educational content for your consideration:
I also second steve mould
NileRed and NileBlue for Chemistry.
Might be a bit of a bad influence on that age range lol
Even he thought he went too far with a video casting a gigantic cube of lead indoors recently 😅
Steve Mould: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEIwxahdLz7bap-VDs9h35A
Would also definitely recommend Terrestrials, Radiolab's "family friendly nature podcast": https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab-kids
Mould is not really for pre teens.
Why not? Genuine question.
Underestimating them, are we?
Now keep in mind it's been years since my son was young. But Mark Rober is pretty entertaining, the backyard scientist used to be one of my son's favorites (though looks like he hasn't been active in a about 5 years, but he's got a pretty good back catalog),
but superficial on science.
Shame to hear he isn't actively posting. My kids and I also enjoyed watching him!
Kurzgesagt
Daily dose of science. They post about once a week and there is usually one or two detailed science explanations from scientists. The host often gives a brief explanation about why something is happening in a video clip.
I don't know how much preteens will like them, but there are channels like MinuteEarth, MinutePhysics, MinuteFood, which I've occasionally enjoyed watching, and think I would have if they had existed when I was a preteen too.
I recommend Learning Curve. It's mostly about astronomy or the universe, but sometimes also about other things: https://www.youtube.com/@LearningCurveScience
Their description:
Smarter Every Day
Mark Rober
Kurzgesagt
Veritasium
My 10 uear old likes to watch NileRed.
Some of my favs:
History/Archeology
Ancient Americas Archeology of native North & Central American peoples
Modern History TV
Townsends Exploring 18th century life
Zoology/Animal-stuff
Casual Geographic *
Moth Light Media
Lindsay Nikole *
Ze Frank's True Facts This is the kid-friendly version of his channel
Astronomy/Astrophysics
Dr Becky
PBS Space Time
Both of these might be a bit above a pre-teen's understanding. I would have loved these as a kid, complexity be damned.
General Science
PBS Nova
Earth Science
PBS Terra
Chemistry
ACS Reactions
Art & Literature
Great Art Explained
Great Books Explained
*: language/subject matter/style might not be a good fit for younger children.
Crash Course.
Watch all the Crash Courses.
If you can somehow get it, any Bill Nye the Science Guy.
I always enjoy a 3blue1brown video, depending on their current intuition they probably be able to parse his explanations