Amidst the global outbreak of Coronavirus, many are told to stay at home. As we have learned, a forced lockdown is no fun! You aren’t allowed to accept guests, enjoy your weekend brunch at your favorite spot or go watch a sports game of some sort. The great news, there’s time for learning which you’ve always wanted but most likely lacked.

To support those forced to join the office exodus, many course are being offered free of charge. The stars are aligned. You now have the free time and access to the world’s best knowledge bases. Let’s make this uncertain time we are living in as productive as possible for you. 

Learn A New Language Online For Free

You can do this. You can finally take your Spanish to the new level. It’s a realistic goal if you have these language websites and apps available to you. 

Duolingo 

Duolingo is a huge platform where language learning is split into small interactive challenges. You can choose your own path, unlock rewards, and decide to learn more than one language.

HelloTalk

With this language platform, you’re killing two birds with one stone. Learn the language by chatting with native speakers. Apart from the web platform, it is also available on iOS and Android for your for when you are on the move once again!

Memrise

On Memrise you can watch and learn real conversational language from native speakers. Receive a personalized learning experience that gives you just the right level of challenge to keep you motivated. They use a variety of fun and proven memory techniques that will speed up your learning. For those busy bees, you can download the app on iOS or Android to pick up new phrases whenever you have a free moment in your day.

Learn To Play An Instrument

Have you been itching to play that piano or guitar which has just been sitting there? Now is as good a time as any to learn.

Piano Nanny

This excellent educational site is a free public service. The instructor for the course is award-winning film composer and Jazz musician Clinton S. Clark. Clinton is member of ASCAP and The Society of Composers & Lyricists.

Justin Guitar

Often cited as the best guitar instruction to be found anywhere online. By keeping it completely free, Justin Sandercoe, a well-known UK-based guitarist, has given the opportunity to learn guitar to everyone. Those who are shy, poor or simply too busy to make regular lessons can take lessons from his site.

His approach is to be patient. Learn one thing well and be able to use it before you learn more. The method works. Many hundreds of thousands of people around the world have benefited from the lessons on this site.

Take Free Online Exercise Classes

Want more movement than walking from room-to-room all day but worried about venturing outside? Here are just a few of the more popular online alternatives for getting you back into motion.

Yoga with Adriene

When it comes to online yoga classes, over 6 million people trust Adriene. In the playlists, you’ll find 30-day challenges for regular yoga practice. They work equally well for complete beginners and people who love sweating at their local gyms.

PopSugar Fitness

POPSUGAR Fitness offers fresh fitness tutorials, workouts, and exercises that will help you on your road to healthy living, weight loss, and stress relief. Check out Class FitSugar, their do-it-along-with-us real-time workout show hosted by Anna Renderer. She will inspire you to sweat alongside fitness experts and Hollywood’s hottest celebrity trainers.

Please click on the highlighted link for a longer list of adult online exercises classes.

Take Free Online Art Classes

Always wanted to refine your drawing or painting skills but never had the time. Now is your chance to do so.

Rapid Fire Art Drawing Lessons

Rapid Fire Art is just what it sounds like. The instructor, an experienced artist named Darlene, describes her videos as “a series of fun and easy tutorials which will develop your drawing skills quickly.” The lessons are broken into brief and structured videos that are part of a larger lesson plan. There are two to three lessons in each of the five levels.

Jerry’s Artarama Drawing Lessons

These lessons are taught by professional artists with degrees to prove it. The topics are vast and wide-ranging. Instead of focusing on the basics of sketching a face, the website offers quick classes in anatomy, animals, landscapes, and collages.

Free Art Tutorials: Painting & Drawing Lessons

Artists Network offers free art tutorials. They are committed to providing artists of every skill level accessible and up-to-date instruction on painting and drawing techniques. The skills which allow artists to take their creative abilities to the next level.

You’ll find clear, insightful, step-by-step art demonstrations as well as tips and troubleshooting techniques from the best instructors teaching today here. Every art medium you wish to explore can be here along with amazing tutorials on their most popular subject matter. Whether you are a beginner or well on your journey as an artist, you will find what you need in their free art library of resources for painting and drawing lessons.

Take Free Online Baking/Cooking Classes

Now that more restaurants are open for pick up and delivery, perhaps these skills are not as necessary as it has been. However, if you still wish to refine your baking/cooking skills you still have some time to do so.

Bake It Easy w/Nestlé’s Head Baker, Meredith Tomason

Nestlé Toll House is doing a “Bake It Easy” online baking series featuring their head baker, Meredith Tomason. The free tutorials, which are posted on the company’s Instagram page, feature mouth-watering recipes.

Bread Ahead Bakery Baking Lessons

Their main focus is to keep doing what they do best and hopefully spread some much needed positivity and joy while they are at it. Since we can’t to to them, then they are coming to us. Everyday at 2pm on Instagram Live they will be sharing their favourite baking lessons with us.

Quarantine Cooking (Episode 1) — Jo’s Chocolate Chip Cookies

Fixer Upper star, cookbook author, and interior designer Joanna Gaines is also taking her baking smarts to YouTube to whip up some treats, including chocolate chip cookies. The video does not include the recipe. However, it mentions you can find it in the Magnolia Table cookbook.

Antoni’s Cooking Lessons in Quarantine

Celebrity chef and Queer Eye star Antoni Porowski can be seen showing off his cooking skills daily on Instagram. His videos include quick tips and lessons on cooking with pantry staples which you might already have at home.

Kitchen Quarantine

Even if you absolutely abhor cooking, when else will you have the chance to learn from a Michelin chef? Massimo Bottura, whose name is linked with one of Italy’s finest restaurants, Osteria Francescana, recently announced the launch of his Instagram cooking show. It’s called Kitchen Quarantine and it’s a fun video guide to cooking basic meals at home. 

Take Free Online Crochet/Hand Sewing Classes

Always wanted to learn how to crochet or hand sewing but there was never enough time? Here’s your chance to do so!

Craftyminx Crochet School

This set of nearly two dozen free online crochet lessons is one of the best ways for a complete beginner to learn the art of crocheting. You can start from scratch to learn about the materials necessary for crocheting and how to use them. Then you can progress through the crochet lessons to practice single crochet, double crochet, and other basic crochet stitches. As you continue onto the later lessons, you can learn shaping, texture, blocking, and reading crochet patterns. Each lesson comes with a 15 to 20-minute tutorial video that teaches you how to perform that task. This is a fantastic complete guide to crocheting. It’s all available online for free.

Red Heart Yarns Free Online Crochet Lessons

Most of the major yarn companies and crochet magazines offer free online tutorials to help you learn how to crochet. Red Heart Yarns has one of the most up-to-date and complete lists of tutorials. They cover everything from the very basic such as how to hold a crochet hook to beginner crochet stitches. The more advanced stitches and techniques are taught as well. Furthermore, they offer a free crochet e-book for beginners called “Crochet Made Easy”.

Hand Sewing on Instructables

Even if you sew primarily on a machine, being able to sew well by hand will allow you to finish every project you make in the cleanest, most professional looking way. Hand sewing is also the best way to mend and make repairs.

By following along with this class, you’ll learn a variety of stitches and techniques which will make you become excellent at hand sewing.

Hand Sewing on Sewing is Cool

Whether you’re completely new to hand sewing or you’ve got a couple of projects under your belt, the lessons on this site will walk you thru everything you need to know.

We’ll be discussing free educational classes to take during lockdown in another article coming soon! If you have any other ideas in which we did not cover within this post, please let us know within the Comments section.

This list is by no means an exhaustive one. If you do not find anything of interest on this list, you can Google your criterion and see what pops up. Let us know if you find something our readers might be interested in within the Comments section of this post.