LearningMole gives South African teachers, parents and home educators free access to 800+ videos and 3,300+ resources covering maths, English, science and more, all created by a former primary school teacher. You create an account, sign in, and the library opens. There’s no trial period, no card details, and nothing sits behind a payment.
Everything works exactly the same outside the UK as it does inside it. The content itself is British-made, built around a British teacher’s classroom experience, but the account has no country restrictions. A teacher in Cape Town or Durban signs in the same way a teacher in Belfast does, and gets the same library, the same videos, and the same worksheets, with nothing held back and no additional cost for using it from outside the UK.
This guide sits alongside all our teaching resources and points you toward the main South African government platforms, CAPS-aligned materials, multilingual resources and support networks that fill in the rest of the picture. It’s built for three audiences at once: classroom teachers looking for material that saves planning time, parents trying to help with a homework problem that’s gone sideways, and home educators building a week of learning from scratch.
It costs nothing: create an account and the full library opens immediately, with no trial period and nothing held back. It works anywhere, with no UK-only restriction on the account, the videos, or the downloadable resources. And it covers maths, English, science, history, and geography videos and worksheets for children aged 3 to 11, alongside South Africa-specific platforms and CAPS materials detailed below.
Michelle Connolly, LearningMole founder, has over 15 years of experience as a primary school teacher, including time teaching internationally, and every video on the platform is built the way she would have built it for a class of children sitting in front of her rather than as a generic explainer aimed at no one in particular.
Michelle Connolly, LearningMole founder, has over 15 years of experience as a primary school teacher, including time teaching internationally. Every video on the platform is built the way she would have built it for a class of children sitting in front of her, rather than as a generic explainer aimed at no one in particular.
“The videos I wanted as a teacher were the ones that showed the thing happening, not the ones that talked around it. That’s exactly what we’ve tried to build for teachers and parents in South Africa, wherever they’re teaching from.” , Michelle Connolly, LearningMole founder, with over 15 years of experience
Teachers tend to use the platform in short bursts rather than as a full scheme of work. A video on equivalent fractions or the water cycle opens the lesson and does the explaining, which frees the teacher to move around the room and work with the children who need the most support, rather than standing at the front talking through the same concept for 20 minutes. Once the video has done the initial explaining, the matching worksheet gives children something to work through independently while the teacher checks understanding in smaller groups.
Parents mostly arrive with one specific problem rather than a general interest in browsing a library. A child stuck on a maths method the school teaches differently from how the parent remembers learning it, a spelling pattern that will not stick, no matter how many times it is repeated, or a topic that came home in a workbook and made no sense to anyone at the kitchen table. Watching the short video together and then working through the linked worksheet is usually enough to get past the sticking point without turning homework into a longer battle than it needs to be.
Home educators, who make up a meaningful share of the people searching for teaching resources in South Africa, tend to use more of the library than either teachers or parents do. Because LearningMole’s videos are sequenced within each subject, they give a home education routine something to build a week around, rather than starting from a blank page every Monday. Many South African home educators combine this approach with a CAPS-aligned curriculum provider for official record-keeping and use LearningMole for the explanation, practice, and revision that sit alongside it.
Because South African schools work across eleven official languages and serve families with very different levels of internet access, most teachers and parents here treat LearningMole as a supplement to CAPS materials and local-language resources rather than a wholesale replacement for them. The sections below cover where to find that local, curriculum-specific material.
The South African Department of Basic Education runs the main national platforms that teachers rely on for CAPS-aligned material, usually the first stop for anyone building a term’s worth of planning from scratch. SchoolNet South Africa’s teacher resources span a wide range, from Grade R resource kits to Grade 12 study guides, and the Thutong Portal hosts government-backed curriculum content directly.
Siyavula covers mathematics and physical sciences content aligned to South African curriculum standards, with textbooks and practice material that map onto what is taught in Grades 10 to 12. Zero-rated access matters in a context where data costs remain a genuine barrier; both MTN and Vodacom offer zero-rated access to certain educational platforms, so learners can use them without their data allowances being deducted from limited monthly plans.
Mindset Learn provides curriculum-matched video content across subjects and grades. As Michelle Connolly, LearningMole founder, with over 15 years of experience, puts it: “The best educational platforms fit around the teaching a school is already doing, rather than asking teachers to change how they work. Free, curriculum-aligned material that saves planning time is what actually gets used, rather than tried once and abandoned.”
Other platforms worth bookmarking include Khan Academy for free courses and practice exercises, as well as BCX Learn and the Vodacom e-School, which are zero-rated on their respective mobile networks.
Your teaching toolkit should include the CAPS-aligned Rainbow Workbooks for Grades R to 9, which give structured activities designed for immediate classroom use. Foundation Phase teachers can draw on the Big Books collection and interactive workbooks for Grades R to 4, both built to support multilingual classrooms where children may be encountering formal schooling in a language that is not their home language.
For mathematics, the MST Workbooks cover Grades 7 to 9 with structured practice that follows the CAPS sequence, and GeoGebra brings geometry, algebra and statistics together in a single free package that works well for demonstrating a concept visually before children move to written work.
For reading development, the African Storybook Project offers picture storybooks across multiple African languages, valuable for Foundation Phase teachers building a home-language reading habit before children transition into English or Afrikaans instruction. Nal’ibali provides multilingual stories connected to learners’ home languages.
Physical Sciences teachers can use PhET simulations, developed by the University of Colorado, to help students grasp abstract concepts, such as circuits or chemical reactions, through interactive models that would otherwise require equipment that many schools lack.
South African classrooms work across eleven official languages, and finding quality teaching material in each one remains a genuine, ongoing challenge. The Department of Basic Education’s Mother Tongue-based Bilingual Education programme uses a child’s home language as the foundation for early learning, then builds additional-language skills from that base rather than asking children to learn new concepts and a new language simultaneously.
“When children can access learning materials in their mother tongue, they build confidence and understanding more effectively,” says Michelle Connolly, LearningMole founder, with over 15 years of experience. “That foundation supports how they pick up additional languages later, because they are not trying to learn a new idea and a new language at exactly the same moment.”
Useful starting points for building a multilingual classroom library include graded readers available across all eleven official languages, mathematics workbooks with instructions written in African languages, and audio resources that support pronunciation. The South African Book Development Council also funds publishers producing new content in indigenous languages, which is gradually expanding what is available.
For a Foundation Phase teacher building a term’s reading plan, a practical approach is to pair a home-language storybook from the African Storybook Project or Nal’ibali with a matching English-language video from LearningMole’s early reading collection, so children build vocabulary in both languages side by side.
CAPS lesson templates provide teachers with a structured framework that aligns with South African curriculum requirements. Digital planning tools such as Microsoft OneNote ClassNotebook let teachers share and adapt templates across a year group or a phase team, so one teacher’s well-built plan does not have to be reinvented by every colleague teaching the same content.
“Well-structured lesson templates don’t restrict creativity,” says Michelle Connolly, LearningMole founder, with over 15 years of experience. “They provide the foundation that lets teachers focus on how they deliver the content, rather than spending planning time on the format around it. A good template should save you an hour, not add one.”
For assessment, Kahoot works well for quick, game-based reviews at the end of a lesson, giving teachers an instant read on what has actually stuck. Microsoft Forms and Google Forms are useful for building short surveys or checking understanding without having to mark a full set of written responses by hand. Grade 12 e-assessment platforms give learners practice that mirrors the format of the official National Senior Certificate exams, reducing first-time nerves with digital testing before the real assessment period arrives.
Combining these tools with LearningMole’s video library works well in practice: a video introduces a concept, a CAPS-aligned worksheet gives structured practice, and a short quiz checks whether the class is ready to move on.
Families choosing to homeschool in South Africa have several CAPS-aligned curriculum providers to choose from, alongside a growing range of free resources that help reduce overall costs. Providers such as Impaq deliver structured, CAPS-aligned programmes with full curriculum guidance, assessment schedules and academic support built in.
“The growth in quality homeschool resources means parents can now access professional-grade curricula that used to be far harder to find outside a traditional classroom setting,” says Michelle Connolly, LearningMole founder, with over 15 years of experience.
Several South African homeschooling communities share free maths and science resources, including videos, tests and worksheets aligned to the CAPS curriculum. Active Facebook and WhatsApp groups connect families by province or by curriculum choice, offering day-to-day support and a marketplace for second-hand books and materials.
LearningMole fits naturally alongside a CAPS-aligned homeschool curriculum: the videos work well as the explanation stage for a topic before a child moves to the workbook exercises that come with a chosen provider.
The South African Council for Educators (SACE) manages the Continuing Professional Teacher Development (CPTD) system, and SACE-endorsed courses count toward the points teachers need to keep their professional registration current.
“Professional development works best when it connects to a challenge you are facing in your own classroom this term,” says Michelle Connolly, LearningMole founder, with over 15 years of experience. “Look for training that gives you something practical to try on Monday morning, not just a certificate to file away.”
The Department of Basic Education offers online courses covering curriculum content, holiday-period workshops, and subject-specific training in maths, science and languages. Beyond formal, points-bearing training, Professional Learning Communities let teachers from different schools work together on shared problems, and the National Education Collaboration Trust (NECT) runs district-based improvement programmes focused on reading, mathematics and science outcomes.
For day-to-day peer support, WhatsApp and Facebook groups such as “South African Teachers” and “Foundation Phase Teachers SA” connect thousands of teachers who share resources and troubleshoot classroom problems in real time.
Alongside the South African-specific platforms above, LearningMole’s own library gives you 800+ videos and 3,300+ resources organised by age and subject, all free once you have created an account:
You can browse our teaching resources in full to see everything organised by age band and subject, or subscribe to the LearningMole YouTube channel for new videos added every month.
LearningMole offers 800+ videos and 3,300+ teaching resources for children aged 3 to 11, all created by a former primary school teacher. Everything is free, with no trial period and nothing behind a payment.
South African teachers use it to open lessons and support learners who need a different route into a topic. Parents use it to work through a homework problem at the kitchen table. Home educators use it as the spine for a week’s learning. The account works exactly the same whether you’re signing in from Belfast or Bloemfontein, with no additional cost and no restricted content for users outside the UK.
This page also links to teaching resources in India for readers researching how LearningMole works across other regions with similarly diverse language and curriculum landscapes.
Yes. LearningMole is free everywhere, including South Africa. There’s no separate pricing for users outside the UK, no trial that expires, and no premium tier holding back the better material. You create an account, sign in, and the full library of 800+ videos and 3,300+ resources opens straight away, with nothing to pay now or later.
Yes. LearningMole works on any standard internet connection, including mobile data, with no special network requirement or app download needed. Because some content is video-based, teachers and parents on limited data plans may prefer to watch on Wi-Fi where it’s available and save printable worksheets for offline use in class or at home, which keeps data use to a minimum while still giving access to the full library.
LearningMole covers children aged 3 to 11, organised into three bands: 3 to 5, 5 to 7, and 7 to 11. These bands are a guide rather than a strict rule, and teachers regularly pull material from the band above or below to stretch a confident group or revisit something a class found difficult, so the age ranges should be read as a starting point rather than a hard boundary.
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