Documentaries for Free

In our school we treat the core subjects as academic and the others as elective.  Let me clarify what that means.  For me it means we study math, reading, and writing on a daily basis using curriculum materials for the most part.  The other areas such as world studies (history and geography) and science are explored in a free fashion.

A large component of our elective studies are documentaries and lectures.  My eldest has a penchant for Astronomy and our family has purchased the Great Courses Lecture series  Understanding the Universe: An introduction to Astronomy taught by Professor Alex Filippenko from California Institute of Technology,    Berkeley.   Our 12 year old is on lecture 44 of  96  30 minute lectures  This is a pricey series.   Right now they have a 70% off special on many of their courses. 

There are also numerous high-quality documentaries available to view online for FREE.  Such as Planet Earth presented by the BBC.  We have started to catalogue documentaries of interest to us on our documenary blog.