LittleActivity vs Zearn

A non-profit K–8 maths curriculum with paired digital lessons, free for teachers and families.

Last updated: 23 August 2026

The short answer

Zearn is a serious, free, non-profit maths curriculum with genuine instructional design behind it — closer to a real maths programme than most paid products in this list. It is maths only, K–8, and it does not keep your homeschool records. LittleActivity is broader and administrative; Zearn is deeper in one subject.

Which one is right for you

Choose Zearn if

A family or school that wants a coherent, research-backed K–8 maths curriculum at no cost.

Choose LittleActivity if

A family that needs every subject planned and the paperwork produced, not one subject done extremely well.

What each one actually is

What is Zearn?

Also known as: Zearn Math, zearn.org

Zearn is a non-profit K–8 maths curriculum with paired digital lessons, free for teachers and families.

Related: Adaptive practice and skills · K-12 education · Homeschool resources

What is LittleActivity?

Also known as: Little Activity, littleactivity.com

LittleActivity is a free educational platform for children from Pre-K to Grade 10, combining sequenced lessons in ten subjects, thousands of printable worksheets, games, and a homeschool system whose attendance, report cards, portfolio and transcript build themselves from the work a child actually completes.

Related: Homeschool curriculum · Printable worksheets · K-12 education · Common Core Standards

Zearn vs LittleActivity, feature by feature

Twenty-four features in five groups. A dash means we have not established that row from their own public pages — it is not a “no”, and we would rather show the gap than guess at it.

Getting started and cost

What it takes to see the thing before you pay for it.

Getting started and cost: Zearn compared with LittleActivity
Feature	Zearn	LittleActivity
Usable free, with no accountCan a parent open it and use real content without signing up?	No	Yes
Card required to startA card taken up front turns a trial into an opt-out subscription.	No	No
Price published on their own siteA price you have to reach checkout to see is a price you cannot compare.	Free	Yes
Charged per childDecides whether a second or third child doubles the bill.	No	No
Adverts shown to childrenIncluding house ads and upsell interstitials mid-activity.	No	No

What it covers

How far it goes before your child ages out of it.

What it covers: Zearn compared with LittleActivity
Feature	Zearn	LittleActivity
Grade rangeThe span the vendor claims on its own site.	Kindergarten to Grade 8	Pre-K to Grade 10
SubjectsWhat is actually taught, not what is mentioned.	Maths only	Maths, reading, writing, science, social studies, art, music, coding, languages, critical thinking, money
Real Pre-K contentActivities a child who cannot yet read can do alone.	No	Yes
Grade 6 and aboveThe point most early-learning products stop.	Yes	Yes
Standards alignment publishedMatters for reporting in most US states.	Yes	Yes

How it teaches

Whether it decides what happens today, or hands you a catalogue.

How it teaches: Zearn compared with LittleActivity
Feature	Zearn	LittleActivity
Plans the school day for youThe difference between a curriculum and a content library.	No	Yes
Sequenced, not browse-it-yourselfLessons that build on each other in a fixed order.	Yes	Yes
Per-subject placementA child ahead in reading and behind in maths is the normal case.	Yes	Yes
Video instructionA person explaining, rather than a screen of practice items.	Not established	No
Live human teachingScheduled classes with a real teacher.	No	No

Off the screen

What is left on the days the tablet is not the answer.

Off the screen: Zearn compared with LittleActivity
Feature	Zearn	LittleActivity
Printable worksheetsReal PDFs, not a web page you send to a printer.	Lesson paper packets	5,947 free PDFs
Off-screen work for every school dayAn authored task per day, not an occasional printable.	No	2,160 authored days
Printable wall chartsReference material for the wall behind the desk.	No	600 wall charts
A full day can run on paperFor a broken tablet, a car journey, or a screen-time limit.	Partly — paper lessons pair with the digital ones	Yes

Records and classroom

The paperwork, and whether it writes itself.

Records and classroom: Zearn compared with LittleActivity
Feature	Zearn	LittleActivity
Attendance logRequired by law in a number of US states.	No	Yes
Report cardsGenerated from work done, not typed by a parent.	No	Yes
Portfolio of workFor states that require an annual review.	No	Yes
High-school transcriptThe document a college admissions office asks for.	No	Yes
Run a class with no student accountsNo roster upload, no email address per child.	No	Yes

What Zearn does better, and what we do instead

Zearn against LittleActivity

Pros

A genuinely coherent maths curriculum with a published instructional model, not a bank of practice items
Free, permanently, from a non-profit with no upsell path
Paired paper-and-digital lesson design that assumes a teacher is present
Deeper conceptual maths at Grades 6–8 than we offer

Cons

Every subject, not maths alone
A whole school day planned across six strands
Attendance, report cards, portfolio and transcript from the work actually done
Thousands of free printables across every subject, plus wall charts
Grades 9 and 10, past their Grade 8 ceiling

The left column is what Zearn is genuinely better at. The right column is not a list of their faults — it is what we do that they do not attempt. A product is allowed to not do something.

Pricing

We have not been able to read Zearn’s current pricing from their live pages, so we are not going to quote it — see their own page. Ours is on our pricing page, before you sign up for anything.

Stay with Zearn if…

Maths is the subject you care most about getting right, and free matters. Zearn is good and it costs nothing.

Move to LittleActivity if…

You need the other five subjects and the records, and you are currently stitching Zearn together with a planner and a spreadsheet.

The one structural difference

Most families run a content product, a separate planner, and a spreadsheet for records, and nothing in that stack is the system of record. LittleActivity is one system: the same work that teaches your child produces the attendance, the report card, the portfolio and the transcript, and every school day has an authored off-screen task so a broken tablet does not end the day.

In numbers: 5,947 free printable PDFs and 2,160 authored off-screen school days, both counted from the catalogues themselves and checked in our build rather than written by hand.

Try it — no account Browse the free printables See what it costs

How this comparison was made

Their claims are theirs. Grade range, subjects and product shape are taken from what Zearn says about itself on its own public pages, linked above.
Prices are gated. A price appears only with the date a person read it on the vendor’s own page. Most pricing pages in this market render client-side and cannot be checked automatically, so most of these comparisons quote no price at all rather than repeat one that may be a year old.
Our numbers are generated. Printable, poster and school-day counts come from the catalogues they describe and are verified in our build, so a marketing round number cannot creep in.
A dash is not a cross. Where we have not established a row, the table shows a dash. We do not score a competitor down for something we did not check.
We are not neutral. This page is written by one of the two products. That is why it leads with what Zearn does better and names who should stay with it — judge the page on whether those sections are real.

LittleActivity vs Zearn: common questions

Zearn is free — is LittleActivity?

The core is: games, printables and lessons work with no account and no card. The membership adds the homeschool records, the planned day and the print packs. Zearn is free with no paid tier at all, which is a cleaner promise, and for maths alone it is a strong one.

Is LittleActivity's maths as good as Zearn's?

Zearn's maths has more conceptual depth, particularly at Grades 6 to 8, and a published instructional model behind it. Ours is broader — every grade to 10, with games, printables and off-screen work for the same skill — but a family whose only concern is maths quality should look hard at Zearn first.

Can I use Zearn for maths and LittleActivity for everything else?

That is a sensible stack and it works. Use our day plan and records for the whole week, mark maths as covered externally, and let Zearn carry that subject. Nothing here requires you to use our maths.

Does Zearn keep homeschool records?

No. Zearn reports progress within its own maths curriculum. Attendance, report cards, a portfolio and a transcript are not part of what it does, so a homeschooling family using Zearn keeps those somewhere else — usually a spreadsheet.

Should I choose LittleActivity or Zearn?

Choose Zearn if: A family or school that wants a coherent, research-backed K–8 maths curriculum at no cost. Choose LittleActivity if: A family that needs every subject planned and the paperwork produced, not one subject done extremely well. Both are real answers — the deciding question is usually whether you want one subject or one tool done well, or the whole school day planned, printed and recorded.

How much does Zearn cost compared with LittleActivity?

We have not been able to read Zearn's current pricing from their live pages and check it, so we do not quote a figure — see their own site for it. LittleActivity's price is published on our pricing page before you sign up, it is one family price rather than a charge per child, and the games, printables and lessons are free with no account.

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