Summer vacations are fast approaching! And while it’s very important that kids have time to play and decompress during their time off, most parents agree that there is value in keeping kids intellectually stimulated over the break, in order to avoid the dreaded “summer slide”, the loss of academic skills and knowledge over the course of long school holidays that particularly affects young children.
While you may balk at the idea of getting their kids to do homework during the holiday break, when they have already had so much disruption to their learning this year, we believe that there is room to make learning fun, creative and exciting for kids so that they can reinforce what they’ve learned in ways that don’t even feel like homework.
Here are some free, printable learning resources that we love. We’ll keep adding to this list, so be sure to check back regularly for more!
China-themed resources
ESL Kidz China Worksheets – Download a range of free activity pages, including wordfinding exercises, spelling pages, matching activities, and more.
Kindergarten Worksheets and Games – China Coloring Pages – Color them in, cut them out, put the figurines on sticks, and make your own puppet show… the possibilities are endless with these cute images.
Write Mandarin worksheets – The Write Mandarin website has a big range of free printable resources, but we especially like these simple worksheets that concentrate on learning the characters for animals, nature, colors, directions, seasons, and more.
Chalk Academy free printables – Chalk Academy is run by a Chinese-American mom who is raising her children to speak English, Mandarin, and Korean. As well as these free printables, the website offers a huge range of inspiring activities, product reviews, and resources for raising multilingual children.
Special interest
COVID-19 Time Capsule – This free workbook is designed to help children record and contextualize their experience under the global pandemic and is now also available for adults and in multiple languages.
Social-emotional Printable Worksheets – This range of activities from Education.com includes worksheets about mindfulness, understanding emotions, and managing stress. Quite frankly, plenty of adults could benefit from these worksheets too.
National Geographic’s Mission: Explore Food Sustainable Seafood – The National Geographic website contains a wealth of free learning resources, but we particularly like this module that is related to sustainable seafood. Either download the entire set, or select specific activity pages according to your kid’s ages. And don’t forget to check out their Coloring Pages for some quick time-fillers.
At-Home Scavenger Hunt – Kids can do this scavenger hunt even if they are confined indoors.
Kindergarten, Primary, and Middle School
Education.com worksheets – We’ve spent ages looking through dozens of free online learning websites aimed at younger kids, and although there are hundreds out there, we believe that Education.com is the best one-stop shop for busy parents. It’s easy to navigate, and has a truly fantastic range of free worksheets, that you can filter these free worksheets by grade and difficulty level. It is a ‘freemium’ model, so certain materials are only accessible to premium subscribers, there is more than enough free content to keep just about anyone happy.
High-School
The Worksheet – This website contains hundreds of free, high-quality printable online learning resources for high-school kids.
International Baccalaureate worksheets – The website ‘Teachers Pay Teachers’ allows you to filter for resources specifically relating to the IB.
KEEP READING: Viral COVID-19 Workbook Now Available for Adults & Kids
Images: Aaron Burden (via Unsplash)
