This summer, take advantage of free education resources to keep your kids engaged and learning. According to an Oxford Learning article, over the summer about one month of overall learning is lost and two-thirds of the income-based achievement gap comes from summer learning loss. But there is good news: it only takes 2 to 3 hours of educational activities per week to prevent this!
If you’re stumped on what to use for a summer of learning, don’t worry because we’ve put together a list of some great, free resources to help you out:
1. Khan Academy: This website offers lessons and quizzes for a variety of topics. Odds are, if your child has taken a class on something in school then it will be on this website. From grammar to organic chemistry, your child can explore whatever topic they want with this great resource.
2. The public library: Often overlooked, your local library is a great way to catch up on some reading over the summer or even take advantage of their free computer services. Reading helps build a strong vocabulary and is important for tests in all grades.
3. Duolingo: This popular app is a gamified way to learn a new language with easy to follow lessons. The app offers daily practices and will even send you reminder notifications in case you forget.
4. Codecademy: This website offers free, easy to follow tutorials on how to code and is a great introduction to computer science. With courses on HTML and CSS, Python, and more, there are hours of learning to be done with Codecademy.
5. edX and Coursera: For your older students, both of these sites provide online university-level
courses from some of the best colleges in the nation. These classes are a great opportunity to learn from the best and brightest in a variety of fascinating subjects.
6. CodeCombat: This website is another way to learn coding, but with a twist: the lessons are set up as an adventure video game. With fun and interactive lessons, your student will battle their way through this game one lesson at a time and won’t even realize they are learning!
7. iTunes U: This Apple app has tons of free lectures and audiobooks for you to listen to wherever you
go. The content comes from colleges, museums, and public media organizations from around the world and covers just about every educational topic you can think of.
8. TED: Offering a huge selection of videos, TED is a collection of online lectures from some of the greatest thinkers and doers of today. These talks aren’t your typical educational lectures, but can be just as important and spark curiosity in your student for the world around them. There are even some talks by kids the same age as your student - talk about inspiration!
9. This website: This link sends you to a page with 200 more sites and resources just like the ones above!
Let your child take advantage of the free time they have by learning and developing a love for learning. There are limitless opportunities for your child, and maybe even yourself, to learn something great this summer!
