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Fun and Free Summer Learning Activities for Kids

Don’t let your kids have summer learning loss. Grab these fun and free summer learning activities for kids of all ages.

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It’s finally summer! I normally give my kids a week or two break, then they get bored. Once they get bored, I usually start doing a few activities with them so the summer slide won’t get them!

I don’t pay money for summer programs. Luckily, with the Internet, you can learn anything you want. Here are a few things that I’ve done and my kids enjoy.

girl holding little glove with 2 hands

Fun and Free Summer Learning Activities for Kids

Kahn Academy is a great website that’s free. Kids of all ages can use it. Your kids can take tests and make sure they have mastered all units from previous years and then move into future years. (UPDATE: My oldest is now in high school and he is studying for the SAT for a few minutes everyday now.) IXL.com is also a great program, but there is a fee.

Learning to Type– My kids use Typing Club and love it. Since kids will be doing more and more work on computers, I think this is pretty important to know how to type correctly.

Cursive writing– My kids are 6, 8, and 10 and none of them can write in cursive.  My older son had a couple of weeks of instruction and he doesn’t use it at all.  Here is one I found for teens and another for younger kids.

Cooking–  I’ve already told my oldest he will be responsible for dinner one night a week.  I’m a little scared, but I think he can handle it.  I’m not expecting major dinners, but I think he can handle some spaghetti and maybe pancakes on breakfast for dinner nights.  My son loves to bake these cookies. Lots of math when doing baking!

Science Experiments– I’m going to love Pinterest this summer and be pinning all kinds of science experiments to do at the house.  My kids love this kind of thing.  It will be fun to have them help pick out some cool things to do.   Growing some crystals and making slime are always popular.    I have a Pinterest board that has tons of ideas.

Girl with Telescope

More summer learning opportunities

Reading–  No brainer! This is so easy and you can get free books from the library or downloads. Remember- reading magizines is still considered reading. My boys love Sports Illustrated. Reading books that are movies too are fun- like The Outsiders, Harry Potter (These illustrated books are AWESOME!), or The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Astronomy–  My kids are VERY interested in this, but they haven’t studied it at school yet.  This is the perfect time to get out your telescope. If you don’t have a telescope, that’s ok. There are a lot of free apps for your phone you can download.

  • SkyView Lite- This one is great because you can point your phone to the sky and it will tell you what you are looking at. We love this while we’re at the beach!
  • NASA- There are images, news and you can watch NASA TV.

Geography– I realized my kids don’t know geograhy like I thought they did! I bought a real map to keep in the car so they could look at it while we drove. Stack the States 2 is a free app we use. I also got this fun word search to do on trips and we keep it in the car. Here’s a great post with more geography teaching tools.

How do you keep summer learning fun?  What should I add in?

Oh- Make sure to print out this cute first day of school sign!

Maria Flores

Tuesday 16th of May 2017

Totally agreed, kids love doing something productive in the summer. We do less of the desk sitting stuff and more exploring, being active.

Definitely the astronomy side of things is fantastic because it has the appeal of being able to stay up late too :D ;)

Thanks for sharing!