5 Benefits of Earning College Credit in High School
by Christopher E. Nelson
Fun Worksheets to Keep Students Sharp Over Summer Break
byConnections Academy
5 min to read
After a long school year, summer break can be a sweet relief to school-aged children. The time off with friends and family offers children a chance to develop relationships, relax, and make lifelong memories.
Unfortunately, if students don't take the time to reinforce and practice what they've learned over the past year, they may experience what's colloquially known as "the summer slide."
What Is Summer Learning Loss?
The summer slide is also known as summer learning loss. Skills and knowledge acquired over the last academic year don't simply stand still while your child takes a break from school; in fact, they erode.
Between the end of one school year and the beginning of the next, children can easily lose progress they made over the past year. This problem is especially pronounced in children who come from low-income households, the reason being a lack of resources. The learning gap between social classes widens much faster during the summer than during the school year. However, most children show some form of summer learning loss when they return for the next school year.
Teachers across all subjects usually spend about six weeks each school year reteaching students the material learned the year before in order to prepare students to learn new things. As a result, students often lose a little more than two and a half months' worth of math skills and two months of reading skills.
Each summer, some students fall farther and farther behind. By the end of sixth grade, students who have repeatedly experienced summer learning loss can be about two years behind.
How to Prevent Summer Learning Loss
Of course, it's important for kids to have time to be kids, develop social skills, and enjoy their summer. However, a little effort can go a long way toward keeping your children's learning development on track while school is not in session—and it can be as easy as dedicating around two to three hours a week to some fun summer worksheets and other activities.
Reading can be an excellent cost-effective way to combat summer learning loss. Your local library can supply a wide selection of books for your child to read regardless of age or reading level. Allow your children to pick books that interest them, so they’ll willingly take up the challenge.
A reading habit can help your child improve in several academic subjects, but the best approach to preventing summer learning loss is a well-rounded approach.
Learn more: “5 Ways to Prevent Summer Learning Loss”
Worksheets for Summer Learning
You don't have to be a master in all subjects in order to help your children (of all ages) continue to learn throughout the summer. The following resources can give your children the practice they need to maintain, or even improve, their academic skills while on break.
Adapted Mind: This website provides summer worksheets for kindergarten, fun worksheets for elementary school, and on-the-go middle school worksheets in reading and math. As your child improves, the difficulty level increases.
Education.com: Education.com provides worksheets that accommodate students starting in preschool to eighth grade.
Woo! Jr: Your younger children will love the summer activity worksheets this website provides. You can even bring these printable worksheets along on car trips.
TeacherVision: Fight brain drain with these summer worksheets on every subject, including math, science, art, drama, and social studies.
Scholastic: Scholastic offers printable worksheets for summer sorted by grade level and subject.
K5 Learning: K5 Learning provides worksheets for elementary-aged students to practice vocabulary, grammar, cursive, math, and more.
Code Academy: Learning new skills will stretch your student's mind, which allows them to do better across subjects. Code Academy teaches students as young as 12 a valuable new skill—coding.
Summer Can Be Fun for Kids without Being a Step Back
There's no reason why summer can't be fun for your kids. So be sure to set aside plenty of time for family vacations and playing with friends and include downtime to just let your kids be kids. As long as you're supplementing their summer activities with some educational content, they'll be both rejuvenated and prepared when school starts again in the fall.
Ready to Learn More
About Connections Academy?
Explore the benefits of attending Connections Academy, a tuition-free, accredited online public school that’s passionate about helping your child thrive.
Related Posts
-
-
Discover How Riddles Can Improve Your Child’s Creativity
by Christopher E. Nelson
-
10 Computer Keyboard Shortcuts and Other Tips for Kids
by Christopher E. Nelson
Students at every level and in every environment need to learn time-management skills. For online students, technology plays a huge role in managing time for virtual school tasks.
The basics of time management for online students come down to knowing how to navigate computers to access online and technology-based educational resources and how to sort them and the information they’ve gleaned from them. Today’s students must be able to type well, and then, to make their lives easier, they need to learn keyboard shortcuts for the most frequently used computer functions.
Below we offer some computer keyboard shortcuts to help your online or homeschool student get the most out of his or her time spent preparing for and participating in the online classroom.
Typing and Keyboard Practice for Kids
Let’s start with the computer basics for kids. TypingClub offers more than 600 lessons that teach touch-typing with the correct hand posture for every key. Its game structure and animated stories make lessons engaging and fun, and the student’s work is rewarded by stars, badges, and increasing levels of mastery to reach for. TypingClub computer lessons for kids are free, but a premium, ad-free version requires a fee.
Keyboard Shortcuts for Online Learning
Computer keyboard shortcuts are combinations of two or more keys that execute certain tasks that otherwise require a mouse-click on a menu link or some other type of input. Some are well-known, like Control (Ctrl) + C (Command or Cmd + C on a Mac) to copy highlighted text and save it to be pasted elsewhere with Ctrl + V or Cmd + V.
Shortcuts are timesavers for those who know them well enough to use them by second nature. Here is a printable pdf of 10 PC and Mac keyboard shortcuts every virtual school student should know for streamlining online schoolwork.
Once your student has become comfortable with the basic keyboard shortcuts, there are many more they can learn to save time and impress their friends in Microsoft Windows and for Apple’s Mac operating systems. Below, we’ve gathered 10 of our favorite keyboard shortcuts for staying organized.
10 Computer Keyboard Shortcuts for Better Organization
1. Win (Windows key) + E
Open File Explorer, a window that shows your frequently used folders, recently used files (and their locations), and a search box.
2. Ctrl + W
Close current window or document.
3. Alt + F4
Close current window or document.
4. Win + D
Minimize all windows open on the desktop. Press again to restore.
5. Ctrl + T
Open a new browser tab.
6. Ctrl + Shift + T
Reopen the most recently closed browser tab.
7. Win + T
Cycle through apps pinned to your task bar.
8. Alt + Tab
Show items open on your desktop and cycle through them. Alt + Shift + Tab will cycle backwards.
9. Alt + Esc
Cycle through open items in the order they were opened.
10. Win + Shift + Left/Right Arrow
Move the current window to the other monitor if you have multiple screens.
Sort Online Classes or Projects with Virtual Desktops
The truly busy online student can create one or more virtual desktops on their PC to establish a dedicated space for each class or project. Virtual desktops let you access all the notes, documents, apps, web pages, etc., pertaining to a specific topic or task with one keystroke instead of shuffling through windows to find them. It’s also a good way to separate schoolwork from, say, game or entertainment apps.
Add a virtual desktop to your PC with Win + Ctrl + D. Then switch back and forth between them with Win + Ctrl + Left/Right Arrow. Click the task view icon on your task bar to see your multiple desktops (and hop between them by clicking on them) and what’s open on the one that’s currently active. Here’s how to create virtual desktops on a Mac.
Having the proper tools makes any task easier, but knowing what the proper tools are capable of leads to efficiency. We cited just a few of the many computer keyboard shortcuts available to help make virtual school tasks more efficient. To help your student further increase their computer capabilities and confidence, check out these seven computer skills your child should master by the time he or she starts virtual high school.
read more
