🦁 Free CE1 summer workbook to print: heading towards CE2

The year of CE1 is ending, and what a year: your child has done their first written calculations, discovered multiplication, learned plenty of new spelling patterns… and their reading has finally become fluent — or almost. So, when packing the suitcases, a question arises: how to keep all this fresh until CE2, without turning the campsite into a classroom? Good news: a free CE1 summer workbook to print is more than enough — and we offer you one, downloadable in one click, without giving your email address. In this guide: what a child really needs to retain from their CE1 year, concrete activities for each area, and why reading deserves, that summer more than any other, a little fifteen minutes daily.

What should a child retain from their CE1 year?

CE1 is not just a repeat of CP: it is the year when major learning consolidates and new projects begin. Here, area by area, is what your child takes in their schoolbag — and the summer priority for each.

If your child has just finished CP (Cours Préparatoire, ages 6-7) and is heading to CE1 (Cours Élémentaire 1, ages 7-8) in September, this is not the right article: instead, go read our guide for free printable CP summer workbook, designed to review letter teams and number bonds to 10.

Why the “summer slide” mainly threatens struggling readers

Every September, CE2 (Cours Élémentaire 2, ages 8-9) teachers notice: some students come back as they left, others have lost part of their skills over the summer. Anglo-Saxon studies have measured this phenomenon for a long time — it’s the famous “summer slide”, which we detail in our article on loss of skills during vacations.

What is less said is that it doesn’t affect everyone the same way. A child whose reading is fluent keeps reading without noticing: highway signs, restaurant menus, comic book bubbles. A still struggling reader avoids what costs effort: they don’t read anything all summer, and it’s precisely they who fall behind. Between CE1 and CE2, the gap silently widens. The solution is not heroic: fifteen minutes a day, well chosen, is enough to keep the engine running.

CE1 revisions, domain by domain (without a blackboard)

Forget the classroom recreated in the kitchen. Here’s how to maintain each CE1 skill with what summer provides.

Reading: aim for fluency, not quantity

Fluency — reading quickly, without stumbling, with expression — is THE big project at this age. Reading-speed benchmarks exist, but the only comparison that matters this summer is your child against themselves. The most effective technique is also the simplest: repeated reading. Choose a short text, the child reads it aloud three days in a row, stopwatch in hand, and watches their score climb. They love beating their own record. Add paired reading (one paragraph each), dialogues acted out with character voices, and remember that a comic book, a recipe, or board game rules count as much as a “real” book.

Grammar: the verb “to be” and plurals

English verbs don’t change much — but the ones that do are used all the time. The verb to be (I am, you are, he is, we are, they are) opens our CE1 workbook, followed by plurals, including the tricky ones (fox → foxes, baby → babies, mouse → mice) and pairs like king → queen or lion → lioness. Two painless rituals: the verb of the day at dinner (“tonight it’s to have: I have, you have, she has…” — one minute on the timer) and the pronoun dice (1 = I, 2 = you, 3 = he, 4 = she, 5 = we, 6 = they: your child makes a sentence with the verb of the day). Finally, postcards to grandparents remain the best disguised lesson: “we are at the beach, it is sunny, I am learning to swim” — three sentences, one stamp, zero protest.

Written calculation: don’t let the carry slip away

Setting up an addition or a subtraction with borrowing, it is a precision mechanism learned this year — and it is exactly the kind of technique that rusts in eight weeks. No need to line up pages of operations: just one per day, carefully set, is enough. Vary the supports: add two items from the receipt, count the scores in a game of boules, check the points in the board game. And bring out the change, a great discovery in CE1 (7-8 years old): paying for bread with real coins and checking the change from €5, these are subtractions that don’t say their name.

Multiplication: times tables as a playground

At 7-8 years old, your child has discovered the meaning of multiplication — 3 × 4 is 4 + 4 + 4 — and is learning the times tables one after another. That is why our workbook mixes facts from several tables (3 × 4, 5 × 6, 2 × 8, 7 × 3): the goal is not to recite every table by heart, but to understand each fact and find the answer calmly. Summer is wonderfully suited for this, as the world is full of equal groups: pairs of socks to hang (the 2s), fingers on a hand (the 5s), wheels on a car (the 4s). Start with the tables that already feel safe (2, 5 and 10), then build the others with doubles: 2 × 7 is double 7, and 4 × 7 is double 2 × 7 — half the work is already done.

How much time per day on a CE1 holiday workbook?

At 7 or 8 years old, you can aim for 15 to 20 minutes per day — a little above the 10-15 minutes of CP, but no more. The regularity beats duration: four to five mornings per week, at the same time — just after breakfast — is better than one hour of forced catch-up at the end of August. Also allow a real break of one to two weeks at the beginning of summer: a rested brain relearns faster. And keep the course: a holiday workbook is for maintaining, not finishing the program — summer is primarily for dens, friends, and ice pops.

Free CE1 holiday workbook in PDF, no email or sign-up

On paper, the web is full of “free” workbooks. In practice, many require an email address, a newsletter subscription, sometimes worse. At Kidibook, it’s shorter: you click, you download the free CE1 holiday workbook in PDF format, and you print. Six pages: English (the verb to be, tricky plurals, king → queen), maths (times-table facts such as 3 × 4, 5 × 6 and 7 × 3, a word problem with packets of sweets, telling the time), a games page (counting in 5s, ordering animals by size, a sentence about the jungle) and the answers. That’s all.

The printable format has another merit that no commercial workbook offers: the failed page can be reprinted. A scribbled subtraction? Restart the printing and try again without drama. You can also print only one sheet per morning — a finished page displayed on the fridge motivates more than a big workbook that never “goes down” — and skip concepts already mastered.

Leo the lion cub and the Jungle world: revise like an expedition

The real difficulty remains: making the child want to open the workbook on the twelfth morning, when the novelty has worn off. That’s where Kidibook plays its card: each level is a world, and CE1 is the Jungle, with Leo the lion cub as expedition companion. In Leo’s Great Journey, operations are done to cross the river, verbs are conjugated in the present to talk to parrots, times tables are recited to count monkeys hidden in the trees. The child does not “do homework”: they advance toward the jungle throne.

If you’re looking for engaging activities for your child in CE2 (age 8-9), try Astro's Workbook, Space Mission — Large Activity Book CE2 (age 8-9) for 24,99 € (), with free delivery in France, €5 to other countries. For a fun daily routine, sign up for 31 days of free 10-minute challenges by email. You can also discover all English editions in our shop collection for more adventure workbooks and memory tricks for ages 3–11.

In summary: between CE1 and CE2, the useful summer boils down to three lines — read aloud every day, do a written calculation, play with the times tables and the verb “to be”. A free CE1 summer workbook to print, fifteen minutes at breakfast, and Léo takes care of the rest: in September, your explorer will enter CE2 with their mane blowing in the wind.