This has been a big week for our family. Not only did my husband and I celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary, but our family got a dog! I was 100% against getting a dog when my husband first started talking about it. Our daughter has been begging us to get a pet dog for a while now. She has been dreaming about what type of dog she’d like to have ever since she chose a book about dogs from the school book fair earlier this year. Ultimately, she and her dad decided a German Shepherd was a good choice, and we all know daddy loves to please his little girl! Even though I was against getting a dog in the beginning, meeting Willow for the first time made me begin to picture our life with a dog. I became convinced that adding a dog to the family could build valuable responsibilities and meaningful memories for the kids. Fast forward a few weeks, and we have a dog!
Having a dog has been an awesome motivation to keep the kids active outside, but I’ve also been thinking about what kinds of things I can do with the kids this summer to keep their BRAINS active and learning. I think the most important thing we can do is not let our routine of reading with the kids every day slide. For my older kids (ages 7 and 6) we are spending time reading to them AND listening to them read aloud on level appropriate books.
We love this set of levelled readers. They start out super simple with lots of repetition, and then we also ordered a few levels up for when the kids reading skills improve. We also have this sight word reader set that focuses on sight word recognition. My son loves these books because they give him two new sight words to focus in on per book. It’s not overwhelming, and he feels successful when reading these.
We also have these sight word flash cards. I like to give my kids just a few words to focus on for the week, and then they try to memorize and recognize these words without having to sound them out. Practicing sight words helps kids recognize words at a glance quickly.
We recently got these Summer Brain Quest activity books for the kids. I love that they are for kids BETWEEN grades, so perfect for those summer months when you are wanting to get the kids ready for school to start up again.
Wipe Clean activity books are also super fun for kids, and the pages are reusable! I ordered the Sight Word Book, Number Skills, and the My Big Activity Book for my kids. They are great books for travelling with kids, and I love that they are coil bound so they stay open!
We have a few different magnetic letter sets which are perfect for sticking to a baking sheet to spell words. Just search Pinterest for some printable magnetic letter activities, and you can place the paper right on the baking sheet for some magnetic letter fun!
My family loves Peaceable Kingdom brand cooperative games. They are a fun way to get kids to work together for the end result, and the quality of the games are great.
We love this Alphabet Go Fish card game. There are lots of ways to play the game. You can play Go Fish, Concentration, etc. It’s great for kids who are working on letter recognition and letter sounds.
We also have this Race to the Treasure game that my kids love! They have to try to beat the ogre to the treasure by collecting keys and building a path. Cooperative games are the best!
We also enjoy Usborne books. We have this set of early readers which was been a fun set for my daughter to read this past year. The stories are interesting, but not overwhelming for new readers. They also have great activities in the back to complete after reading.
My kids love being able to listen to a story on a CD. You can play it aloud or use headphones. This Read Along Storybook & CD would be a great activity for a rainy day this summer!
Here’s a master list of all these activities, plus a few more:
- Between Pre K & K
- Between K & 1
- Between Grades 1 & 2
- Between Grades 2 & 3
- Beween Grades 3 & 4
- Between Grades 4 & 5
- Between Grades 5 & 6
Peaceable Kingdom Board Games:
Wipe-Clean My Big Activity Book
Scholastic Levelled Books: A, B, C, D, E-F
Bananagrams Game – Great word building game!
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