Fun Summer Reading Logs and Challenges for Kids

May 29, 2026 by Sarah White Leave a Comment

Reading regularly during the summer is a great way to keep kids on track with their learning, and it’s just a fun thing for people of all ages to do, especially when the weather doesn’t cooperate with outdoor activities.

For kids who need a little extra motivation to do their daily pages, check out these reading challenges and trackers that make reading more of a game.

Everyday Reading has several great printable coloring play mat reading challenges (designed by Hadley Designs). Shown here is the Dive into Reading challenge, which includes things like reading a book to a pet or stuffed animal, reading a book that’s cover is your favorite color, plus shells to color in on days you read. There are also ones with a summer camp theme and a summer travel theme.

Fuzzy Mama has cute summer reading printables that include a reading bingo page and a bucket list that’s filled out with things like reading different genres of books, a book recommended by a teacher and reading in your backyard. There’s also a list kids can fill out themselves to check off reads.

Rock Your Homeschool has a great summer reading planning pack for kids of all ages, with book recommendations, reading bingo cards and reading logs.

I also love color in bookmarks as a way to track progress, like these from Paper Trail Design, where you can color in stars or books as you read. Or try the ones from We Are Teachers, which has a reading checklist but also bookmarks with challenges on them you can color as you complete them.

For kids who need a little extra motivation, One Lovely Life suggests tracking reading (by time or books read) and offering prizes like cooking together, extra screen time or letting the kid pick the game for game night. The trick here is the rewards need to be things you’d want to do anyway.

And be sure to check out my previous posts on summer reading bingo and more summer reading printables for kids. Happy reading!

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Make Unpoppable Bubbles You Can Play with Inside

If it’s hot where you live, you might be looking for some fun activities you can do with kids inside the house. And while bubbles are generally a strictly outside the house kid of activity, these special bubbles are ones you can play with inside. It’s both a lot of fun and a science lesson.

These bubbles aren’t blown into the air, you blow them onto a tabletop gently through a straw.

What’s really cool about them is that they will stay on the table top without popping. You can even blow another bubble inside the first bubble, or stack bubbles on top of each other.

Why does this work? It’s thanks to a special ingredient in the bubble solution: sugar.

This particular recipe is from Play Party Game, but I’m sure you can find it other places with similar ingredients as well. But this post has a good explanation for what is normally happening with regular bubble solution made mostly with just soap and water, as well as why the sugar helps to make bubbles stronger and helps them last longer.

You could make this into a full on science experiment for your kids, comparing regular bubbles (this time you’ll want to do it outside or somewhere easy to clean) to the “unbreakable” bubbles, letting them hypothesize about what ingredients might help make bubbles stronger or what the sugar does to the solution.

You can talk about the molecular structure of the bubble being altered by the sugar, which makes it stronger and longer lasting.

They even have an activity kit you can buy to help guide your explorations and that offers extension activities for you to try.

Or you could just play with them. No judgement here; it’s summertime.

Grab the recipe and more of the science behind the bubbles from Play Party Game. And while you’re playing with bubbles you can also check out my giant bubble solution recipe over at Our Daily Craft.

[Photo: Play Party Game]

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