Fun Summer Reading Logs and Challenges for Kids

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!

Learning numbers actually involves a few different skills, from recognizing the shape of the number and knowing the word that goes with it to understanding one to one correspondence for counting and what order the numbers go in.

A lot of this is learned best through play and activities that get kids counting and tracing and otherwise interacting with numbers. These activities can help.

I specifically mentioned tracing above because of these number formation rhymes cards from Teaching Mama, which can be used in lots of ways to practice making the shapes of the numbers, including tracing, lining up items on the number shapes (and counting them!), using playdough to shape the numbers and so on. Each number has a little rhyme to help you remember how to make it, which is cute.

And speaking of playdough, you can find lots of playdough number mats with different themes for kids to use as they learn about numbers. Preschool Play and Learn, for example, has these cute apple themed ones that also teach one to one correspondence as you learn the numbers and count to 10.

Or use these tree-themed ones from Live Over Cs to form the numbers, count out items on a ten frame and place the correct number of items in the tree to match the number (do this with playdough, little buttons or whatever manipulatives you have on hand). Your little builders will also love these Duplo number mats from Life Over Cs, which allow you to shape the number out of blocks and count out the number of blocks that corresponds to each number.

I also love these mats from The Savvy Sparrow that include the number and the word you can trace with playdough or marker, showing how to count the number on your fingers, a tens frame and a number line.

Finger plays and counting songs are lots of fun for little ones, too, and Childhood 101 has a great collection of songs and rhymes having to do with numbers (as well as printable song cards you can use with them.

This cardboard roll number chain form Hands On As We Grow would be a fun addition to singing number songs or to use in other play and counting games. And we all love something easy to make with stuff we already have.

Older kids who already know the order of numbers can also use these connect the dot number printables from Fun Learning for Kids. Or use the shapes for playdough mats or to practice tracing even for kids who don’t know all the numbers in order yet.

Have you read?

Leave a Reply