Make sure kids have something to read during the summer:
Put books into children’s hands! Sign up for the First Book Marketplace and gain access to award-winning new books for free and to deeply discounted new books and educational materials or find other national and local programs and organizations that can help.
Get your local public library to sign kids up for summer reading:
Summer Reading 2025 Registration at Bandera Public Library!
Here is the Google form to sign up! https://shorturl.at/nItHO
Event Timing: May 31st Kick Off- July 24th
Event location: Bandera Public Library @ 515 Main Street Bandera, TX
Contact us at 830-796-4213 or circulation@banderalibrary.org
Free summer reading incentive programs
At Scholastic, you can take the Read-a-Palooza Summer Challenge over the course of 18 weeks, kids can enter their summer reading minutes online, unlocking digital rewards as they complete weekly reading challenges; and access book excerpts, videos, and other summer-exclusive content. Sign up for Pizza Hut’s BOOK IT! summer reading program ,where you’ll receive weekly emails with reading activities for kids.
Help kids build math and science skills over the summer
Check out Literacy in the Sciences series. Each one-page tip sheet (in English and Spanish) suggests easy hands-on activities as well as fiction and nonfiction books to extend the learning. In this section you’ll also find links to great science websites for kids, blogs about children’s science books, and links to PBS KIDS science programs and activities.
Start a neighborhood book club with other families:
Book clubs can be a great way to keep the summer learning social and low-key. Warmer weather can inspire some not-so-run-of-the-mill meeting places, too: a tent or picnic blanket in the backyard. If the book club catches on, it’s something to continue throughout the school year.
Listening is learning, too!
Set up a summer listening program. Listening is an engaging way to learn, and many children love listening to books, music, stage plays, comedy routines, and other works. Point out background sounds, such as the way the peppy tune on a sound track adds fun and humor to an adventure tale. Learning to listen is particularly helpful to children with learning disabilities. If your kids love audiobooks, check out Our Favorite Audiobooks, and find even more recommendations at Book Finder.
These reading adventure packs are a paired set of theme-based fiction and nonfiction books and related interactive activities that kids bring home from school to share with their family. Just assemble everything into a two-gallon zip top bag, and they’re ready to go!
https://www.readingrockets.org/literacy-home/literacy-tips-activities/reading-adventure-packs
CLICK THE LINK ABOVE TO REDIRECT YOU TO PDF VERSION OF READING PACKS! You can select by topic and grade!
What's inside:
Two books: one fiction and one nonfiction, selected by Reading Rockets for high quality and wide availability in school libraries
Creativity Activity: a hands-on craft project
Imagination Activity: encourages imaginative play, writing, or drawing
Get Real Activity: focuses on real-world experiences for parent and child
Bookmark: lists the featured titles and alternative titles
Sortegories features nine activities that target essential literacy skills and concepts in a web-based practice setting. Multiple layers of word knowledge — phonemic, phonological, semantic, morphological, and syntactic — are woven together to give kids the chance to apply reading practice. Sortegories is for kids who need practice with phonics, vocabulary (word meaning), and syntax (phrase and sentence meaning) to become fluent readers and comprehenders. A variety of subscription plans are available. (https://www.95percentgroup.com/products/sortegories/)
LetterSchool — Learn to Write is a fun and intuitive alphabet tracing and handwriting app, for preschoolers. The updated version has an option to download and switch between 12 different languages. (Available in Google play, itunes and Amazon)
Blending Board A powerful educational tool for teachers and parents working with dyslexic learners or anyone else still learning the foundations of blending sounds (phonics) and the multisyllabic rules of English. Create a deck of phonemes that can be substituted and manipulated to create various kinds of blending activities. The decks enable users to practice decoding simple words, and multisyllabic words, too.(Available in Google play, itunes and Amazon)
Other Ideas:
https://www.startwithabook.org/summer-writing
Use our (Khan Academy) fun writing prompts to help learners of all ages express their creativity and build their writing skills.
Vocabulary and literacy
Once per week, practice your vocabulary and literacy skills with our English Language Arts courses. (Khan Academy)
High Frequency Word Lists
chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://spedsupport.tea.texas.gov/sites/default/files/2023-08/high-frequency-word-list.pdf
Typing Practice for kids