Summer Reading Fun

Our little town has an amazing library for its size. They have tons of books, and whatever they don't have they will get for you on inter-library loan. They have an awesome kid's corner, with books and toys and art supplies. We LOVE to spend time there, especially during the summer. The Summer Reading Program they put on is amazing! This year I volunteered to help keep the little kids (ages 0-5ish) busy while the older kids did their thing, and it's been a lot of fun.
The activities for each week are centered around a specific book (or books, in some cases), so we get to have fun and introduce the kiddos to new literature at the same time!

I didn't really want to go out and buy a bunch of new books, and so I was limited to the books on my own shelf and whatever I could find at the library. Luckily we have a great collection of books in our home, thanks to the Dolly Parton Imagination Library. If you don't know what this is, or just haven't gotten around to signing up for it yet I strongly encourage you to click the link and check it out. It's amazing!

For each week I tried to come up with activities that fit the theme in each of the following categories:

Playdough
Arts/Crafts
Gross Motor
Sensory
Snack

We do play dough as our gathering activity each week because it's so easy to add kids into the mix as they arrive. I let them play until a few of them start to get bored, then we move on to our craft so that any paint or glue has time to dry before the kiddos go home. Next I gather them around to read the story. By this point they are pretty much done sitting still, so we head outside for snacks and then finish up with our gross motor and sensory activities.

Over the next few weeks I'll be sharing our activities with you all, hopefully you can find something that looks fun and doable for you and your kiddos. Pretty much everything is cheap and requires very little prep work because I'm just lazy like that. ;)

Week #1: The Snowy Day
Week #2: Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? 
Week #3 The Rainbow Fish 
Week #4 Corduroy
Week #5 Big Red Barn
Week #6 Not Your Typical Dragon
Week #7 The Three Little Pigs
Week #8 If You Give a Mouse a Cookie