Elf Pen Pal Writing Paper
Turn your Elf on the Shelf (or homemade elfin friend) into a tool for social-emotional learning, family bonding, and literacy this Christmas! The secret is to make your elf a Yuletide pen pal for your kids. Read our Elf on the Shelf pen pal activity post, then print out this adorable elf-themed writing paper to get started.
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Christmas Bookmarks
These color-your-own bookmarks make a sweet little gift to encourage children to read and a fun holiday activity to do with them on Christmas eve or the big day.
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Read with Me Recipe: Christmas Ornaments
Sneak in some light reading practice as you follow a simple recipe to bake DIY ornaments with your child to keep or gift.
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Word Family Snowman Craft
Make a cute snow family to help your child learn simple rhyming words and beginning spelling patterns. Just print out the snowpeople templates and follow the directions on the printable. To learn more about teaching word families and see a more complete tutorial, visit our Snowman Craft blog post.
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Family Year in Review Coloring Worksheet
In the same way that the key to a great morning is a good night’s sleep, a little-known trick to start your new year off right is to spend some quality time reviewing the year before. Print this cute worksheet and coloring page that your child can fill out with highlights and reflections about the past year.
Download the Year in Review Worksheet
Family Year in Review Conversation Cards
In the same way that the key to a great morning is a good night’s sleep, a little-known trick to start your new year off right is to spend some quality time reviewing the year before. Print and cut out these conversation cards, then use the prompts to spark some family reflection about the past year.
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Conversation Hearts Activity
This Valentine’s Day-themed literacy activity helps kids practice letter sounds and learn to spell and read simple three-letter words. Just print out the template on colored paper and follow the steps in the Conversation Hearts Activity tutorial. Use the letters provided and/or write your own letters on the blank hearts.
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St. Patrick's Day Rainbow Reading
Help your child practice reading and spelling three-letter words with this cute St. Patrick’s Day activity. Read the full tutorial, then print and cut out this rainbow reading template to quickly make your own.
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St. Patrick's Day Rainbow Reading Activity Guide
This full-color guide walks you through how to make your own St. Patrick’s Day Rainbow Reading activity. Print it out to have the tutorial at hand as you craft your own Rainbow Reading game. Perfect for groups, from scout troops or clubs to crafting parties.
Download the St. Patrick's Day Activity Guide
Easter Bunny Puppet Template
Print this template and let your child color it in to make an Easter Bunny puppet using a paper bag. See this tutorial for how to make your puppet, plus tips for using it to build literacy skills.
Download the Easter Bunny Puppet Template
Read with Me Recipe: Easter Egg Bread
Print out this easy recipe and then read it with your child to help them practice the tricky EA spelling pattern while making a fun Easter-themed snack together. Read our Easter Egg Bread blog post to get tips for teaching as you cook.
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Father’s Day Card
Celebrate Dad with a cute, personalized card. Print the PDF on two sides of the same 8.5”x11” paper, then fold in half to make a card with “Happy Father’s Day” on the front. Inside, your child can fill in answers to the prompts with words or drawings, then color in the whole thing. Tip: Use crayons or colored pencils to avoid bleeding through the paper, unless you print on cardstock.
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Summer Activities Bucket List
Download this PDF for a checklist of fun summertime activities to keep your young one happy, entertained, and learning all summer long. The PDF includes descriptions, context, and tips for each activity. Print it out or just save it for easy reference when you need some inspiration.
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Summer Conversation Cards
Print on 8.5”x11” paper (preferably cardstock, but any will do) and cut the cards apart. Use them to spark conversation with your child on the go, at the table, or anytime you need some entertainment and bonding.
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Road Trip Activity Book
Keep the kids entertained on car trips long or short with this family activity book. Just download and print it double-sided, then fold to make a booklet. If you can’t print double-sided, don’t worry—you can print it normally, cut the papers in half, and staple the booklet together. Then grab some crayons, plus a book or clipboard for a mobile desk, and have some family fun! Note that a grownup (or older sibling) will need to help younger children read certain pages.
Download the Road Trip Activity Book
Read with Me Recipe: Roasted Pumpkin Seeds
Print out this fall kid-approved recipe and then read it with your child as you prepare a simple, frustration-free dish together.
Download the Roasted Pumpkin Seeds Recipe
SpOOky Spelling Game
Help your child learn and practice the tricky “OO” spelling pattern with a cute Halloween-themed ghosts and pumpkins activity. Just print this template and cut out the shapes. Then work with your child to form the letters into words, from BOO and MOO to BOOM, MOON, and even BROOM. Read our Spooky Spelling Game blog post for more instructions and tips.
Download the SpOOky Spelling Game
Reading Bingo
Challenge your little one to read more! Print out this bingo card with fun challenges to complete, from “read in a fort” to “try a new book.” You can tackle the challenges together, as you read aloud to them, or independent readers can complete them alone. Bonus: Offer simple rewards for each row or column completed, such a special outing together, a fancy sticker, or something else (tangible or intangible) your child values.
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Halloween Alphabet Spinner
This word spinner of Halloween-related words and illustrations from A to Z helps kids match sounds to letters. It’s like a more interactive ABC book. Just print it out and then follow the tutorial.
Download the Halloween Alphabet Spinner
DIY ABC Book
Kids can write & illustrate their own ABC book! Print the pages using two-sided printing, preferably on sturdy white paper, then fold the stack in half to form a booklet. Help your child fill in the blanks with words and drawings for each letter sound. (Note: For more accurate learning, we suggest a word that ends with X.) Encourage your child to trace each letter inside the outline to practice its shape. (For a multi-use activity, laminate the pages, then cut apart & attach using a hole punch & string.)
Download the DIY ABC Book
Storytelling Cards
Creative storytelling is a classic activity that offers great screen-free fun. It’s also a powerful tool to build key skills that underpin literacy, from vocabulary and comprehension to imagination and fluency. Storytelling cards serve as prompts to help you invent a story on the fly and captivate your little listener. Then be sure to turn things around, and encourage your child to improvise their own story from the cards. Just print these cards onto 4”x 6” index cards (or on cardstock and cut them out). Then turn them over, mix them up, deal them out, and invent a story around what comes up. Get more tips in the “How to Play” section at the bottom of our DIY Story Cards post.
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Nursery Rhyme Coloring Book
Nursery rhymes are a time-honored way of engaging small kids that builds their language skills. Each page in this collection of coloring sheets features a different classic rhyme. Print them on 8.5”x11” paper, then read the rhymes together and let your child color the pages. You can staple the pages together to form a book, or hang them on the wall or fridge as a reminder to recite rhymes with your child.
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Picture & Writing Journal
This PDF contains three journal pages to inspire budding writers. First is a blank page with space for children to write and illustrated a story. The second and third pages have illustrations already printed on them to spark storytelling, followed by space for kids to write stories about the pictures.
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Alphabet Board Game
Board games teach children fine motor skills, taking turns, patience, and problem solving, and they can even help improve academic skills. But, most importantly, they’re fun! Use this tutorial to make a personalized board game that reinforces alphabetic knowledge and gives you a unique opportunity to bond.
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Learning Tools Checklist
Get a short list of ridiculously simple, insanely cheap, super fun, must-have items to get preschoolers ready for reading in a clickable PDF checklist. The download also includes specific ideas on how to use each to infuse your child’s days with more learning fun. Save it on your phone and check off items at the store, or print it out and post in your play space.
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Ice Cream Activity
This playful reading activity helps children practice building sentences. Just print and cut out the scoops and cones, then let your child create sentences by piling one scoop on top of another above one of the cones. Gently help them add words until they have a full sentence. You can also write your own words on the blank scoops! (Read the post for more tips.)
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Family Reading Journal
Create a sweet record of what your kids love to read with this free printable reading journal. Inside, you’ll find a cover ready for coloring and journal pages with room to jot down your reflections, note favorite quotes, and rate each book.
Download the Family Reading Journal
Read with Me Recipe: Carrot Hummus
Read and prepare this healthy recipe with your child to help them practice reading (and spelling) words with double consonants. Tip: Print the recipe and then help them find all the double-consonant words in it, then demonstrate how to read them. Get more tips in the carrot hummus blog post.
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Read with Me Recipe: Three-Bean Salad
Read and prepare this healthy recipe with your child to help them practice the TH spelling pattern. Tip: Demonstrate the TH sounds in the and three, and explain that those sounds are made by T and H together. Then print the recipe and invite your child to circle all the words with TH they can find.
Download the Three-Bean Salad Recipe
Read with Me Recipe: Yogurt Bark
Print out this simple recipe and then read it with your child to help them learn how to read Y as a consonant while making a healthy treat together. Read our yogurt bark blog post to get tips for teaching about the letter Y as you cook.
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Read with Me Recipe: Cake in a Cup
Print out this easy recipe and then read it with your child to help them practice the silent E spelling pattern while making a sweet treat together. Read our Cake in a Cup blog post to get tips for teaching silent E as you cook.
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Wheel-of-Phonics
Every app and workbook alike asks kids to draw a line from a picture to the letter it begins with. This literacy activity is everywhere for a reason—it works. Our fun, interactive upgrade to this classic activity puts the letters at the center of a wheel that kids can clip corresponding pictures to.
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Conversation Starters & TALK Graphic
Simply talking with babies and kids of all ages is crucial for building their brains and setting them up to thrive as readers, thinkers, and doers. This printable has a handy graphic about ways to add more conversation into days with kids, plus a set of conversation-starting questions to get you going.
Download the Conversation Starters & TALK Graphic
DIY Letters Activity
Even before kids have the motor skills to write, you can start teaching them how to form letters by giving them laminated letter-part cutouts to assemble into letters. Drawing their attention to elements like curves and lines, and where those end and meet, helps them distinguish among the 52 upper- and lowercase letters.
Download the DIY Letters Activity
Printable Bookplates
Let your child personalize their library—or make a book gift extra special—with these printable bookplates that kids can color in themselves. Just print them directly onto 4”x6” labels and stick into the front of the book, or print on regular paper, then cut them out and paste them in. (You can also scale before printing to adapt the bookplates to your book size.) Tip: Let your child color the bookplate before sticking it in, to avoid overflow color around the edges.
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Alphabet Tracing Activity
Tracing the shapes of the letters is a gentle introduction to writing them freehand. Our printable has a page for each uppercase letter, a page for each lowercase letter, and a page for each letter with both uppercase and lowercase side by side. Print just part, or the whole thing; the black-and-white pages are low-ink for easy printing. We recommend putting the pages in a presentation book with plastic sleeves or laminating them, so you can wipe off the writing and use them again as often as you like.
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Reading Inspiration Posters
Download five high-resolution posters perfect for decorating a playroom, bedroom, or classroom. They’re sure to spur on the bookworms in your life!
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Inspirational Bookmarks
Celebrate the power of reading with 10 free printable bookmarks, each featuring a parent-author reflecting on the fresh perspectives, fond memories, and cherished connections they gained through family reading.
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Alphabet Bingo
Help your child practice letters and letter sounds while exploring your neighborhood together with this free printable download that includes four bingo sheet designs.
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