Looking for ways to boost summer learning? Keep the spirit of curiosity alive while school’s out with these informal anytime learning resources. This collection of activities encourages families with students grades PreK-3 to spend the summer exploring and learning at home.
Reading
Molly of Denali Field Guide
Use this Molly of Denali Guide to learn about birds in your neighborhood.
Narrative Writing Organizers
Use these guides and graphic organizers to come up with an exciting story!
Sunflower Biscuit Bones
Build vocabulary while baking a treat for
your four-legged friend.
Memory Book
Create a memory book of events from the last year.
Getting to the Game Story
Read this fun story and learn new vocabulary words like transportation, rotate, and gears.
Theodore Roosevelt Reader
Learn about the 26th President of the United States with this booklet.
Amelia Earhart Reader
Learn about the first woman to fly over the Atlantic Ocean alone with this booklet.
Recipe Book Family Activity
Use this recipe book based on Molly of Denali to get cooking with family and friends! Try out some of Molly’s recipes and then write down your own recipes to add to her recipe book. Writing a recipe down is a great way to share your favorite foods with others, so they can make them, too!
Math
Cupcake Math
Bake your favorite cupcake recipe and help your child learn about measurment and math with these talking points
“Peg+Cat: Games with Hundreds Chart”
Use a hundreds chart as a playing board in these fun and simple games.
Peg’s Perfect Pizza
Explore shapes while making this yummy pizza recipe
Counting Around the House
The purpose of this PBS KIDS Labs activity is to help children explore numbers and counting, an important step toward learning how to add and subtract.
A House Just Right for Me! – The Cat in the Hat
This activity will help children practice sorting and measurement skills and understand the connection between size and shape. A fun way for them to practice these skills is by building a house for a favorite toy or character like the Cat in the Hat.
Hands Down! – Curious George
Counting forward and backward by 1’s lays the foundation for addition and subtraction, while counting by fives helps prepare children for multiplication. Counting by fives also prepares them for telling time and counting money. This activity will help children count forward and backward by 1’s, 5’s and 10’s.
Birthday Calculator Math – FETCH! with Ruff Ruffman
This Fetch activity will help children understand the concept of days, weeks, and months, and practice addition and early multiplication by using a calculator to solve an addition problem and then, the same problem using multiplication.
Science
Dot’s Nature Bingo
Find out how many of these objects in nature your students can spot with PBS KIDS Bingo! Find all you need to play Dot’s Nature Bingo here, in English and in Spanish!
Super Senses
Children can explore how animals and humans use their senses to learn about the world around them with this fun hands-on activity.
What Floats Your Boat?
In this Cat in the Hat activity, have children predict what will sink or float, test out their predictions in water, and then record their observations on this printable Sink or Float Table. Available in both English and Spanish.
Rainbow Popsicle
Explore kitchen chemistry and make a cool rainbow popsicle in this activity from The Ruff Ruffman Show.
Grab it and Run
Explore wearable science and try to make it to the finish line of this special relay race without breaking any materials in this activity from The Ruff Ruffman Show.
Mix it Up! Playing with Mixtures
Use these related resources to learn more about mixtures together, and use the discussion prompts to further support conversations and play.
Ramps
Make predictions, observations, and investigate with these ramp activities.
The Cat in the Hat Pinwheel
See the wind at work by making this Cat in the Hat pinwheel! Invite children to observe what happens when they blow on it, run with it, or put it in front of a fan (slow speed and high speed). They can also measure how fast the wind is blowing by counting the number of spins.
There’s No Planet Like My Planet
Is your child ready to invent their own planet? In this activity from Ready Jet Go!, they will create a Bortronian Power Cube Presentation and share their new place in space with friends and family (you!).
Engineering
How- To Cards
These How-To Cards introduce multiple pathways and features to help children get started using the PBS KIDS ScratchJr app. Print, cut, glue, and make them available for children to reference as they work with the app.
All Sorts of Things
Practice sorting natural and human-made objects in a variety of ways.
Scratch Jr At Home Activities
Play and build together with these Scratch Jr at home activities. Design your own monster, play a sequence game, build a catapult, and continue the fun with suggested books and digital games.
Stick Puppet Shadow Play
Make your own stick puppets of the Cat in the Hat, Nick, Sally, Fish, and Thing One and Thing Two. Then find a dark space, and explore shadow science with the puppets, a flashlight, and your imagination.
Build a Better Birdhouse
Encourage children to explore core science concepts in this activity based on The Ruff Ruffman Show! After a birdbath mishap, Ruff wonders if a different column would make it stronger. Which shape would support the most weight?
Physical Activity
Step It Up Guide
Use this Cyberchase chart to keep track of how many steps you take each week.
Animal Fitness
Support children’s motor skills while they learn about the movements of various animals.
Rock Paper Scissors
This lesson puts a physical twist on the traditional game, rock, paper, scissors! Students get into pairs to play rock, paper, scissors. However, in this game the person who does not win the match is rewarded with exercise by doing activities such as star jumps or jumping jacks depending on the round (there are 3 rounds).
Active Deck of Cards
Read playing cards so the suit determines the type of physical activity, and the face value determines the number of repetitions.
Fitness Tips For Kids
Help children learn easy ways to stay physically fit, in this guide from Arthur.
Additional Resources
Summer Learning
This collection of videos, lessons, and activities encourages students grades PreK-12 to spend the summer exploring their own neighborhood, the country, the world, and even outer space – in person, or from the comfort of home or a local library.
Summer Reading Collection
Get summer started on the right page with PBS LearningMedia’s Summer of Reading collection! These videos, activities, and interactive games help to build vocabulary and reading comprehension while bringing storybook characters to life.
Camp PBS LearningMedia
This collection of resources is ideally suited for camp counselors and other summer staff looking for fun, educational activities to include in their daily schedule, as well as resources to help seed ideas for introducing topics to campers.
Unplugged Learning
These menus introduce and support learning outcomes in science, literacy, math, arts, and much more through fun activities to do with the family, regardless of age! Using the bingo-playing style, Unplugged Menus are all completely independent of one another and don’t require any internet access.