AGES:  Prereaders, beginning readers, older readers
MATERIALS:  Calendar, pen, list of reading activities (see suggestions)

You can set up a whole calendar of events to make sure your kids experience a little reading fun each day throughout the summer vacation. Here is a month's worth of ideas to fill in a school-break calendar.  Choose the ones your children will enjoy, repeat some, and add your own ideas to the list:

• Make up a recipe for a refreshing summer drink.  Write out a recipe card.
• Go to the library and sign up for the summer reading club.
• Write an alphabetized list of the furniture in your bedroom.
• Search for something tiny enough to fit in your pocket and make up a story about it.
• Look out your window and write down the names of everything you see.
• Read a book to your younger sister.
• Press some flowers between the pages of your book for somebody else to find.
• Trade books with your best friend.
• Write a letter to your grandmother about what you did this week.
•  Make a crayon rubbing of an object you find outside.
• Make a map of your yard.  Label the patio, trees, swing set, and so on.
• Tonight there is a full moon.  Sit outside and tell a scary story.
• Cut out words from the newspaper.  Send someone a mysterious message.
• Make a scrapbook of our vacation.  Write captions under all the photos and picture postcards.
• Trace an illustration in one of your brother's favorite books.  Give him the picture to color.
• Find an unusual fact in today's newspaper and share it with us at dinner.
• Make up a new fruit.  Describe its flavor, texture, and appearance.
• Start a reading marathon.  See if you can read all the books written by your favorite author, by the end of the summer.
• How many out-of-state license plates did you see today?
• Read the most exciting paragraph in your book to the rest of the family.  Try to persuade someone else to read it.
• Write the four food groups at the top of a piece of paper.  Look in the refrigerator.  List all of the foods you find under the correct heading.
• Write the number words from one to twenty.
• Find a long word on the cereal box.  Can you find smaller words inside the big word?
• What is the tiniest sound you can think of?  Write a poem about it.
• Write all the words you can think of that sound like the noise they describe:  crash, squeak, gurgle, etc.  Look up the word onomatopoeia in the dictionary.
• School begins soon.  Make a list of the supplies you need, then let's go shopping.