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Reading for Kids

I received the below books free for purposes of my review. All opinions are my own. *this post contains affiliate links*

I am absolutely loving the Read City USA challenge for 2021. They’re challenging everyone to read 20 minutes a day. You can join through your local library and then at every 10 hours mark you earn a sticker. We just stopped in our local library this week and pick up our first sticker. And my 4th grader who is all about doing things to their fullest, picked up her 10 hour and her 20 hour sticker. She’s figured out that if she reads an hour a day she can earn every single possible sticker. So, she’s been averaging 1 hour and 20 minutes of reading a day.

This challenge goes through the end of December 2021 so there’s plenty of time to get started and encourage your kids to read more! I’m on a perpetual hunt for new books for my kids and I’ve definitely struck gold with my latest 2 book reviews! Keep reading to discover a couple of our new favorites!

One book that my girls recently enjoyed is “The Friendship Fairies – Go to School“.

The Friendship Fairies by Lucy Kennedy – Illustrated by Phillip Cullen is a super cute book about 3 Fairy friends and their adventures back to school at the Magic Manor.

Faced with new challenges both in school and in their friendships, how will they make this a great back to school experience for everyone!

I love the friendly story and the fun illustrations and am happy to have my girls reading a book about the challenges of making new friends. Friendships are even harder this year and it was so good for them to read about other girls facing friendship challenges and overcoming them!

My son was super excited to help me review these books and CD from Friendly Fables by RAP DAD.

These books and the rap music are so much fun! My boys love rap music. I do not, so I have no idea what rap artists are appropriate for kids and who is not. It’s so hard for me to find raps that I actually like the boys listening to, because I’m so unfamiliar with the genre.

I was excited to try something new, and designed for kids. These do not disappoint. They’re fun, catchy, approved by me, and greatly liked by my boys. Plus, with matching books, my 2nd grader is actually excited to read, and his little brother is excited to listen to him read, because they both think that these are so cool.

Dino Rap is our current favorite, and the cd is now a permanent addition to my car!

Share with me in the comments, what’s something your child has read and loved this year! I’m going to run out of books really fast if my kids keep up this reading pace all year, and I need some new suggestions!

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Summertime!

So, it’s summertime, and I deliberately did not sign my kids up for any summertime activities. Well, I take that back, I deliberately TRIED not to sign my kids up for any summertime activities before summer began. We’re not doing any dance camps, no dance lessons, no parent’s day out programs, etc. So, I think I’m doing pretty good so far.

I did plan out our reading logs for the summer. (we’ve already turn our first one in). My 5yr old finally took off on some independent reading – think “learn to read” books stages 1 and 2 – at the end of the school year and I don’t want to re-teach that the beginning of next year, so she’s participating in every reading activity in sight. It’s a good thing, she’s motivated by prizes, so filling up her sheet and turning it in for something appeals to her. I picked up her library reading sheet yesterday (which was the first day I could get it) and about a dozen books for her to read as well. She was all set to fill up her entire reading log – she has to read 30 hours – in one day. I explained to her that we can’t turn our sheets in for a month, and that we have plenty of time to read the books we have and check out some more to read. So, she only read 2 books to me this morning, and I’m sure she’ll try to read as many as possible at bedtime (it’s her new “stay out of bed” trick). There’s a few more reading logs we can’t sign up for until June (pizza hut does one) so we’ll be busy all summer with our reading! And the best part, she’s actually asking to read!

I just discovered yesterday that the Disney Store has activities every day of the week starting in June. I guess we’ll be going to their summer kick-off the beginning of June and be visiting the store many times this summer. They have story time every Tuesday, and I’m not sure what else planned for the summer, I think a craft time one day, and I’m sure plenty of other activities to keep two little girls happy.

We have season tickets to our local water park – which opened this past weekend, horray! My kids love the park and we plan to have some really nice tans by the end of summer!

And to top it off, I’m doing something I always said I would never do, my 5 yr old is entering a beauty pagent this year. I was just notified yesterday that she’s a “state finalist” so I should soon be receiving my envelope with all my schedule info and such.

Yes, I’m doing a terrific job of doing nothing this summer!  Not really, but at least it’s all fun stuff! And my summer is just starting 🙂 Surely I can fit in a vacation or two, a couple of Birthday parties, and maybe a shopping trip!