Creative Summer Fun for Kids

Celebrating three books that promote creative summer fun for kids.

Click to read also: How to Plan a DIY Summer Camp You Can Run at Home

Summer is the perfect time to get creative with your kids! You can follow a morning at the park or pool with a quiet afternoon of crafting. A quiet, creative afternoon with your kids a wonderful parent-child bonding opportunity, as well as a chance for children to develop new skills and discover new interests, all while practicing self-expression! This summer there are three great new books that are all about creativity for kids! I’ve read through all three and am reviewing them here today in hopes that they can inspire to you make time for some creative summer fun for kids!

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission. I received review copies of Tinkerlab and 101 Kids Activities, but all opinions are my own. Mike brought Project Kid home from the library because he recognized it as my kind of book.

Books that Promote Creative Summer Fun for Kids

Rachelle Doorley’s Tinkerlab: A Hands-On Guide for Little Inventors is geared for children aged 6 and under, but my eight-year-old would enjoy all or nearly all of the activities in this book! Tinkerlab is a parenting/teaching guide as much as a craft book, with a lot of space dedicated to discussions of why kids are natural tinkerers who experiment, explore, test, and play – learning a great deal in the process! If you want to learn why designing, building, concocting, and discovering is important for your child, this is the book for you! I love the abundance of open-ended activities in this book, since it allows children to take an idea and run with it, and also leaves a lot of room for families to adapt activities to meet their particular interests and needs. Tinkerlab includes several creative science activities – a great reminder that art and science are closely connected!

Holly Homer and Rachel Miller’s 101 Kids Activities That Are the Bestest, Funnest Ever! lives up to its title! This book boasts 101 colorful, engaging activities for children of all ages. These activities are beautifully photographed, and my kids have spent a lot of time thumbing through the pages, searching for activities. I appreciate that the activities in this book range from simple enough for my toddler to complex enough to engage my eight-year-old, with several that all four of my kids find intriguing. Most of the activities are quick and easy, with minimal prep and little clean-up. Activities do range from zero mess (pipe cleaner disguises) to delightfully messy (toe painting!), so there is something for everyone! Several of the more structured crafts double as games, which I always like!

I found Project Kid: 100 Ingenious Crafts for Family Fun by Amanda Klingoff to be the most “concrete craft project” oriented of the three books. Most of the activities in this book are geared towards producing a pretty specific outcome, although there is always room for personalization. I read a lot of craft books, and this one had several ideas I had never seen anywhere else that I thought were quite clever. Because many of these crafts are quite complex, I recommend this book for children aged 8 and up, but there are activities in the book that are accessible to younger children.

Are you planning any creative family fun for this summer?

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MaryAnne Kochenderfer

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MaryAnne is a craft loving educator, musician, photographer, and writer who lives in Silicon Valley with her husband Mike and their four children.