Get Ready for Kindergarten With These Summer Workbooks and Activity Sheets

Children enter kindergarten with a wide range of academic skills. Some know a few numbers and letters, while others know the full alphabet, can count to 20, and may even be reading short words. Kindergarten teachers are well-equipped to welcome children at every level, and help each of them progress at a developmentally appropriate pace.

Even so, it helps to do some pre-academic work to ready your child for the learning that lies ahead.

If that seems like a herculean task, don’t stress — building your little one’s knowledge takes only about 10 minutes of practice a day. We’ve found that the Weekly Reader: Summer Express (Between Grades PreK and K) workbook is a helpful tool for prepping kids for kindergarten because it covers everything your child will need to know (from counting to handwriting!) in short daily exercises that are colorful and fun.

“The goal was to give children a solid foundation of content that they would need going forward for kindergarten,” says Ourania Papacharalambous, the book’s editor.  

The Weekly Reader: Summer Express workbook is split up into ten weekly sections, and each week is divided into five days. There are two daily activities, ranging from phonics exercises to counting practice. What's more, there's built-in gratification: The book keeps kids motivated with pages of bright stickers and an incentive chart you can fill out whenever your little one completes a week. There are even certificates to congratulate them for completed work!

You can easily see which skills are covered each week, and return to certain exercises if you feel your child hasn’t mastered a certain skill. “It covers everything — it's not just the alphabet, and it's not just numbers one through ten,” says Papacharalambous. “Kids will need everything in this book in kindergarten, and having that skill base is important.”

But perhaps most importantly, we love this workbook because it helps children see what they’re learning all around them. Its activities allow you to practice certain skills with your child in the real world, whether it’s finding patterns in clothing or identifying shapes at the supermarket, and to show them the real-life applications of numbers, letters, shapes, and patterns. That foundation of skills will help your child thrive in kindergarten.

Pick up your copy below now! You can find all books and recommendations at the Scholastic Store Online.

Want more fun activities and book recommendations? Sign up for our Scholastic Parents newsletter. Find more expert-approved kindergarten books, tips, and resources at our guide to getting ready for kindergarten.