The Best Workbook and Book Combinations for Summer Reading

Between lots of play, relaxation, and travel during the summertime, it’s easy for your child to lose some of the reading momentum they gained during the school year. Fortunately, you can encourage them to continue reading and learning with the right workbook and reading combinations.

Scholastic’s popular line of workbooks, such as Early Learners,  Success With… and Little Skill Seekers, are perfect for supplementing your child’s learning while they’re outside of the classroom. In preparation for the upcoming school year, these workbooks will help your child sharpen their phonics, grammar, and vocabulary. And when paired with their favorite books, your child will have so much fun, they won’t even realize they’re still learning.

Explore more summer activity books to help kids make the leap to the next grade.

Plus, check out our Summer Reading Value Packs curated for every grade. Each set comes with five books plus a workbook, to help children retain valuable academic skills over the summer break and keep kids inspired to read, learn, and grow all season. 

These expert-recommended workbook and story pairings will help your child hone their reading skills and allow them to put those skills to work on the pages of their favorite titles. From picture books to graphic novels, these books cover a variety of topics, including historical fiction and STEM. 

Shop the best workbook and book combinations for summer reading below! You can find all books and activities at The Scholastic Store, where you can get free shipping on book-only orders over $25.

Pre-K

These workbooks and picture books will help your child identify letters and build phonemic awareness — sounding out multisyllabic words — which are key learning skills to get kids prepared for kindergarten.

Kindergarten

Get your child excited about joining the “big kids” in the fall with this winning book combo. The workbooks will give your child lots of practice writing letters and sounding out words. Meanwhile, the picture books and early reader books are geared toward children learning to read.

Grade 1 

Help your newly independent reader adjust to longer, faster-paced plots with early chapter books, such as the Unicorn Diaries and Press Start! series. Then, give them more practice with Scholastic Success With reading comprehension, grammar, and writing workbooks.

Grade 2

Word recognition, vocabulary building, and spelling are front and center in second grade, where your child will begin exploring more challenging titles. This is also the ideal age for introducing a variety of book genres to your child. Popular series like The Dragon Girls and The Bad Guys are packed with humor and will allow your child to dive into more complex themes.  

Grade 3

This workbook and reading combo takes your child’s reading comprehension and vocabulary a step further with more robust and nuanced story lines. When your child practices identifying complex words and phrases, they’re able to dig deeper into the meaning of their texts. 

Grade 4 

In fourth grade, your child will learn how to make inferences, sequence events, and analyze an author’s intent. This powerful pairing features the Front Desk and Wings of Fire series, which explore coming-of-age topics that will resonate with your child.

Grade 5

Fifth grade will introduce your child to more advanced grammar skills, such as sentence structure, parts of speech, and subject-verb agreement. These engaging page-turners for fifth grade readers can help them stay motivated to read and understand more complicated plots.

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