With school coming to an end for the schoolyear, I have been keeping the last few days simple. Filling them with fun unstructured learning. Which seems to help keep my oldest daughter calm and more interested in the learning process when we keep our lessons relaxed.

My daughters aren’t always interested in sitting down and reading. Therefore it can be difficult to get them to sit through a book and in time I’ve learned it’s ok. I just have to work with their attention span and keep trying. Rather than getting stressed out about it I just stay at their pace. Which means we can read several books in a setting although none of them may be read to the very end. My youngest often turns the pages skipping pages on purpose and telling me she doesn’t want that page she wants the next. I’ve learned to go with it, and keep reading, the most important part of the process is continuing. It doesn’t have to be done perfectly to count. It’s really just about reading and exposing young children to as much reading as possible. If that means your reading a book as the child is making a book fort it’s ok because keeping it fun is an important tool for keeping kids interested.

Most nights after my youngest goes to bed my oldest and I have a designated playtime in which she decides what we play and I go along with it. Since we have introduced this concept it has helped her mood improve slightly. She is someone that likes to be in control of many things, and it has helped to an extent allowing her time at night just the two of us in which she determines what we play. Tonight she chose to play pretend school. Which was perfect because it got her to sit down and read to me in a way that she felt in control. It kept her interest and she actually read to me without getting upset and telling me she didn’t feel like doing school because she was in control of the activity. I often have to check in with myself and remind myself it’s ok it doesn’t have to be so serious. Reading and learning in general is meant to be fun otherwise kids aren’t going to want to do it.

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The boxed sets pictured above are great for early readers. The joke books pictured above are great for kids such as my daughter that enjoy jokes and aren’t always interested in reading books. They keep her entertained and give her more jokes to share with others. Ten little lady bugs, and If You Give a Mouse a Cookie are books my youngest daughter enjoys listening to.

(I am a participant in the Amazon Associates Program and any qualifying purchases made through affiliate links I may earn a commission on at no additional cost to you.) The chalknetic wall adhesive is what I use for my daughters magnetic chalk board on our wall. The magnetism isn’t strong and it can’t hold up heavy magnets. Although it works for what we use it for. The chalk set pictured above is what we used during our chalk art time. The paper we used I had bought at our local dollar store.

Thanks for reading and I hope some of our ideas inspire a fun simple approach to learning that can carry on into the summer.