Kindergarten Summer Reading Activities: The Great Outdoors

The outdoors is a place of endless wonder, adventure, and discovery. It's an inspiration to many and encourages us to be curious and appreciative of our environment. Below are five reading and learning activities designed to engage your child in an exploration of nature all around us.

1. Read In the Woods

A family goes for a walk in the woods. What colors will they see?

• Download In the Woods

Discuss the book: What is the family doing? What color is the bird they see? Which animal would you like to see in the woods?

2. Watch A Year in the Garden

Watch the video A Year in the Garden to see how a family creates and nurtures their own garden over a whole year.

Discuss the video: What is different about this video? What is the family growing in their garden? What animals did you see in the video?

You can extend the fun by growing a fruit or vegetable from a seed or seedling. You could also create your own video about the experience.

3. Write about colors

Think about living or nonliving things that you can find in the woods. Use the pictures from In the Woods to help you think of ideas. Name and describe objects using color words. Write sentences using one of these sentence frames:

I can find a _____ in the woods.

A _____ is in the woods.

You can extend the activity by using color words to write about plants and animals in a different habitat, such as the beach or pond.

More to read!

For more reading about outdoor fun, download The Fishing Trip.

4. Create a concept web

• Draw a circle and label it “The Woods.”
• Add more circles and connect them to the first circle. Write or draw different animals and plants that live in the woods to each circle.
• Choose one plant or animal from your web to read more about.
• Draw details about that plant or animal on the back of your concept web.

You can extend the activity by creating a web for another habitat, such as a pond or your backyard.

5. Make trading cards

Use index cards to make animal and plant trading cards!

• On one side of index cards, draw and color plants and animals that the characters see in In the Woods or The Fishing Trip.
• Write the name and the color on the other side of the cards.
• Add more cards for other plants and animals that live in the woods.
• Sort the cards by color. Then sort a different way.

You can extend the activity by adding facts and details to each card. Help them find information in books or online.
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Find more language arts activities for kindergarten. 

This blog, originally published in 2020, has been updated for 2025.