By incorporating natural materials and the powers of observation, your child will become a backyard naturalist while building early writing and drawing skills!

Spark your kids' interest in writing by helping them write a mini-book about their favorite subject: themselves!

Here's a household scavenger hunt that shows kids the natural sources behind everyday objects...and builds reading skills, too!

All you need is chalk and pavement to set up this silly, fun, and practical game that reinforces important vocabulary.

Try this simple activity to stimulate some very complex thinking with your first grader to develop those all-important reading and comprehension skills.

With a newspaper, highlighter, and some fun extra prizes, you can help your first grader start lifetime reading habits with print all around us.

Give your child some hands-on experience mixing autumn colors. All you need is a large piece of white paper and tempera paint.

This 'handy' Thanksgiving wreath gets your child to focus on things he's grateful for all year. Create a Thanksgiving wreath with your child this November.

What are you the most thankful for? Challenge your kid to think about all the reasons he has to be thankful and make a turkey featuring one particular thing.

In this parts of speech fall scavenger hunt, kids will search for all the hidden leaves, sort them into parts of speech categories, and then practice creating their own sentences using the words they find.

Put numbers and letters together -- key kindergarten math and reading skills -- while creating a marvelous game piece for outdoor play!

This fill-in-the-blanks game is a little like Mad Libs, but for emerging writers. Get ready for some silly sentences!

Celebrate Irish history and culture this St. Patrick's Day by making a miniature version of the Blarney Stone!

With nothing more than a flat open space and some lively kids, you can reinforce key concepts of punctuation while having lots of healthy laughs.

Help your child understand that letters, put in a certain order, make words. In this fun activity they'll get to make their own puzzle, and practice letters, too!

Let your child catch you making deliberate errors in this silly game that promotes serious learning about punctuation.

Kindergarteners are expected to master the alphabet. Get your child outside and exercising with this fun, move and shake alphabet game.

Make learning word families more hands-on and interactive with this simple craft that has your child making "word sliders" out of paper plates.

Play hopscotch with numbers, but also with letters, to get kids ready for reading.

For Read Across America Day, challenge your first grader to come up with a story using magnetic words inspired by "Green Eggs and Ham" by Dr. Seuss.

Help your preschooler learn the Four Questions prior to the big night with a homemade book, complete with words and illustrations!

Use real elastic to help your kindergartener learn to "stretch" and blend letters to read words.

This alphabet hunt is pure pirate-loving fun. And it gives kids practice in learning to recognize letters and sounds-- a key skill for reading readiness.

Make these simple homemade New Year's gifts with your child this holiday season to give to friends and family, each with a special message inside.

Looking for a teacher gift? Here's a way for your preschooler to show off her growing writing skills and create a cute picture frame to show her thanks, too!

Any decent Halloween celebration isn't complete without a cat. Even though this cat has an arched back to look as if it's hissing, it's still cute!

Here's an activity to help your first grader read and write, while staying in touch with a faraway friend or relative. Here's how:

Foster a love of words in your little cupid this Valentine's Day by creating a memory game that doubles as an early reading activity.

Help your child pick up spelling, alphabetical order, sight word practice, and reading fast with just simple clothespins and paint sticks.

Ask a child if they want to practice the alphabet and you'll likely get snubbed. But ask if they'd like to play letter detective? You might hook yourself a fish.