My daughter and I read before bed every night but I am always inspired by contests and pledges – and any motivation to read more and seek out new books is always a good thing. So when I found out about a free 10 week DIY Summer Reading Camp sponsored by Education.com and PBS kids, I was excited to learn more. And when I discovered there are activities appropriate for kids as young as preschool age (and up to fifth grade), it sounded even better.

All you have to do is sign up for an account at Education.com and then take the pledge to read at least 10 books this summer. Mom and dad will also be entered to win one of 5 a Kindle prize packs valued at more than $350 – Bonus! Education.com asks you to select your child’s grade and then gives you a great list of summer “Must-Reads” at your child’s reading level to start you out.

But wait, it gets better. Each of the 10 weeks of Reading Camp has a theme (“Bugs”, “Heroes”, “Get Wet”, “Dragons and Dinos”, etc) and at least a dozen activities per week to do with your kids using materials you likely already have around the house. There are free worksheets to download in the weekly activity sets too. They even give you weekly print outs with all the activities and supplies on a checklist so you can collect everything in advance and pick and neatly choose which activities you want to try. All 10 weekly activity sheets and all the activity instructions are already posted online (no waiting!) so you can do them in any order you want. And did I mention it’s all FREE??!!

Here are the books O and I picked (some based on the cover pictures, but that’s okay):

• Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
• Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
• Caps for Sale
• Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!
• Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
• Harold and the Purple Crayon
• Flat Stanley
• If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
• I Stink
• Harry, the Dirty Dog

We will probably add in extra books that work with each week’s theme also. And for older kids it would be cool to make a chart to tape to the wall so that they can mark off each book and see their progress. Maybe get some star stickers involved – what kid doesn’t love stickers on a chart?

Poking around the Education.com site I also found that you can download 10 additional free printable worksheets every month (more if you want to get a paid subscription to Education.com). Why haven’t I been using this site more often?!