Summertime 2024
Pick up a free adventure journal
Pick up your free copy of the Adventure Journal from any of our library branches! You can also print a copy from home. Use the journal to keep track of reading and explore fun activities.
The Adventure Journal is for kids ages 0-12 years. You do not have to be reading on your own to participate. Children ages 0-5 can participate with parents’ help.
Printable Adventure Journal
(8 pages full color)
Events
Look for seasonal reading celebrations at your local library. Programs at each branch will promote literacy development, honor cultural heritage, and create a love of books and reading. Everyone is welcome!
Summertime Park Adventures
Bookmobile 75th Anniversary! Bolinas
Horse Around: Art with Author Amy Novesky
Benefits
The focus of the Nature Adventure program is to make reading fun, prevent learning loss over the summer, and close the opportunity gap through targeted outreach to partner agencies. Kids can track their reading progress using the Adventure Journal.
Reading, writing, playing, singing, and making up stories are ways that children build literacy skills. Completing the Adventure Journal challenges together as a family provides a variety of ways to engage with reading.
The Library provides strategic targeted book giveaways in coordination with partner agencies. Friends of the Marin County Library have generously sponsored the giveaway books.
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Summer Reads
Wondering what to read this summer? We are happy to help!
How to get recommendations:
- Call or visit your local library and ask a children's librarian.
- Request a Book Bundle of personalized picks chosen just for you!
- Explore these lists of great reads.
Summertime Reading
Why is summer reading essential for a child’s success?
Summer reading facilitates the practice of skills learned during the school year and improves children’s experience of the world around them while also helping them discover the joy of reading.
It is an opportunity for children to turn something they are unfamiliar, with or uncomfortable with, into an important skill and eventually into a habit by practicing reading skills.
By participating in summer reading activities, children gain more reading skills and a better understanding of language, and they are laying a foundation for lifelong learning.
Research shows that reading during the summer helps beat the "summer slide", exercises the brain, improves emotional intelligence, builds vocabulary, and broadens perspective. Summer reading is critical to helping children retain information learned earlier in the school year and develop critical thinking and knowledge skills for the coming school year. Children should read every day to maintain literacy skills and develop new skills.
How can parents support reading at home?
- Make time for reading.
- Read aloud together! Reading aloud benefits children and teenagers, especially if they are struggling.
- Model reading behavior at home: Do your children see you reading at home? Do you have things to read at home? If not, go to your local library, or for fun label items at home and let the kids practice reading them out loud.
How can I make reading a part of summer fun?
Explore your library! Visit your local library and check out magazines or books you have never read before.
Read when you least expect it, create your own book, write a letter, set aside some time for reading during the day – at the park on a blanket, before bedtime, make it fun! Read aloud - to all ages!
The Kids Summertime Program is generously funded by the Friends of the Marin County Free Library, opens a new window.
