The Only Book You'll Need for an Entire Summer of Fun

bacteriaI know a lot of us work hard at finding fun, frugal activities for our kids during the summer months when school is out. My little girl is only home from preschool—which she attends for just three hours a day—but I still try to find really great things for us to do together. I picked up 101 Things You Need to Know…and Some You Don’t! on a whim from the library last week and have not been able to part with it for more than a few hours since.

At first, it sounds like a book of facts—and it is full of them, which makes it an educational read. But the text is far from boring, written with more of a Mythbusters perspective than a National Geographic narrator. From facts about the oldest living thing on Earth (bacteria) to answers regarding questions about exploding stomachs, the size of the universe and the Ice Age, 101 Things is full of entertaining tidbits of knowledge.

And the book doesn’t just stop with the facts. Each fact comes with interactive elements, such as quizzes to take, ways to integrate the fact into your own life, questions about how it relates to you, recipes to try, diagrams to label, and my personal favorite—experiments to go along with the fact!

For example, “Which way is North?” offers several ways of experimenting to find North, and “Why don’t we fall off the Earth?” provides an experiment about gravity involving none other than apples.

You can check it out from the library if you like as well, but if you buy a copy you can write in all of the fields it has to record your own experiments and experiences in. It even has a collection of star stickers in the back to place on each activity you’ve completed—or rather, on each fact you’ve mastered.

Whether you love science or crafts, or just plain learning, this book makes them all fun and mostly free. I would say it’s appropriate for many age levels—just pick and choose the items that seem doable for your child. My husband and I (who always love stuff like this—we even did the fries-in-a-jar experiment after we watched Supersize Me!) are having a blast with the ones that are too old for our daughter, so you may even just want to get the book for your own summer fun.