Favorite Activity Style Books to Enjoy as a Family

Our family loves a good reason to snuggle in and huddle up.  I decided to make a list of a bunch of fun books we love to use for some quality together-time around here.  Sometimes this means all 6 of us, and sometimes it's a combination of any 6 of us huddled around one of these activity-type books.  We find ourselves sitting down with one of these at bedtime often, or when we have a spare 5 or 10 minutes to kill.  We also seem to go through phases, and we will be on an ISpy kick (for example) for like a month or two where the kids are constantly asking us to look at an ISpy book, and then all of the sudden those are out and we are quizzing each other on crazy NatGeo facts for the next bit, but they all cycle back into favor over and over again, and at lots of ages and stages of our kids over the years. (We have a range of kids right now from 14 years to 2 years- and it's so awesome to have anything we can all participate in together!)

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1.) I Spy Books - There was a point in our lives that included I Spy time before bed as a family every single night, for months on end.  We have so much fun with these, and love that it's something we can all do together.  We sometimes race to see who can find the item listed first, or we divide and conquer!  Some of our favorites are this, this, or this one, but honestly, they are all great.

2.) Where's Waldo - This goes hand in hand with I Spy.  While we tend to enjoy the I Spy books more, Waldo has been a hit as well!  My husband and I even dressed up as Waldo and Wenda for Halloween last year! We have this one and this one, and my daughter got this one for her birthday which is super cool, and a favorite for sure.

3.)  Would You Rather - We have a wide variety of NatGeo books.  The Would You Rather book we own is super fun, inspires some fun, interesting, and silly conversations, and typically leads to all of us making up our own "would you rather" questions for each other through the rest of the day or week.  

4.)  Weird but True - We also love the other NatGeo books we own, and we have a big ol' stack of these Ultimate Weird But True ones, and have fun flipping through them and reading about crazy facts.  The girls have been receiving these as gifts for quite a few years from their family members, so we have a few others like these 5,000 Ultimate Facts books, but they are all fun and are basically the same concept.  Big hit with our kids at all ages.

5.)  Bedtime Math - This is a fun activity book for kids, with a variety of math story-type problems that are presented in a fun way.  There's different levels presented for each one, to make it more appropriate for different levels of math abilities.  

6.) Magazines - Our kids get a magazine subscription from their great-grandma for Christmas each year.  As their ages have changed, their magazine subscriptions have changed, but they've always been Highlights varieties.  Right now we get the Hello magazines for the littlest one, the regular Highlights for our two middle gals who are in 2nd and 4th grade, and the Muse magazine for our teen.  We also loved the High Five magazine when our kids were more appropriately aged for it, (it falls between Hello and Highlights) and I actually think our toddler is switching to that one any month here when his subscription renews.  I can't gush enough about these.  We read fun articles together, do the picture searches, and the kids love to read them independently as well.

Our youngest child (who is almost 3), was our first to ever received the Hello magazines... and they are AMAZING.  I have told everyone I know about them, including our tutor, who is also a kindergarten teacher, and plans to use them as an "early reader" option for some of her kids.  They are sturdy, plastic-y pages that a baby can't wreck, stitched binding (which is my favorite!), and have such sweet little poems and stories.  The Find It pages work like an I Spy, and my little guy loved them so much we decided to buy him his first Look and Find book for Christmas last year.  We got him a Baby Einstein version, and it's super fun and it's kind of crazy how good he is at these things!  The Hello magazine versions have like 3 items to find in each booklet, so he kind of eased into the bigger books.

Hopefully this little list gives you a few ideas for your own kiddos!  All of these are great as a family, as a duo with a sibling or parent, or independently.  


What type of activity books or otherwise do you like to enjoy as a family?  I'm thinking poetry books would make a good addition for us... any recommendations?