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Extend the Learning

Explore games & toys that encourage creative play!

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Have printable activities sent directly to your printer on the dates and times you choose!

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LeapFrog Summer Camp Week 2: Puzzle Time

Summer Learning Activities for Kids: Art & Music

Music and art can help increase learning for children because these activities provide unique sensory input and mental stimulation. When kids have success with music and art, you may see an increase in self-confidence as well as improved social and communication skills. Engaging with music can help children’s language and mathematical development, memory and physical coordination. Creativity blossoms when kids have time and freedom to experiment with a range of media including crayons, paints, wire, clay and more.

This week's activities, including handmade instruments, interactive crafts, and a home art gallery, can be used later during Storytelling week.

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kids playing homemade instrumets

Make Music

Make musical instruments this week: a shaker from a sugar canister, a drum from an empty oatmeal container or a tambourine from two aluminum pie plates. Be creative! Check out the box guitar we made from an old Leapster box!

Use the instruments to accompany a well-known song, or create a rhythm of your own—and a dance to go with it. Take a picture and you could win one of our weekly prizes!


Activity >

clothespin pteranodon sculpture

Pteranodon Sculptures

These creatures were inspired by a wire-and-wood dog made by American sculptor and artist, Alexander Calder. Kids will love how the clothespin head makes the sculpture interactive.
Activity >

Enter a photo of your camper's sculpture in our contest!

my room printable

My Room

Self-portraits are an introspective art form. Kids often put themselves in their drawings, but focusing on a self portrait can help a child confront the question, "Who Am I?" and so can be an important part of their learning and personal development. This printable encourages your child to draw himself in his room—his most personal space.
Printable >

calder garden sculpture

Calder-Inspired Garden Art

Help your camper learn about visual design and balance in this art project inspired by American sculptor, Alexander Calder.
Activity >

Remember to take a photo of your camper's project to enter our contest!

child holding artwork

Magnificent Museum

Make your home into a museum when you artfully display your things. This activity suggests you display and discuss common household items, as if in a museum. But today you can also add the masterpieces you created this week! Encourage your child to title each piece. Invite other kids to participate with their art. Brainstorm words you might use to describe art, such as colorful, lively, abstract or lifelike.
Activity >

Share photos of your museum and you can enter to win prizes!

art and music certificate

Explore the Museum

Congratulate your amazing artist or musical maestro on a week well done!

Take an educational excursion to your museum with our tips for keeping it fun. Remember to cut your visit short if necessary, and come back often. You and your child will build up a store of visual memories that you can share, using them as reference points in some of your talks together.

Certificate >

Enter photos of your museum trip for a chance to win our weekly prize!

Extra Credit

Get into the groove with even more creative ideas:

  • Make cotton-swab fireworks—a fun and easy kids' craft for Independence Day.
  • Create an abstract self-portrait using bold and beautiful chalk pastels.
  • Pointillism is a technique using dots of color to create images. Challenge your child to paint a planet in dots!
  • Create abstract art using cut-out shapes and pictures from magazines.
  • How do you teach painting? Don't try. Just let your child exercise his or her creativity freely.
  • Encourage creativity by asking your child to write a recipe for a feeling or event.
  • Make a pattern necklace by stringing colored beads or cereal loops onto a string of yarn or elastic cord. Take turns creating and completing different patterns.
  • Potato stamps are a fun way to decorate t-shirts or paper crafts, and they can be adapted to virtually any art style or occasion.
  • Who knew the perfect preschool food also makes for a great craft? Mix pasta shapes (corkscrews, bowties, tubes, etc.) with liquid watercolors or food dyes and then spread them out to dry. Let your child glue them onto cardboard to create summery scenes, skeletons, robots, or just about anything he or she can imagine!

What Is LeapFrog Summer Camp?

If you think that learning should always be in season, you’re right! Studies have shown that when students return to school after a long summer vacation, they've lost about one month’s worth of learning.†

LeapFrog Summer Camp is designed to keep the learning going all summer long through exciting weekly themes and free, do-anywhere learning activities that explore geography, writing, science, art and more. Sign up to receive a Summer Camp email every other week.

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We Want to Hear From You!

What's your favorite Week 4 activity?