Family Fun
This topical guide will introduce you to important books, videos, and information resources available from the EI Clearinghouse and other sources. Contact us via online form or by phone (1-877-275-3227) to request a resource listed below (or ask your local public librarian). Note that some videos may be viewed online, and journal titles will take you to the publisher’s homepage.
Table of Contents

EIC Resources
Infants and toddlers learn so much from being read to. Make it a routine to read to your child every day, if you can.
Books
A month-by-month collection of 365 easy and enjoyable ways to connect as a family and explore life outdoors. These activities give families an idea for every day of the year, requiring little planning, no expertise, and relatively few resources (time, cash, or patience!), no matter where they live.
Complete with dozens of ideas for babies, toddlers, and school-aged children, this book will help your family step away from your devices and step into endless afternoons of playtime fun.
From building basic models and mazes to constructing complex stairs and bridges, box and block activities ignite children’s imaginations and engage their creativity and critical thinking. This book is full of small group and individual activities that explore construction, collaborative play, and basic math concepts.
This book provides hundreds of entertaining toddler activities, songs, games, and art projects that stimulate cognitive development and encourage inventiveness.
This book is for the father who thinks he is short on time. It provides ideas to use to connect with their child/ children in ways that engages both parties, and ways to interact and learn from one another as they participate in tools built on promoting communication and activity.
With more than 250 songs, rhymes, and chants, this book is a fun way to enrich toddlers’ language experiences.
Enhance the growth and development of infants and young children with more than 400 fun, fast, and easy-to-use learning activities
This book supplies 50 play-based developmentally appropriate activities for introducing STEM. All activities include extensions, inquiry questions, and tips on how to help parents strengthen children’s learning at home.
Taking a lighthearted approach to the serious business of parenting, This book offers new ideas for parents who are looking for fun and educational activities that they can do with their kids but that are also fun and interesting for the parents themselves.
Organized by age, this book gives you the tools needed to make developing fine motor skills easy and fun for young children.
This book is a collection of screen-free, traditional games and activities for young children that require nothing more than people and their brains to play. All games and activities are adaptable according to the age of the children, their interests, and their abilities.
This book presents 52 open-ended activities to help you engage your child in the outdoors. No matter what your location—from a small patch of green in the city to the wide-open meadows of the country—each activity is meant to promote exploration, stimulate imagination, and heighten a child’s sense of wonder.
This book will tempt families to cook up some physics, chemistry and biology in their own kitchens and back yards. Many of the experiments are safe enough for toddlers and exciting enough for older kids, so families can discover the joy of science together.
This book provides basic crafting lessons for children of all ages.
Screen-Free Fun offers over 400 ideas to disconnect from tech devices and reconnect with our families in a healthier way. This book has 400 ways to have fun as a family: DIY projects, outdoor adventures, easy daytrips, etc. are all examples of possible activities in this book.
This book teaches you how to stimulate speech using everyday play. It makes learning to talk fun and engaging for your child using easy-to-follow activities.
Whether the goal is for a child to sleep better, concentrate before a big test or game, or enjoy some much-needed relaxation, this guide helps anyone who loves and plays with children to introduce them to the many benefits of meditation.
This book is the perfect companion for any busy parent who wants to stop stressing over mealtime and find a creative, playful solution to make this family ritual relaxing and fun.
From stomping around in mud boots in the spring to gathering around the woodstove in winter, the activities in this book naturally change from season to season—from the rhythms of the seasons comes the rhythms in our homes, our hearts, our families, and our every day.
This book features simple, practical gardening advice, including how to design a play-friendly garden, ideas for fun-filled theme gardens, and how to cook and preserve the garden’s bounty.

This book includes dozens of activities for grandparents and grandchildren, including scavenger hunts, fruit cobblers, bath-time fun, and more.
This book explores what we learn and can gain as parents and families by encouraging and experiencing creativity and nature exploration with our children, the seasons can provide us with a rhythm that brings us close to the earth, and closer to our children.
Whether it’s simple, silly, selfless, or an aspiration, this book is the ultimate handbook for reimagining quality time and creating magical shared experiences as you go.
This book offers parents a fresh approach to feeding a toddler by providing tips and tricks for quick shopping, easy recipes, and nutrient and supplement needs.
This book explains heuristic learning–discovery by trial and error–and how to encourage this type of learning to boost development. Teachers will learn how to set up treasure baskets that encourage heuristic play: containers filled with easy-to-find items that support explorations in emergent language, math, and science skills.
This book provides ways for parents to introduce yoga to their child and the benefits that come with participating in yoga.
Videos and Media
Parents and caregivers will learn how to play with babies in ways that support their social, language, and motor development.
Parents and caregivers will learn how to play with babies in ways that support their social, language, and motor development.
Parents and caregivers will learn how to play with babies in ways that support their social, language, and motor development.
Presented by Kathy Reid-Naiman. Fingerplays are a way of telling a story using your hands and fingers to illustrate the words.
The mind can only absorb what the butt can endure! Lisa will teach you large motor games that can be played both indoors and out.
Yoga motion contains 10 3-4 minute yoga routines. Your child can mix-and-match chapters to create their own unique yoga experience.
Organizations
No resources have been added to this section yet. However, new resources are added frequently!
Articles
Young children use their sense of touch to explore and understand the world in which they live.
Web Resources
This resource from the National Center for Families Learning provides a month’s worth of family literacy activities and practices designed to inspire family memories rooted in imagining, playing, and learning together.
This comprehensive list includes links to many ideas that families can use to incorporate fun activities into their day.
These simple activity ideas will keep your kids engaged and learning, with smiles all around.
Parents and caretakers play an important role in assisting with their children’s early learning and finding low-cost or no-cost places to play and learn together can sometimes be a challenge. Libraries and museums of all kinds are all welcoming places where you can borrow books, learning backpacks, and other materials to use at home.