What book activities do your children like best?

[Wordweaver]

I am writing some activity books and am interested to find out what sort of activities children enjoy most. There are certain tried-and-tested favourites such as mazes, colouring in, wordsearches, odd one out, make and do, spot the difference etc. I'd like to know how popular these really are and what 'new' activities your children have enjoyed. Also how old your child is.

[MilaMae]

What age are you talking about?

Mine are 5,5 and 4. They hate spot the difference and word searches I always avoid books with those in.

They love stickers,finishing off doodles(like the doodle colouring books),mazes. That's it. I think a lot of these books are a waste of money and time,they often don't want to do them as they're too school like iykwim. As an ex teacher I don't think they teach them much either.

I'm not keen on make and do as it means getting the stuff etc. I'd keep make and do in a make and do book.

Mine love the Usborne sticker books and the Doodle colouring books. They're pretty much all I buy,we've been given loads of others but they just collect dust to be honest. I used to like the Cbeebies and Charlie and Lola comics and the dc did occasionally.

I think kids under 4 should just be playing with paper,pens,crayons,paint etc not forced to do activity books. Over 4 a lot have started school so don't want to carry on doing school type things after school(they have enough reading etc to do anyway).

Saying that I've bought a couple for the summer holidays eg the Holiday Doodle Book and the Usborne Spooky, Summer Dolls sticker books.

Hope this helps.

[lucymack]

My ds is 5 and loves mazes, wordsearches, spot the difference and solving codes using a key as well as colouring in and colour by numbers. My 3 year old just likes colouring in and join the dots and mazes.

Hope that helps.

[Wordweaver]

Thanks, this is helpful - I think kids don't always want new, complicated activities!

[procrastinatingparent]

DSs - Mazes and join the dots. Not colouring in.

DD - colouring in and stickers.

[Hulababy]

My 7y DD likes anagrams, crosswords, simple sudoku, word search, odd one out, mazesm etc.

She isn't keen on colouring in activities.

When she was younger she loved the magazines that have an activity book in the middle. Trouble is, she is now outgrown all the ones that come with one and the next stage magazines don't have them and are aimed way to high with make up and "I love...." type stuff in.

[Hulababy]

And 6/7 year olds still live stickers too

[MilaMae]

Forgot dot to dot, mine love those too.