Are you looking for activities to do this summer when traveling? On a rainy day? For some slowing down and quiet time? Usborne Activity books are ideal for all those moments and more. Your children will love them!
We’ve always loved their books (we’ve done many sticker books), we have many lift-the-flap and look-inside books, and we love the Learn to draw step by step books. But today, I’m here to share with you some new books that we’ve been lucky to win in a Giveaway on Instagram. (Yes, I couldn’t believe it, but it is actually possible to win these things).
In this post:
- Our new 6 Usborne Activity Books
- About Usborne
- Some of our all-time favorite Usborne books
- Usborne Activity Books – fabulous, engaging, and educational
*Disclosure: I only recommend products I would use myself, and all opinions expressed here are our own. This post may contain affiliate links that at no additional cost to you; when you buy through the links, we may earn a small commission. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Thanks!
Our new 6 Usborne Activity Books
They sent us a selection of 6 activity books that my children instantly loved and that have been great during the holidays. The books are the following:
- Sticker Dolly Dressing – Summertime Fairies
- Coral Reef – Magic Painting Book
- Fingerprint Activities – Animals
- Little Children’s Travel Activity Book
- Little Children’s Nature Activity Book
- Sparkly Summer Sticker Book
My 4-year-old son went straight to the Travel Activity Book and started sticking cars and buildings. My 6-year-old daughter was thrilled to try the Magic Painting book and the Fingerprint activities. That was their first instinct. But since then, we’ve done a bit of all.
Sticker Dolly Dressing – Summertime Fairies
The Sticker Dolly Dressing book is just lovely. My daughter picked the Autumn fairies on our last trip to London and was so happy to find the Summertime fairies book.
It’s a book filled with almost 12 double-paged scenes (the last scene is just one page), with fairies that require dressing up and decorating their surroundings. The book has +250 stickers, and the pages are slightly thicker than usual and glossier, allowing you to gently unpeel the sticker if you need to correct a misplaced one.
This book is recommended for ages 4 to 7 (my children’s ages), and they are both enjoying it together. Spot on!
Here are a few pictures of what you can find inside (and how my children have placed the stickers).
Coral Reef – Magic Painting Book
The Coral Reef Magic Painting Book is truly magical and marvelous to take on trips as well. If your children like watercolor painting, they will enjoy this book. The magical thing about it is that you need some water to make it work.
Color ink is under the black lines, and color flows onto the page once it is in contact with water that you can apply with the brush that comes with the book. The result is surprise and magic.
There are 15 scenes (not counting the title page, which you can also color in magically). Along with many other underwater creatures, you will find clownfish, dolphins, turtles, sharks, seahorses, and jellyfish.
The mechanism is so simple that you could take it anywhere, ask for some water, and they could be peacefully painting. I can imagine my children using it at a restaurant or on the plane (my daughter, yes – she is more careful – my son might spill the water – so I wouldn’t risk it with him yet).
TIP. To stop water from seeping through to the next page, unfold the flap at the end of the book and place it under the page you are about to work on. That last page also contains the name of the reef creatures you find in the book.
They recommend it for children between 5 and 8. My almost 7-year-old daughter has been loving it and teaching her 4-year-old brother how to paint it. He’s doing quite a good job, and he is feeling very proud. Here is his creation.
Here are some of our pages. They are gorgeous.
Fingerprint Activities – Animals
The Fingerprint Activity books inspire creativity. They are fabulous. The book is filled with ideas for fingerprinting and lots of suggestions and space to fill.
Learn to make dogs, sheep, butterflies, flamingoes, koalas, and many, many birds with some ink, your fingers, and a felt tip pen. There are 40 different scenes to fill in with your creations. Super easy and super fun.
The book comes with an attached inkpad with seven colors. You must press your fingers onto one of the inkpads several times to ensure you have a nice inky finger before printing it in the book. Make sure you clean your fingers before going for another color (you don’t want to mix or get another color dirty). Once they are dry, you can draw details on them with a felt-tip pen (or even a pencil).
I love how they show that by using different parts of the finger or fingers, you make different sizes of prints.
Fantastic for children ages 4 to 6.
We’re having a lot of fun with it.
Little Children’s Travel Activity Book
This excellent travel activity book is filled with fun things to do: stickers, drawing, coloring, puzzles, mazes, things to spot, and more. They recommend it for children ages 6 to 9.
Ideal for when you are traveling, you are out and about, waiting for an appointment, or enjoying it at home.
It comes with slightly over 100 stickers that children will love to play with. So if you need a book to keep them entertained, this one is a winner they will enjoy from the first moment.
Little Children’s Nature Activity Book
The Nature Activity Book is another fabulous book packed with activities to do and all nature-theme related. You have spotting puzzles, coloring activities, sticker scenes, and many games and facts to discover.
You have fun while you learn what nature is, animal footprints, the parts of a fly, animal homes, or how to draw a heron, among many other things!
This activity book is recommended on Amazon for ages 4 to 6, but I must admit I see it as more advanced. For example, my 4-year-old son would not be able to do many activities, but my oldest daughter, yes.
It has more than 150 stickers to use in activities throughout the book.
Sparkly Summer Sticker Book
The Sparkly Summer Sticker Book has eight summery scenes and double the stickers you need! It’s fantastic to give to children when you need them to focus and entertain themselves. It would be amazing on journeys, in restaurants, or at home on rainy days.
The scenes include:
- Colorful coral reefs.
- A butterfly garden.
- Boats on the sea.
- Prickly cacti.
- A tropical jungle, among others.
They are colorful and beautifully illustrated.
For almost every shimmery sticker, you find a non-shimmery counterpart. As a result, you have more stickers than you need to decorate the scenes, which is fantastic. I’ve counted 135 sparkly stickers and 140 regular stickers. That’s over 250 stickers for a tiny book! It’s awesome!
They recommend it for ages 3 to 5. My 4-year-old has been playing with it and enjoying it.
Here you can see some pages and stickers.
About Usborne
Usborne is one of the world’s leading independent children’s book publishers and is proud to be a family business. Their books are brilliant. We have many, especially in our dining/living room, and take them out during dinnertime to find answers to our many questions. They have small chunks of information that are fantastic for little ones to understand, and the illustrations and the flaps make it so engaging and entertaining.
These are the principles that they believe in:
- Creating brilliant books for children of every age, ethnicity, and gender.
- Looking after people and the planet
- Making Usborne a happy and healthy place to work
- Putting charity at the center of everything they do
You can read more about them here. I like Usborne’s ethos and what they stand for. I like that my children are growing up surrounded by beautiful, entertaining, and educational books. And they are not the only ones learning; we are learning with them daily.
Some of our all-time favorite Usborne books
Another day I’ll share with you our Usborne book collection. But I thought it would be worth mentioning some of the ones that we read or consult the most. They are amazing:
- Look inside The Human Body
- All About Friends
- Lift-the-flap Space
- Lift-the-flap The Ocean
- Children’s Atlas
- Lift-the-flap Dinosaurs
- Step-by-step drawing
Usborne Activity Books – fabulous, engaging, and educational
I can’t believe my luck getting this set of books, so I had to share them with you so you can see them and consider them if you need to gift something to your children or friends. They are fantastic!
We had bought many Sticker Dolly Dressing books before; my daughter loves them. But the fingerprint and magic paint have been an enjoyable discovery. They are a fabulous invitation to a colorful and creative world. And the activity books are fantastic for getting them to stop, think, and learn new things. They are all wonderful!
So if you are thinking of getting some activity books this summer, I would highly suggest some of these. You’ll all enjoy them!
Happy summer!
