The only way I know how to officially get kids to learn from skill books is someone has to read them to sleep with it, teens and older. But I think one may need Generations for that feature.
Now for activities they can actually do, have a Sim max out their logic skill to use the "Tutor in..." interaction to teach children and older. Some of the skills they can be tutored to learn are fishing, writing, logic, photography, painting, inventing, dancing (shows up blank or at least for me), and advanced technology. Dancing you can use the Stiff as a Board Dance Floor from the store, but kids can only use dance and ballet dance. Otherwise there is another dancing skill but hidden. For the advanced technology skill, kids can use the hoverboard, the holo disc sprite, the food synthesizer, etc. Teens will have a lot more available to them when they get tutored. That reminds me, the podium from UL also teaches skills so that is something to use to teach a group of Sims or students that are teen or older.
The podium is also a quick way to prepare young adults for university. I created a university prep school so I could teach a bunch of Sims at once. Of course, some had different majors but they had to do their own studies as well as getting personally tutored from the instructors or helping each other out. That was really fun to play.
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