18 Dec 40 Days Of Summer Fun
This inexpensive bucket list of fun will keep the kids entertained with a balance of outdoor play at home, activities to do when out and about and crafty indoor projects for when the summer rain strikes.
Plan ahead to avoid constant utterings of, “I’m bored”, with these forty fun Summer activities.
1) Visit the beach, of course! Jump the waves, build sandcastles, bury each other from the waist down and don’t forget to slip, slop, slap.
2) On a second beach visit, collect shells and explore the rock pools. Early evening when there are less people is the best time, but be sure to check when it’s high tide.
3) Take a family bike ride. You can often find great trails nearby just by googling.
4) Make your own bubbles at home using a solution of water, dishwashing liquid and gelatin in a bucket. Use bubble wands to blow them around the yard.
5) Make potato-print artwork in the garden on a warm day.
6) Paint each other’s faces. Kits can be purchased at most department stores as well as books with instructions on how to create different looks.
7) Have a pool party! Whether or not you have a built-in pool, you can get an inflatable pool and fill it with water and play Marco Polo, or have the kids search for items that have been dropped on the bottom.
8) Make playdough from scratch.
9) Build an outdoor cubby house. You can use sheets over the clothesline or outdoor furniture to make it look like a teepee.
10) Do some painting with yoghurt.
11) Set up an outdoor photo booth. Find a plain-coloured background and switch an iPad or another type of tablet onto self-portrait mode. Give the kids silly props such as wigs and hats and let them take as many funny photos as they want.
12) Take the kids fishing off a local wharf or find a spot at a nearby river. If you’d prefer, you could fish items such as toys and branches out of a plastic pool in the yard.
13) Make fizzy ice.
14) Dig out the board games and have a games night! Monopoly and Cluedo are my childhood favourites, and Scene It is also great if you have a DVD player.
15) Take a walk and collect bits and pieces such as leaves, bark and feathers to make a summer-themed collage.
16) Turn the backyard into a water park! It can be done just using equipment you already have. Place a baby slippery dip so that it runs down into a plastic pool, or turn the sprinkler on rotation so it splashes the kids while they’re jumping on the trampoline. Just make sure you supervise the kids at all times, just as you would with any activity involving water.
17) Make toilet-paper-roll people.
18) Set up camping equipment in your backyard and sleep out under the stars.
19) Visit a local carnival.
20) Create coloured sand by adding food colouring to wet sand you bring home from the beach, and then putting it in small bottles. You could even try layering different-coloured sand in one bottle for a rainbow effect.
21) Have a water fight! Use water balloons, water pistols or even just the hose to try and wet each other. This is a fun water activity for families who don’t have access to a pool.
22) Make finger puppets.
23) Play balloon volleyball.
24) Make chalk art on the driveway by drawing fun images around your kids’ bodies and take photos. Check Pinterest for some cute ideas, but make sure you do this on a surface out of the sun. You can also draw squares to play hopscotch.
25) Make a tissue-paper bee.
26) Set up the slip and slide. If you can put it on a slight incline, your kids will be able to slip a bit better without adding detergent.
27) Start a vegetable patch in the garden or create a window box if you live in a unit or flat. Strawberries and herbs are good plants to start with as they are fairly easy to maintain.
28) Take the kids to the drive-in! You could even set up an outdoor cinema with a projector, using a white sheet or white wall as a screen, and watch some family movies together.
29) Make a treasure basket.
30) Have a ‘make-your-own’ day. Kids could make ice-cream sundaes, snow cones, pizza, homemade lemonade, ice-cream spiders, hamburgers or icy poles, to name a few possibilities.
31) Make frozen fossils.
32) Have a picnic play date. Meet up with friends and their kids at the park and have each person bring a picnic dish to share.
33) Set up a game of Twister on the lawn, drawing the circles with green, blue, red and yellow spray paint to shake things up a bit!
34) Make a dollhouse out of shoeboxes – one shoebox for each floor.
35) Go bowling in the backyard. Use plastic bottles half filled with water as pins, and bowl with a tennis ball to try and knock them over. For extra fun, kids can get squirted once with a water pistol for every pin they miss.
36) Make a felt fairy house and put it in the garden for the fairies to find.
37) Put food colouring into your pancake batter and cook on the barbecue for breakfast.
38) Make a mural using spray bottles filled with watercolour paint. Hang an old sheet on the clothesline and let the kids spray shapes and patterns onto it.
39) Pick flowers and make a bracelet chain or press them in a book.
40) Make a photo scrapbook of everything the family has done in summer!
Words by Brooke Tasovac
