Summer fun activities

First I need to post this picture and have a moment examining my mortality.

When exactly did this happen?  Oh yeah, I remember I blinked my eyes and slept maybe a couple hours and BAM!  My three littles have turned huge.

No more sleeping allowed

 Back to the point of the post -

This year I was really into finding a summer camp for Gabe to go to during this break between school.  I knew I would be faced with the inevitable "I'm bored" at least a hundred times, so I thought it would be fun for him to have something to look forward to.

Instead, I found that camps are EXPENSIVE!  Like $200 for 4 days expensive.  Like "I don't have that kind of money for a four day camp where we could spend $200 on stuff at Disney instead" expensive.  So I decided I would make a summer camp (of sorts) for us here instead.  I pulled all my resources and looked up a bunch of different activities, made my lists and poster board and here it is.

Today is officially the first day of our "Summer Fun Activities".

How it works:

I made a list of every day (Monday through Friday) for the month of June, July and August and researched, brainstormed and listed a different activity for each day.  Some days are "trip" days, some are "creation" days, some are "rainy" days.  I am only listing one month at a time.


My list:

June
1.  Homemade water color paints with ice cubes
2.  Rock candy
3.
4.  Trip to the Zoo
5.  Marshmallow shooters
6.  Lego quest
7.  Bubbles with different objects - socks, strainer, funnel
8.  Water gun fight
9.
10.  Rock friends
11.  Cloud Dough
12.  Family basketball game
13.  Condensed milk painting
14.  Homemade pizza
15.
16.  Blank
17.  Blank
18.  Blank

July
1.  Smoothie for lunch
2.  Glowsticks on the bath tub
3.  Apple stamps
4.  Lego game
5.  Chalk paint
6.  Water balloon baseball
7.  Board games
8.  Make a fort
9.  Snap painting
10.
11.  Trip to the Park
12.  Puppet show
13.  Ice excavation
14. Nature collectors
15.  Science experiment with oil and water
16.  Make a book
17.  Homemade bread and butter
18.  Bubble art
19.  Movie afternoon
20.  Solar Smores
21.
22.  Bike ride to the ice cream store
23.  Bobbing for apple slices
24.  Blank
25.  Blank
26.  Blank

August
1.  Make bird feeders from toliet paper rolls
2.  Finger painting
3.  Rent a red box movie
4.  Leaf Imprints
5.  Trip to Barnes and Noble
6.  Masking tape names on canvas painting
7.  Hula hoop basketball
8.  Movie night in mom's bed
9.
10.  Homemade ice cream
11.
12.
13. Blank
14. Blank
15.  Blank

Then instead of me assigning each activity to a day, at the beginning of the week I take down our weekly white board and let them pick one activity post-it note for each day (Monday through Friday).  I add a blank post-it note once a week.  This is something they can pick to do (Gabe's idea - Family Fun Time at a park and make musical instruments out of recyclables) or we might already have something else planned (meeting friends at a bookstore).

I am really excited to see how this is going to play out.  All of the ideas I have been listing are things that we might not do normally, or they are something we do often in a different way (like blowing bubbles with a strainer).

I used a lot of different resources to come up with the ideas.

Fifteen Minutes Outside - Rachel Cohen
I Love Dirt - Jennifer Ward

These activities are certainly going to keep us busy and I will continue updating the success of our summer fun! 

Happy summer break!

Follow my blog with Bloglovin