Ideas for long summer afternoons

Summer days are long. And when the kids are out of school, it may sometime seem a bit too long. Here’s a list of things I like to do with my son as a quick list in case any of us (including me) runs out of ideas. I would love to hear from you.

1. Pooling together – Set out a small inflatable or tub pool outside, outfit the kids in swim wear, connect your hose and let them have fun in the water. This works great for play dates, too, really! Just keep towels handy.
2. Float Boats – Fill your tub in the middle of the day and add some old shampoo or bubble bath to make some bubbles. Make paper boats (lots of sites on the web on this, I have heard, but I make mine from memory). This is a great activity to extend – have them first color the boats, then cut out shapes to stick on them.
3. Cook together – From when he was one, my son loves spending time in the kitchen helping out with all kinds of dishes. Before I had my little one we would spend a lot of time this way. Though he mostly never ate what he made.
4. Kids Science – we like doing experiments together. Such as what happens to milk when left in the hot garage for 2 days? What happens when you freeze milk?
5. Summer Snow – Get crushed ice, some raisins, dried cranberries, nuts  etc and make your own crushed ice snowmen or snow animals. Add food coloring if you like.
6. Treasure Hunt – Choose a treasure and hide it. Then leave clues around the house for the little investigators to find it.
7. Side walk chalk – buy an inexpensive box of colors, open up the garage and let imagination run wild. I also like using the garage floor
8. But forts and castles with sheets, pillows, sofas and chairs. Provide plenty of fort supplies – books, cooking utensils, puzzles etc
9. Dress up – Take out your old clothes, belts, accessories and let imagination fly. I usually have a bag of clothes I had kept aside for ‘donating’ but never got around to it and that works great for us.
10. Write letters – or emails – plan what you want to say to some family member or friend and jointly compose the email. Add pictures or photos or if you are up to it scanned artwork.

Do write your ideas. I run out of steam often and would love to hear them. Add as comments or sign up to write a post.

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