Our Summer Fun List

In honor of Works for Me Wednesday's theme: "Mom I'm Bored Summer Edition: Share your best tips to keep boredom at bay. I'm sharing our family's summer fun list. Some of the items are favorites we've done in years past and plan to do again this year and some are new ideas we want to try this summer.

1. Blueberry Picking (one of our favorite annual family traditions and yes, I did this one year with a 5 week old infant in a front baby carrier)
   
2. Eating Blueberry pancakes for dinner the night after picking!
3. VBS at our church
4. Going to shows at our local children's theater
5. Visiting our children's museum
6. Zoo trips (with challenges like finding an animal that begins with each letter of the alphabet)
7. Swimming at our pool, a lot!
8. Visiting our library for storytime, the summer reading program, and checking out books
9. Spending lazy afternoons reading the library books over and over!
10. Reading great chapter books aloud like these: The Complete Little House Nine-Book Set, or Magic Tree House Boxed Set, Books 1-4: Dinosaurs Before Dark, The Knight at Dawn, Mummies in the Morning, and Pirates Past Noon or Freckle Juice or The Secret Garden
    
11. Eating popsicles in our inflatable backyard pool
12. Cooking/baking (I plan to let each of my 2 older kids pick one thing each week to cook with me)
13. Bowling
14. Water gun fun in the backyard
15. Going to our little city's 4th of July parade and festival
16. Day trips to the beach
17. Attending Princess Prep School for a week for my daughter and Prince Warrior Academy for my son (check out this link to see if they have this super camp in your area)
    
18. Having a family baseball game in the backyard
19. Visiting Sea World (a 3 hour trip for us)
20. Shaving cream fun in the backyard
21. Bug Hunting
22. Visiting the farmer's market
    
23. Crafts (the Internet has so many cute crafts you can do with kids)
24. Attending the free Kid Workshops at the Home Depot the 1st Saturday of the month (My husband does this with the kids each month throughout the year. Even our 2 year old can hammer in a real nail!)
25. Seeing a movie at the movie theater (maybe even some free ones)
26. Going through the memory boxes my kids added school work and other keepsakes to during the year. Hopefully we'll throw a few things away and file away the rest in an orderly manner.
27. Have ice cream for dinner one night
28. Picking black-eyed peas and okra in our own backyard and cooking them for dinner!!
29. Having family devotionals and memorizing Bible verses with the kids
30. Working on age-appropriate workbooks in a fun, non-structured way.
31. Visiting Ikea to shop a bit, let the kids play in the kid section (complete with slide and kid furniture and toys they can try out), and eat lunch (they have surprisingly good, cheap food -- the meatballs and the chocolate pudding will keep you going back and keep you doing the Shred!)
32. My oldest will participate in our city's swim team and the rest of us will cheer him on at the swim meets
    
33. Organizing closets, cabinets, and drawers (the kids will learn how to organize and I'll get something crossed off my to-do list)
34. Attending a professional baseball game
    
35. Visiting other tourist attractions and museums in our area (buy a local tour guide book, you may discover something you never knew was there!)
36. Last, take pictures all summer and at the end of the summer create a "Summer Fun Book" with scrapbook pages of pictures and stories of all your summer adventures. I did this with my kids last year and they have looked at that book a hundred times since last summer!
    

Summer is a great time to work on the goals you have for your children and family. Check out ours here.

I'd love to hear your summer fun ideas!