The Mom Crowd

Now that summer is here, all three boys are home all day, and the weather is nice I have felt the urge to beat the summer doldrums. I don’t want every day to feel the same, day in and day out. I notice that the kids get a look on their faces when they are bored and are looking for something to do. It is easy for me to get caught up in doing the morning chores around the house while they play and not think proactively about fun activities they can do. So, I had an idea to come up with a list of activities so that we can do at least one fun activity every day. I tend to be a planner but I don’t always practice it. I know that I usually feel less stressed when I do have some activities planned and it’s kind of fun to tell the boys in the morning what our fun “thing” is that day.

I thought I’d share my list and I hope that if we all put our brains together that we can help each other out with fun ideas to keep boredom at arms length over the summer. My kids aren’t very crafty so I tried to think of a variety of activities to do. We also live in a very seasonal climate so I want to take advantage of the sunny, warm weather while it lasts!

1. Every Monday- Pack lunches while baby Graham is taking his morning nap and head to the supercool park after he wakes up. Eat lunch at the park and play until it is time to head home for afternoon naps.

2. Go to the YMCA during family swim time and splash around.

3. Bake something fun together. Bread, cupcakes, cookies….

4. Go to a “pick your own” fruit/vegetable farm.

5. On Friday it is daddy come home early day and we go to Raccoon Creek. (A local state park 20 minutes away with a “beach” swim area)

6. Make homemade play dough.

7. Make homemade popsicles (vanilla yogurt+frozen berries blended and frozen=yummy frozen desserts! you can even add things like ground flax seeds for a healthy nutrition boost).

8. Go for a nature walk and collect different specimens of bugs, samples of leaves, sticks, and rocks.

9. Make a family tree with pictures of family members and hang it on a wall.

10. Go to the science museum.

11. Go to the dinosaur museum.

12. Go to the zoo.

13. Make paper boats.

14. Go to story time at the library.

15. Go to the indoor park at the mall and let the kids run around in the air conditioning.

16. Play date, play date, play date!

17. Hit the (age appropriate) summer reading list for your kids and read together.

18. Plan a treasure hunt.

19. Make a mobile to hang in the kids bedrooms. (We recently made a bug mobile by cutting out pictures of bugs from magazines and then tying them to straws with thread. We had to balance it by sliding the bugs across the straws but the boys love it and it is fun to watch it move from the breeze of the ceiling fan.)

20. Build a fort inside the house and play games inside the fort.

21. Find and empty parking lot and do some fun sidewalk chalk drawing.

22. Go to an indoor bounce house.

So, kick the summer doldrums in the pants and go have some fun!