Quick Cures for the Summer Doldrums

Just this week, we graduated our 6th child (4th fully homeschooled). He will be off to Wyoming Catholic College at the end of July. Our youngest daughter, who recently graduated from college and has landed her first job, will also be flying our nest. In the blink of an eye we will have only one child still at home. I honestly can’t believe it. These years have gone by way too fast.

As we ease into summer, I wanted to share a fairly old post originally written for and published on Catholic Sistas. While unscheduled time is actually beneficial to children, having a few creative ideas up your sleeve to alleviate some of the fatigue of boredom can really help liven up your family’s summer break.

Indoor Activities for Rainy Days and the Dog Days of Summer

• Try some summer art projects. Mudpies and Fireflies and Momooze have some really creative ideas for all ages.
• Explore some summer science projects. Our kids loved 50 Science Things to Make and Do which is filled with easy and inexpensive experiments, most of which use common household objects.
• Write letters to faraway relatives, friends, or new pen pals.
• Play pretend doctor’s office, veterinarian, restaurant, etc. using these great print outs from My Joy Filled Life.
• Have a family cooking showdown modeled after the Iron Chef, Chopped, or Master Chef.
• Turn on some up-beat music and have a dance party.
• Have an indoor scavenger hunt.  This one from  Hey, Let’s Make Stuff is great! 
• Play sardines in a can, which is basically hide and seek in reverse.  In this version one person hides while everyone else counts.  After the count everyone splits up and searches for the hidden player. If a searching player finds her, the searcher hides right along until everyone but the last player is hiding, squeezed into the same location, just like sardines in a can.
• Play charades. Bonbon Break has a list of charade ideas great for kids.
• Lego Challenge is a game I had my boys play frequently while I was making dinner.  I easily assigned a task, set the timer, and judged their creations without missing a beat during dinner prep. It’s also fairly easy to come up with your own building challenges.
• This site has some super cute ideas for crafting with pipe cleaners.
• Homemade play dough is always a hit. There are tons of simple recipes on the web. You might try out this Kool-Aid version for something new.
• If you’re feeling ambitious and don’t mind a mess give papier-mache crafting a go. I love this cute papier-mache piggy bank (I made one very much like it at vacation bible school when I was a little girl).

Outdoor fun

• Set up a lemonade or Kool-Aid stand.
• Start a rock collection. I saw all sorts of ways this could be done.  One family had a collection of rocks that were all heart shaped.  I like Inspiration Laboratories ideas for budding rock collectors.
• Paint rocks. I’ve seen so many cute rock painting ideas on Pinterest. I love the idea of painting rocks and leaving them for others to discover and enjoy. Living Well Mom has some cute pet rock painting ideas.
• Plant a garden (flower, herb, vegetable, container). Children love to be able to dig in the dirt and plant growing things.  Planting a family Mary Garden is one idea I hope to incorporate some day.  Here is a list of flowers and their religious meanings. A friend of mine once said, “I don’t decorate house or yard without honoring the angels or saints.” I love that decorating philosophy.
• Start a bug collection. One of my kids’ favorite websites for identifying mystery bugs–What’s That Bug? Don’t tell the kids you have a cheat site and they’ll think you’re the smartest mom in town.
• Make a fairy garden out of flowers, acorns, tree stumps, painted rocks, etc. If your kids are really into it they can create sweet little fairy peg dolls .
• Take a stroll around your neighborhood or nearby park and learn to identify some of the flowers, plants, and trees.
• Go bird watching and learn to identify the birds you see. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has an awesome website and an app for bird identification.
• You can create all kinds of different kinds of wind chimes using ideas from this site.
• Make mud pies. Several summers ago, my then 13 year old and her best friend spent nearly two weeks making a mud pie village in one of my garden beds. They still talk about how much fun they had playing in the mud.
• Set up a DIY slip and slide. This site has a simple setup.
• Make homemade bubble solution. This site has a recipe for super strong bubbles.
• Make homemade kites and fly them.
• Play water balloon baseball.

Activities for Larger Groups

Getting some homeschooling families, neighborhood or church family friends to join in on these next few activities is not absolutely necessary, but could make the activities more successful.

• Form a summer book club. For several years one of our neighbors held a book club one or two times a month during the summer.  As a group they’d choose 3-4 books to read over the summer, completing a book before each meeting. At the club meetings they’d discuss their reading and engage in fun enrichment activities related to each book.
• Start a cultures club. Each family could choose a culture they’d like to learn about and present to the club as a whole.  This could go in all sorts of wonderful directions and feature food, dress, language, customs, history, etc.
• Choose, rehearse, and put on a summer play. One summer we joined several other families and performed The Tempest using Shakespeare Made Easy. Our kids gained a little exposure to Shakespeare while having a lot of fun.
• Hold a backyard Olympics

Family Outings

• Go to the zoo, aquarium, nature center, etc.
• Go hiking
• Find a local U-Pick fruit farm
• Go to farmer’s market
• Attend a minor/major league baseball game
• Visit a planetarium

Magical Night Time Fun

• Drive out away from night time city lights and look at the stars. Learn to identify constellations, individual stars, and planets or see if you witness a shooting star.  Orion Telescopes and Binoculars updates it’s star chart every month.
• Observe fire flies (or lightning bugs depending on regional vocabulary preference). Inspiration Laboratories has a great article on attracting fire flies. If you live in an area that has a lot of fire flies you can get certified as a backyard habitat. See this website for details.
• Play night games.  On summer nights we can hear the neighborhood kids joyfully playing capture the flag, flashlight tag, ghost in the graveyard, and hide and seek in the dark.
• Attend a free concert.
• Attend a free outdoor movie night.
• Play flashlight hide and seek. Turn out all the lights and give everyone a flashlight. One person is “it” and counts, just as in traditional hide and seek. Everyone else finds a place to hide, turning off their flash light once in place.  The seeker uses his flash light to try and find everyone’s hiding place. Last person found is “it” for the next round.

-Learn to make shadow puppets and put on a shadow puppet show.

Summer Service Projects

Most of these ideas are most appropriate for older kids and teens, but little ones can pitch in here and there too.

• Offer to weed an elderly neighbor’s garden beds or mow their lawn.
• Pick up trash in your local park.
• Volunteer to clean your parish or parish grounds.
• Offer to be a mother’s helper for a new mom.
• Bake cookies and leave them anonymously on a neighbor’s doorstep.
• Make a meal for a new mom, elderly neighbor, or someone needing some special care.
• Volunteer in a soup kitchen or homeless shelter.
• Offer to wash someone’s vehicle.
• Visit a nursing home and volunteer to read to or play games with residents.

Revisiting this list, I think we will dive into some of these activities this summer. It won’t be long before needing to entertain bored kids will be a thing of the past for us. This will be a summer to slow down and enjoy our family and our leisure to the fullest.

Image by Xuan Duong from Pixabay