Summer Ideas

By Katharine Grubb

Counting pennies this summer?  Or are you looking for things to do in between day camp and the week at the beach?  Here’s a lengthy list of activites for you and your preschooler. All require little preparation and little expense and are just right for ages 3 and up.  

1. Check out your local library and sign up for storytimes, special programs for kids, reading incentives and activities. It’s almost always free! 
2. Take a neighborhood walk and look for shapes, colors and textures. 
3. Each week of the summer, choose a specific animal - say, elephants. Read elephant books from the library, download elephant coloring pages. Search Pinterest for elephant art projects.
4. Collect pretty leaves and flowers from your yard. Glue them to a paper and display them.
5. Your kids are up early anyway, right? Take them outside and ask them to listen to different kinds sounds.  What do they hear?  How many different kinds of birds? 
6. Choose an “Author of the Week” and, on your library day, check out all of the books by that author. In between reading books, look up a biography of that author. Start with Eric Carle, Lois Ehlert, H. A. Rey, Margaret Wise Brown, or Rosemary Wells. If you run out of authors, ask your librarian.
7. Make popsicles.
8. Stay up late and identify constellations. 
9. On another night, collect fireflies. 
10. Identify cirrus, cumulus and nimbus clouds and look for them everyday. 
11. Grow marigolds.
12. At the grocery store, look for all the letters of the alphabet.
13. Choose a mode of transportation each week - for example, trains. That week, read books about trains, watch videos, color pages, get out that train set you forgot about and set it up in the living room. The next week is airplanes or trucks or race cars. 
14. July 10 is Teddy Bear Picnic Day!  Host a Teddy Bear picnic at your home.  Invite all your friends over for cupcakes, teddy bear games and fun time together.
15. Who in your family has a birthday this summer?  Instead of a card or gift, make them a video birthday greeting.
16. Play dress up with your kids. My favorite dress up game? Cinderella. Before the ball, we clean the house! 
17. Check your local newspaper (or city website).  Often cities have free concerts, fun runs, parades or other events for the public.
18. June is Audio Book Appreciation Month, so make lunchtime listening time. From your local library, check out books on CDs. Ask your librarian for age-appropriate materials and then make a habit of listening while you eat lunch.
19. Pack a lunch and go on a Coin Toss adventure. Go for a walk, and every time you come to an intersection, flip a coin to tell you which way to go - use common sense in dangerous places, though!  Walk until you get hungry, eat and then come home. 
20. Add music! Try a children’s Pandora station or check out CDs from your local library and make a certain time of day music time.
21. Make jewelry with colored pasta and yarn.
22. Check out any local churches who host Vacation Bible School. Many of these programs are free.
23. Talk about color.  Can you draw a picture in which you only use warm colors like orange, yellow and red?  What about cool colors like blue, green and purple? 
24. Do a search on Pinterest for kid's art. What do you have around the house? 
25. Cut up a magazine and look for words. Glue them on paper for a collage.

Need more ideas? Do a search on Pinterest for preschool activites. And don’t forget to take lots of photos -- you can have an amazing summer with your child and spend very little money.

Part 1 of 4 - Check back the next 3 Thursdays for more ideas!