Summer Ideas - Part 4

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. Which friends on Facebook live out of state or out of the country? Ask them to send you a photo, then find where all of them live on a map or globe. 
2. Create a summer playlist from your music collection. Pick up to 15 songs that your child isn’t familiar with and then play the “soundtrack” all summer. 
3. July 29th is Rain Day. Take a walk in the rain. If it isn’t raining, learn the Singing In The Rain song. 
4. Build a tower with uncooked spaghetti and marshmallows. 
5. Put on a puppet show for family and friends. 
6. Blindfold your child, then have them smell household items like soap, oranges, garlic or vinegar. What can he guess right? 
7. Go to Storybird.com and write a story using provided illustrations. Publish it for your friends. 
8. June is Country Cooking Month, so make fried chicken or biscuits and gravy for supper. 
9. June 1 is National Go Barefoot Day. Have a barefoot race around the house. Paint with your feet on the driveway. Splash in mud puddles. (Then come in the house, wash up and get a pedicure!) 
10. August 6-12 is Exercise With Your Child Week. Put on that Wiggles DVD or hook up the Just Dance Game and work up a sweat with your little one. (If it’s a nice day, go run around a track together!) 
11. June 4 is Do-Dah Day, A Salute To Silliness. Make funny hats and funny faces and video tape yourselves. Then post it on Facebook for all to see. 
12. June 10 is National Ice Tea Day. Make a big pitcher, sweetened just right and drink it on the porch or the deck and listen to the world go by. 
13. Don’t forget the summer solstice!  If there’s ever a day to stay up late, this is it!  Make homemade ice cream, put on that bug repellent and invite friends over to stay up until the sun goes down. 
14. June 23rd is Great American Backyard Campout Day. Put up a tent in the backyard and try not to get scared when all the lights go out. 
15. July is National Blueberries Month!  Try blueberry pancakes or blueberry muffins or make a pie! 
16. July 24th is Cousins Day.  Make a family tree showing all of your and your spouse’s cousins. Then, contact your children’s cousins for a outing or send them an email with funny photos. 
17. Are you a child of the ‘80s? August 10 is National Duran Duran day! Start a new Pandora station or dig out your cassette tapes and dance. 
18. August 20 is National Cupcake Day. This, of course, dictates what you’ll eat for dessert tonight. (Maybe supper too!) 
19. August 30 is National Toasted Marshmallow Day. If you have a fireplace, make your own s’mores. If not, roast them over the back yard grill. (You can also use your broiler, but it’s not as much fun.) 
20. Surprise someone you love with a picnic lunch. Your local librarian? Your spouse? Grandparents? 
21. Create a paper airport for your fleet of paper airplanes. Practice flying them and record which fly the furthest. 
22. Check a Knock Knock joke book out of the library and memorize a few. 
23. Rainy Day? Movies and popcorn. Don’t make the movie the most recent release on Netflix, choose an old Disney Classic or something from your childhood you loved. 
24. Create an obstacle course in the yard. Video your child’s progress through it.
25. Water fight!  Add in balloons, spray bottles, water guns or cups. Then, when you’re done, wash the car.

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 4 of 4 - Check the last 3 Thursdays for previous idea posts!

Summer Ideas - Part 3

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. With hand-drawn invitations, invite your neighbors over for a meal that your child helps prepare. 
2. With a calendar, count how many days until Christmas. 
3. Build a fort under the dining room table.  Eat lunch there, tell stories. This is especially fun during a thunderstorm.
4. Find your home on Google Earth. 
5. Check out a book from your library about easy science experiments, then try some, like mixing baking soda and vinegar. 
6. Recycle plastic jugs for bath or beach toys. 
7. Go to a garden center or nursery, and look at all the flowers. Take photos of your favorites.
8. July 28th is National Day of the Cowboy. Play cowboy for the day. Wear hats and bandanas, ride your stick horses on the lawn and eat baked beans off paper plates. Sleep in sleeping bags in the living room. 
9. Is there any construction going on in your area? Walk or drive over and watch for a little while. Then come home and read a book or draw a picture about construction.
10. Make a daisy chain. 
11. For the princess in your house, give a bubble bath, a homemade facial and paint her toenails. 
12. Draw an outline of your body on butcher paper, then label all the parts. 
13. Check your local library for free or discounted museum passes. 
14. Make a worm farm. 
15. Collect garden snails. 
16. Bake a loaf of bread from scratch. 
17. Host a Pirate party. Have your friends come over for lunch, a treasure hunt and running through the sprinkler. 
18. Blow bubbles. 
19. July 15th is National Ice Cream Day. Make your favorite flavor of homemade ice cream or go to your local stand. 
20. Eat watermelon. June 21-24 is Seed Spitting Week. Have a seed spitting contest and then plant the seeds that are left. Do this again on August 3rd, when it’s Watermelon Day. 
21. Send email, with lots of photos, to family members who live far away. 
22. Make sock puppets. 
23. Go to a local baseball game. 
24. Identify all the trees in your yard. Or, if you don’t have a yard, the trees in your neighborhood.
25. Explore your world with a magnifying glass.

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 3 of 4 - Check back next Thursday (and the last 2 weeks) for more ideas!

Summer Ideas - Part 2

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. Play War with a deck of cards. 
2. Play Candy Land, and every time you land on your favorite color, eat a handful of your favorite snack, like popcorn. 
3. What state parks are nearby? Visit one for a hike, lunch and maybe a little wading.
4. Take photographs all summer of your family and friends, and then make a scrapbook called People We Love.
5. Try a new recipe, like homemade tortillas or gazpacho. 
6. June is National Candy Month so, make homemade candy.
7. Plan for a weekly play date with other moms in your community.
8. Play hide and seek.
9. Grow tomatoes.
10. Make homemade playdough.
11. Make homemade musical instruments, and play along with your favorite songs. 
12. Make sugar cookies.
13. Visit your local playground or drive across town and visit one you’ve never been to before.
14. Create a Word Notebook. Every time your preschooler reads a word, write it in the notebook. You can also collect words from magazines and paste them there.
15. Practice counting to 100. 
16. Practice counting by 2s. 
17. Practice counting by 5s. 
18. Practice counting by 10s. 
19. Get out the tape measure. How tall is everyone in your family? How tall are your child’s favorite toys? 
20. Play Go Fish. 
21. Print dot-to-dot pages from the computer. 
22. Try a new fruit or vegetable every week. 
23. Gather all your legos, Duplos and K’Nex together and build the biggest structure you can. 
24. Visit your local fire station. 
25. Find an easy book on George Washington at your local library. Read it before celebrating Independence Day.

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 2 of 4 - Check back the next 2 Thursdays (and last week) for more ideas!