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!