5 Summer Activities to Do with Your Kids

The end of the school year and beginning of summer months can elicit hugely varied emotional responses for different members of the family. For kids eager to get a break from school and not have homework or responsibilities hanging over their heads, it’s an exciting and welcome season.

For parents who have to figure out how to take care of those children for the 2+ months they are completely untethered and unoccupied, it might be a different story. Many parents feel daunted by having to come up with fun things to do every day for weeks on end (or risk their children’s endless boredom and irritability).

Here are a few easy-to-incorporate activities you can include in your schedule for kids of any age that can fill out your summer survival strategy.

Get off the Phone and Go Outside

Tech’s significant prevalence in our daily lives is virtually unavoidable. Even if your kids don’t have smartphones yet, they would still likely interact with computers, chrome books, iPads, and other screens during their school day.

Device use can create wear and tear on your children. Smartphone addictions and other associated negative effects of prolonged device utilization are realities that children are experiencing in increasing measures. Because of this, it is vitally important to help your children get some time away from screens when you have the opportunity.

Summer provides the perfect time for this. When kids are away from today’s digitized classrooms and have free time on their hands, summer can provide an opportunity to help them “detox” from their tech. Spend a day at the beach or in the park, walk through a forest preserve, or enjoy nature in some other way - and have the kids leave their phones at home.

Discover New Talents

Having more recreational time can make room for skills, hobbies, activities, and more that your kids might never have tried or wouldn’t have had the capacity to engage in during the school year. If there’s room in the planner and the budget, why not help them choose a class offered by the local community center, library, or college that looks interesting to them?

But trying out new skills doesn’t have to be a large commitment. Institute a weekly or monthly “try something new day” and let your child/children pick a topic or skill each time. This can be as easy as finding a how-to video on YouTube. From arts and crafts to dancing, new sports or games, do-it-yourself projects, model airplanes, science experiments, and more - the possibilities are endless. Let your kids drive these explorations. Give them freedom to explore whatever it might be that makes them excited or interested (within reason of course). This can be a fantastic way for them to expand their horizons and discover new passions.

Learn About Personal Finance

As the cumulative amount of student loan debt in this country continues to grow, and as studies reveal countless college students’ ill-preparedness to deal with managing finances, it is never too early to begin preparing your children to manage money and work with a budget. The trick for this is finding ways to make those concepts interesting and fun.

You could try giving your child/children a small amount of pocket money for the summer months that they can access after writing up a spending plan or creating a simple budget on paper. You could help them run a lemonade stand or hold a bake sale in your neighborhood and “loan” them the money for materials and upfront costs to be paid back (perhaps at a discount) when they earn a profit.

This area of learning can easily be scaled for even very young children up through older kids and teenagers. Even simple exercises in talking about money and its use can hugely benefit your children in the long run.

Explore the Culinary Arts

With a little googling, you could dream up nearly endless cooking adventures to do with your child/ children. You’ll be surprised at the relative ease of turning a few ingredients and a good recipe or set of instructions into gourmet items or dishes.

Have you ever tried baking a scone or a multi-layered cake? Do you have a favorite ethnic cuisine that you’ve only ever ordered out? Would your children enjoy decorating pies or cookies on a summer Saturday? Baking and cooking allow ample space for creative projects and hours of fun.

Expand on Math Skills

This endeavor must be taken on with a bit of diplomatic tact. The last thing your kids want to do over their summer break is more school. However, if approached creatively, keeping your kids’ minds active over the summer can greatly aid their re-entry back into scholastic life in the fall. Plenty of interactive math aids and tools exist that can make integrating little doses of continued learning into the summer months much more fun.

You could hold friendly scholastic competitions in your living room. You might set up a weekly reward scheme that involves logging a certain number of hours playing math games online. Or you could engage with another family that has children of similar ages and issue weekly math challenges, prizing the winner with an extra scoop at an ice cream outing. Adding in little bits of academic refreshers throughout the summer in creative or fun ways can work wonders in helping your kids retain what they learned during the school year and prepare them to head back into school after the summer is over.