20 fun summer activities to do with your kids - that you'll love to do too!
It’s the summer holidays once again and you’re racking your brain to think of fun activities to do that’ll tear your kiddos away from their screens - I hear you! But these summer activities also need to be fun for you, because there’s nothing more irritating than feeling forced to do something you find boring.
In this post we share 20 fun summer activities you can do with your under 10s that are actually rather fun for adults too. Plan for 1 morning activity session and 1 afternoon/ after lunch session so you can fit in a nap/ quiet time if your kid is still napping. Involve your kids in the planning (so you don’t have to do everything yourself). And to make things more fun, I added in number 19 just for you.
So here are 20 fun summer activities to do with your kids - that you’ll love to do too!
1. Take photos
Take lots and lots of photos, either on an excursion, on a walk to the shops, or take photos of all your activities together throughout the summer. Then, towards the end of the summer you can make a collage of summer 2022 memories. This way you’ll get to relive all the best bits, bond with your kids and have a project all finished for the usual preschool requests for “what I did this summer” pictures. Look at you all super organised!
2. Have a teddy bear’s party
Get your kids to plan a teddy bear’s party. Make invitations, birthday cards, even make a present. What food is needed? Do you need to bake anything? Or maybe teddy prefers birthday pancakes. Candles? Then you can sit down and eat something tasty!
3. Paint rocks
Little kids love rocks. Collecting rocks can be fun if you have a beach nearby where you can find all kinds of interesting shapes. Collect the rocks one day and paint them another day. Anything goes. Use paints, or felt tip pens. Try your hand at painting a few yourself. Do you need any reminders around your home that you are loved, you are beautiful, you are strong? Paint some rocks and leave them around the house. They will make you smile each time you see them.
Your kids could paint some as pets, which will leave other days to make up stories about the pet rocks. Perhaps some of the pet rocks could even travel around with you in the car, or go on trips.
4. Have a picnic at the beach/ park/ lake
A timeless classic. Most kids love picnics. And if you’re a beach person, it’s an excuse for you to head to the beach again. If there are no beaches nearby, choose a spot you love to go to, or give your kids a choice of 2 places that you love!
5. Go on a treasure hunt
Who doesn’t like a treasure hunt! You can adapt this to the age of your kids. For the little ones, you can make a card with pictures on, such as a tree, a cat, a squirrel, a flower. They cross off the ones they see. For slightly older kids you can try geocaching. There are plenty of apps you can download to find local geocache locations.
Once you find the hidden geocache box, you write your name and the date, take a ‘present’ out of the box and leave another one for the next person. The presents are usually very small like a pen, a fancy eraser, a small rubber toy, etc. But small kids love presents and it all adds to the excitement. They won’t even realise how long they’ve been outside!
6. Cool down with water
When it gets really hot, best to cool down with some cold water. A paddling pool, sprinkler or a trip to a splash pad or fountains is fun while it’s hot. Our ‘water activities’ tend to end up in an all out water fight and lots of laughter, every single time.
7.Try origami/ make paper planes/ hats/ boats.
Have you ever tried origami? It looks very complicated, but you can start out simple like showing your kids how to make paper planes and paper hats/ boats.
For some reason, paper planes never get old, no matter what age you are. You can also get creative and put some interesting designs on your planes/ boats. Then go and test out how they fly/ float. How far can you get your planes to fly?
8. Have a festival
One day my then 4 year old told me she wanted to be nice for the festival. She didn’t know what festival, so we made one for her. And who doesn’t love a festival!
You can prepare for your home festival by making lots of “jewellery” (making necklaces and bracelets from stringing plastic beads on an elastic thread). You can also make crowns or tiaras. We put on our best and fanciest clothes, donned all our new jewellery, made some finger food, played some music and danced. It was a lot of fun.
9. Make a family tree together
This one you can involve other family members in. Talk to grandparents and aunts/ uncles. If you have photos, all the better. If you don’t, you can just draw out the family connections in a line and box format. Or you can get creative and draw a tree with the roots for your family and the branches for your ancestors.
Get your kids to help with creating the tree, and help them fill in the names and dates. This is also a good first step to start a history project, or a project about a different culture or country. It gives kids a more solid sense of where they come from, and how they fit into the family of cousins, aunts and uncles. When I was a kid I was just fascinated by all the names, and how many siblings my grandparents and great grandparents had.
10. Collect snails
One summer we built a snail hotel, filled it with leaves and other good stuff, and put in all the snails we could find on the pavement or driveway. We wanted to save them from getting stepped on. Of course the snails could check out of their hotel any time they wanted. But our kids checked on them often and brought them more “food”. After every time it rained, the kids went out and collected more snails to put in the snail hotel.
We also started to research about the snails when the kids had a lot of questions - like are they born with shells? Do the shells grow with them? Do snails lay eggs? What do snails eat? etc. You can give your kids notebooks, have them draw pictures of the snails or print out some pictures to stick in their notebook.
11. Visit a petting farm
If you live in the city, a trip out to a petting farm/zoo can be a fantastic experience for the kids. Besides loving the “cute animals”, they get to learn how different animals can be, what different animals like to eat, or what is harmful for them, to respect/ show compassion for animals, be aware that all animals react differently, appreciate nature, overcome some fears (of petting certain animals), and really use all their senses.
12. Build an epic lego city
Vow to use up every single piece of lego in your home in a joint family epic lego building session. Not as easy as it sounds, and will keep everyone occupied for quite a while.
13. Grow vegetables/ plant flowers
Whether you have a garden, a balcony, or just a flower pot in your kitchen, ask your kids what vegetables or flowers they’d like to grow. Plant them together, encourage your kids to water them regularly and watch them grow. The sense of achievement of growing a flower, or something you can eat, from a seed is huge for a child.
14. Check out your local library
Libraries are great resources for summer activities. Many have craft sessions, music or reading sessions. Even if your local library doesn’t have any activities on this summer, a trip there to binge read books you’ve never seen before can save a rainy day.
15. Tie dye or fabric paint some clothes
If you’re feeling adventurous and your kids are a bit older you can try tie dying some old clothes, or buy a pack of white t-shirts. Or give the kids some fabric paint and let them loose. Make some for yourself too.
When they’re finished and the clothes are dry you can have a fashion show and take lots of pictures. Or go out somewhere, all of you wearing your new creations.
16. Draw with sidewalk chalk
This one is great because the chalk washes away when it rains so you don’t have to clean it all up. Buy a few of those massive sidewalk chalks and let your imagination loose.
Alternatively, if you find yourself at a beach you can draw in the sand with your fingers. We started drawing dinosaurs for Mr 2, and people stopped and wanted to see what we were doing. Eventually they joined in and we ended up with a huge sand picture of dinosaurs and dragons.
17. Pick fruit
This part of summer (at least here in Sweden), there is usually an abundance of wild strawberries and blueberries. There is also something very satisfying about finding food out in nature, for free. So take some containers and go searching for berries. You can enjoy your haul just as they are, make pies, smoothies or enjoy them with ice cream. The bonus is, it gets kids out in nature and exercises their little legs.
18. Make a fairy house
This is one of my favourite creative activities. And whenever we’ve walked past another fairy house somewhere, I’ve often thought “how fascinating!”, and the kids always want to stop and look at it in detail. There is something about fairy houses that trigger their imagination.
Some hobby shops have ready made fairy house doors and windows you can buy and paint yourself. Or you can make them with scraps of wood, old milk cartons or shampoo bottles. They can be as ornate or simple as you like. Perhaps there is even a fairy garden with moss and pine cones. Fairy houses can be outdoors, on balconies, or even indoors.
19. Have a home spa day
For all those parents who love spas, or just want a bit of ‘me’ time. I mean, if you have slices of cucumbers on your eyes you just have to lie down for a while, right?
Go full on with this. Put a bathrobe on over your clothes. Play some spa music. You can do a full mani and pedi on yourself, while bonding with your kids and painting their nails too (we use the kid friendly nail varnish with no nasty stuff in it). Or put a face mask on yourself and any kids that want to try them (you can search for DIY face masks to find recipes you can make from kitchen ingredients). Make some fancy mocktails with fruit and umbrellas in them. Self-care done, kids happy because they got to spend time with you.
And just in case you’re thinking ‘my kids will never go for that!’, just try them. My intense, strong-willed dinosaur-loving 3 year old had a spa day and he loved it! He did eat all the cucumber slices though.
20. Kinetic sand/ moon sand/ playdough
These are so great for the little kids because they keep them occupied for ages. And to be honest, I don’t mind sculpting a bit of playdough myself. Plus you can make them yourself from most ingredients you have in your kitchen. Great if you have a toddler who likes putting everything in their mouth.
For the kinetic sand/ moon sand, mix 8 cups of flour with 1 cup of oil (we used baby oil but I have read you can use vegetable oil instead). You can add a little food colouring if you want to. We then filled a deep baking tin with the moon sand, threw in some spoons, cookie cutters, small cups, and some shells we’d collected. Honestly, it was the quietest I’d ever seen my kids.
For playdough, we used this recipe https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/playdough-recipe . We made some horses, unicorns and dogs. I really recommend making a few different colours of playdough.
Just remember, it’s one thing to organise a lot of fun summer activities for your kids, but you need to have fun doing them too.
If you want information, support and ideas for more fun kid-friendly activities this summer, come join our Calm Fun Parents Facebook group. https://www.facebook.com/groups/calmfunparents
We have discussions, threads and tips on what other parents have tried, and what they’ve found to work for them. But also, most importantly, activities that aren't boring for you.