Summer can be an amazing time for relaxing and enjoying time with family! It can also be stressful with all the kids home from school and parent work-life continuing even though kids are out of school.
Water Play
Water play is an activity that all kids enjoy! Personally, I prefer it outside, but it is also possible in our kitchen because the floors are tile!
Water Tables
My grandkids love the water table we have outside on our back porch! They have balls and toys they enjoy playing within there. This summer, I have begun to make ice shapes for them to play with at their water table. Check out the picture of them below!
Here is the one we have at our house:
I really like these too:
Sprinklers
Sprinklers are a great way to have water play while running off some excess energy!
Ice Play
Little kids LOVE ice, at least mine did!
What I decided to do since my granddaughter loves ice so much is to make ice toys for her to play with! I use our silicone cupcake pans, fill them with water, and freeze tiny toys in them. Then, once they are frozen, we pop them out and she plays with them in the water table.
Here are some great silicone molds for making cool ice shapes!
Silicone ones are the easiest because they make it super easy to pop out the ice shapes!
Bug Searching
Kids tend to either love bugs or hate them!
We have two grandchildren that live close to us and one hates them and one loves them. I’m determined that the one will not be scared of bugs her entire childhood (like her uncle was)! So we are finding ways to make bugs not so scary!
Learning about bugs
One of the best ways to make bugs not so scary is by reading about them! Here are some cute kids’ books about bugs!
Investigaing bugs close up
Another great way is to get close-up and hands-on (or nets on) bugs at home or at the park!
Practicing Colors
There are endless fun ways to practice colors with kids! My two favorites are books and scavenger hunts!
Books
I’m always a big fan of books!
Games
There are so many great games to help kids learn colors! However, Candy Land is definitely my favorite!
Scavenger Hunts
When my kids were little I loved to send them on scavenger hunts to bring me items of different colors! This was a great game to play on my tired days because I had index cards ready with the name of one color written on each one in that color. I would read the card for them and then send them running through the house looking for items of that color!
It was educational and allowed me to keep them entertained and busy while not having to be busy myself!
Download free color cards to send your kiddos on a stress-free scavenger hunt!
Educational Activities
Besides just practicing colors, there are plenty of other educational activities available for kids! Educational games are one of my favorite ways to help kids learn!
As a clinical psychologist, I know how much kids can learn by playing games. Many people mistake game playing in therapy sessions as just playing games. However, that is how kids play best! They learn by playing!
Here are some of my favorites!
All kids love magnets! These are a great way to help kids stay entertained and work on sight words!
Rush Hour is a great game to teach frustration tolerance and patience! This is one of my favorite games to play with children in my office!
The Angry Monster Machine is an amazing game to help kids learn frustration tolerance! I love playing this game with clients. I have also taken it home from my office and played it with my children when they were struggling with managing frustration and anger!
ABC Mouse is a great online resource for educational games for children of various ages!
Kids Still Bored?
Check out these great ideas to keep kids (both big kids and little kids) active and busy when they constantly let you know they are bored!
I love the Scavenger Hunt idea and having cards ready to send them out looking for something. It’s so simple yet genius!
I agree! It’s a great way to keep them active while not having to be quite so active ourselves!
These are all fun ideas! My kids especially enjoyed scavenger hunts.
Mine did too! We had all kinds of them!
We used to do several of these activities with my kids when they were younger. Great ideas! Now that they are older, we still do books, and we still do older versions of activities!
We have done similar things with our older ones too! The scavenger hunts are great with our older kids! More than once we have done scavenger hunts to tell them about our upcoming surprise vacation!
Thanks! There are so many ways to have fun at home!
Water tables are amazing for little ones.
I agree! I like to add bubbles to it! It cleans the water table and the kids LOVE it!