Category: Summer Projects

Summer Boredom Bucket List: Day 5

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Here we are on the fifth day of a week-long journey to bust summer boredom. Feel free to add your own ideas in the comments!

Idea 17: How Far Can You Jump? The “I’m bored” whines were beginning moments after breakfast and I could tell the kids needed to get outside, so I immediately declared it a mini Field Day. I laid a yardstick down on the ground and notched off the starting point with chalk. Mommy jumped first, the full 3 feet!

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Seeing this made Travis want to take a turn. He landed at 26 inches the first time. But could he beat it? Wow, 32 inches!

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He was so proud. Meanwhile it was not even 9 a.m. and I was pleased the kids had already had some sunshine.

Idea 18: Make a Salad Kabob. Travis loved threading food onto a skewer for a recent project so now I challenged him to make his lunch salad in kabob-form. I suggested a pattern of: tomato, cucumber, cheese (we recommend chunks of mozzarella from Miyoko’s kitchen!). But he declared, “I have my own pattern.” Many slices of cucumber and mozzarella followed.

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We drizzled with non-dairy ranch dressing for the perfect salad on a stick!

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Idea 19: Memorize Five Things. The concept of this one was tricky for Travis (i.e. memorizing five X of any category, be it words in a new language, poems, etc.). I helped him narrow it down to memorizing 5 jokes. Four were Knock Knock jokes, but we threw in one of my corniest favorites from childhood:

Q: What’s gray, and has a trunk?

A: A mouse going on vacation!

Rim shot. We even recorded these onto my phone for little sister Veronika to listen to in the car. 

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Idea 20: Learn to Draw a Chameleon. What a strangely specific suggestion this was from Highlights, but I took advantage of Travis’s recent interest in learning to draw Star Wars characters in order to pique his interest in a step-by-step chameleon tutorial.

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It was tough for him to understand at first how we were following along line by line. Then he began to grasp how each step made it look more like a chameleon than the step before.

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Here’s how mama’s attempt turned out:

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After he had mastered the chameleon, he even tried his hand at drawing Jabba the Hutt.

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Idea 21: Do a New Hairdo. Travis is hesitant about gels in his hair, so I wondered how this suggestion would pan out. So at first I asked if the kids wanted to set up a doll hair salon. That got a big yes!

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We pulled out safety scissors for pretend snipping, along with jars of pretend cream. Then Travis asked for a real hair product. Heck, why not? I let him work all the baby dolls’ hair into big spiky mohawks.

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He decided it was so much fun that he was willing to let me run cream through his hair and attempt a mohawk of his own. And of course needed to see in the mirror!

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Edible Sno Cone Creation Station

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Sno Cone Creation Station (10)

Here’s an activity that will a) cool the kids off; b) provide sensory play; c) fire up the imagination; and d) give them a yummy snack! I told the kids they were going to open up their own sno cone stand, and the excitement began.

I set out a tray of crushed ice (an easy task thanks to our fridge filtration system, but a blender can do this for you, too), then added ice cream scoops.

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For “cones”, we folded conic shapes from craft foam. These turned out to be very easy to break, so next time I would probably stick to little plastic bowls.

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All they needed now were fruit syrups to flavor the ice! For these, I simply pureed fruits in the blender. We had pink from strawberries and deep purple from a mix of blueberries and blackberries.

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If you have condiment squirt bottles, those would be perfect to use here! I gave the kids paper cups filled with each syrup instead, along with plastic spoons.

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As with a recent nature soup activity, I loved that this game could engage both my toddler and 1st grader in different ways. For Veronika, it was all about the sensory aspects. First she just loved spooning through the ice.

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When she tasted plain ice, she copied big brother and said, “It’s yummy!” but I don’t think she really thought so.

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“It’s cold!” she added instead, looking confused. So we showed her how to spoon the berry syrup on top of her ice. Well now she couldn’t be stopped!

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In retrospect I would have done this activity in just a diaper to avoid berry stains, but it was worth a few purple splotches. She was having such delicious fun I let it be.

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Travis, meanwhile, enjoyed the role-play aspect of the game. He loved using the ice cream scoop to properly fill a “cone,” and then asking me for my order, adding strawberry or purple berries on top accordingly.

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And of course he did lots of tasting, too!

Summer Boredom Bucket List: Day 4

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Welcome to the fourth day of your handy summer list for beating boredom. Without any further ado…

Idea 13: Make a Matching Game. Really, this prompt from Highlights is the card game ‘Memory’ by another name, but the idea is to lay down pairs of matching cards, then see how long it takes to find all the matches if you only turn over two cards at a time.

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If your child is older and playing solo, then yes the game can hopefully occupy him or her for quite some time! I didn’t exactly get a break, because Travis immediately wanted us to play together. He also was so into the game that he didn’t want to add the element of timing the task. “Let’s just play!” he insisted. Through three rounds in fact. So while I can’t say that this bought me any time to myself, it did bust his boredom!

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Idea 14: Writing Redo. First, I challenged Travis to imagine a scene from a favorite movie and give it a different ending. He went right to Star Wars of course, and imagined that young Anakin didn’t win his pod race. (Think about it Star Wars fans; in such a scenario, there might never have been a Darth Vader). Now we combined it with a second prompt from Highlights: to make a scroll. I taped 4 pieces of paper together so Travis had a long scroll to work with.

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(Little sister got one, too!)

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He loved adding details including Jar Jar Binks feeling sad at the finish, mountains and droids in the background, and more.

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This little prompt is great for kids to hone their own storytelling skills, whether you have them use a book or a movie as the starting point.

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Idea 15: Doodle Your Day. When the witching hour hit between dinner and bedtime and Travis was sort of flopping around aimlessly, I suggested that he go back and doodle his day. He’s been into drawing stick figures lately, so I knew these simple sketches would be right up his alley, especially with a new special pen!

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This exercise was great not only artistically, but also for thinking back through his day. “What do we normally do first?” I prompted. “Lunch?” “Well no… What comes before that?”

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As he drew, he honed his skills both drawing and recollecting. “Here we are at the restaurant, but our faces are circles because you can only see our heads sitting around the table,” he explained.

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Idea 16: Learn How Something is Made. When I suggested to Travis that we find a YouTube video of how something was made – anything! – Travis chose Lego (of course). We watched a fascinating video on the machines that make the Lego pieces themselves (over 1.7 million in an hour!), followed by a more detailed clip about the designers who get to create new sets. A dream job in the making perhaps? Needless to say, this was an instant boredom buster because once the video was done, he trotted over to his Lego sets to play designer.

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What would your child want to learn about? We’ll be back tomorrow with more boredom busters!

Water Balloon Catch and More

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Water Balloon Toss (1)

It isn’t summer until you’ve pulled out the water balloons! Today Travis and Veronika both wanted in on the action, so we included both toddler-friendly and bigger kid ways to play.

For Veronika, it was all about introducing this fantastic summer activity, since she was too little last summer. She was amazed watching me fill the balloons, and squished one around in her hands with delight as soon as the cold water filled it.

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Try and teach your toddler to catch with gentle tosses back and forth. A hot morning means it’s no problem if one explodes in the process!

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Then try a little target practice. I drew a chalk target on the patio, and encouraged Veronika to toss her water balloons right on top of it.

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She wasn’t exactly on target, but she sure loved the splat they made no matter where they fell!

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Big brother Travis needed something a little more sophisticated. Cue the water balloon pinata! I had envisioned making this out of five or six water balloons, filled and strung up from a tree.

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But he was so impatient for the fun to begin we only had a two-balloon pinata. Take a whack with a baseball bat and watch the explosion!

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After that I simply made Travis a big pile of filled balloons to do with as he saw fit.

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He squished them, he squeezed them, he bounced them, he imagined they were a water balloon family, he smooshed them between his toes. And more!

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What’s your child’s favorite water balloon activity? Please share in the comments!

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Summer Boredom Bucket List: Day 3

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Welcome to the third installment of ways to bust boredom! Hopefully these suggestions are already helping you avoid the dreaded “I’m bored” in your summer of social distancing.

Idea 9: Math-a-Mowing. Want to trick your kids into mowing the lawn? Okay, maybe not really, but I’m not joking when I say that this activity kept Travis happily busy for almost an hour.

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The original challenge was to see how long it took to snip the grass in 1 square foot of our yard. Using school scissors, we calculated it took about 1 minute. You can then extrapolate from there. If your yard were 10 feet square, then it would take you 10 minutes. Just imagine how long it would take to do a full football field this way! (Come to think of it, sit your older kids down to solve that problem with math, for another boredom buster…).

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Now Travis had discovered the simple thrill of using scissors in the grass, and he couldn’t be stopped. He loved trimming clover flowers and blades of tall grass, and proudly showing me how neat he had made each patch of lawn. Plus he discovered lots of bugs as he worked, popping up from his work to tell me about the latest six-foot critter he’d found. So it turned into a morning of nature exploration!

Idea 10: Squeeze Fresh and Fruity Orange Juice. Start the day off right with this fun activity. First, make oranges nice and squishy by rubbing them under your palms. This will help get the juice out to the max in the next step!

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Squeeze out with a citrus juicer, or just squeeze the oranges over a bowl. Pour into a glass and watch your kids’ eyes pop at the freshest juice they’ve ever tasted.

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Idea 11: Learn to Juggle. Here was another suggestion that was a bit advanced for a 6-year-old. Highlights had broken the lesson down into three steps, and we took it one step at a time. First was just tossing one bean bag back and forth. Travis mastered this quickly. In fact, he mastered it with his eyes closed, standing on one foot, looking over his shoulder, you name it!

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I was glad he was so proud because step two was beyond his coordination: Toss up one bean bag, then toss the second up when the first one reaches its apex. At least now we have a goal to keep working toward! Even this mama wasn’t very good at moving to step three – 3 bean bags!

Idea 12: Make Stick Puppets of Family Members. As was the case with our doodles from fingerprints, this game started simple and became loads of silly fun. At first Travis didn’t understand when I said we should make stick puppets of our family on craft sticks. But I showed him that we were imagining the stick itself was the body, and we needed to draw on features.

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Now he caught on to the idea, filling in hair, eyes, clothing, and other details. He insisted we make a puppet for the cat, too! (Note: If your kids prefer to be craftier, try making these puppets from fabric or felt, instead!).

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We then acted out silly stories about our family. And I do mean silly! This brought out the little kid in me, acting out tales that had us swimming through swamps and giggling at family inside jokes.

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We’ll be back tomorrow with a new batch of boredom busters!

Summer Boredom Bucket List: Day 2

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As promised, here’s a second day’s worth of ideas to combat summer boredom. If you missed it, be sure to read the first four ideas here!

Idea 5: Plant Seeds. This boredom suggestion came at just the right time, since Travis was assigned a summer library challenge to help “Jack” grow the beans for his beanstalk.

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We germinated dried black beans overnight in a little water. The next morning, place a damp paper towel inside a zip-top plastic bag. Add the beans and tape in a sunny window.

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It was fun to watch these sprout over the course of a few days, even though we won’t have a garden to transplant them to when all is said and done.

Idea 6: Create Doodles from Ink Fingerprints. This idea was so fantastic it nearly merits its own post. Travis was really in a mood, so we started out simple: If he made a fingerprint with ink, I asked him, what could it be? He decided on bugs. One fingerprint could be a bee or a beetle.

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Two dots together were a butterfly. Five in a row made a caterpillar.

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Now Travis was getting the idea! He started to add details, like spots to ladybugs or wings to flies.

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He loved adding 8 legs to my spider. Our “garden” was soon so pretty Travis wanted to do it again on a second sheet of paper. Hmm… How to keep the game fresh?

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We tried dragging our ink fingers in a line for worms. These ended up looking a little silly…

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Well so now we needed silly bugs! What didn’t we have in the glorious work of art and imagination that followed? There were wizard caterpillars with gentlemen bugs with pipes and tophats:

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There were wizard bugs with beards and wands:

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There was even a king and queen with crowns! Then we drew a cloud, with fingerprint “raindrops” coming down… and then the raindrops came to life with smiles and hats.

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Travis worked on the details for nearly an hour! By the end we even had fingerprint bugs spitting water at each other. Who knew a doodle fingerprint could lead so far.

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Idea 7: Write a Rap About Your Pet. This prompt was hard for Travis, who declared himself not a singer and wasn’t initially interested. Aha, but could he be the DJ in charge of the beat for our rap song?

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Pretty soon he was playing around with an old keyboard, testing out demo beats and drums. Travis discovered he could increase the tempo and get the drums exactly as he wanted them.

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The kids had so much fun mixing and matching melodies and drum beats. You’ll notice little sister joined in and did some dance moves!

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So did we exactly follow the prompt to write a rap about our cat? No, but this sure busted boredom! How’s this for a quick solution:

Krishna, Krishna he’s our cat,

And we think that he is all that!

Idea 8: Create a Code. Here’s another prompt that was tough for Travis, since he’s just learning to read English, much less create a code in it. Instead, I created a code he had to crack.

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Each letter of the alphabet corresponded to its number. Hunting through the code, he then had to search for which letter lined up with the numbered spaces.

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He was so proud to solve it, revealing the answer of “Jabba the Hutt”, of course!

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Summer Boredom Bucket List: Day 1

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Highlights magazine had a great feature in its July issue of 30 ways to turn your kids’ words around when they come harping to you that they’re “bored” this summer. Yes, sometimes it’s good to be bored. But also: it’s summer; they’re kids; coronavirus means camps are cancelled or starting late; and you as a caregiver deserve to stay sane. I’m guessing you are as hungry as I am for ways to keep the littles entertained!

Tonight I’m kicking off a week-long series of posts, a full week’s worth of activities to stymie the statement, “I’m bored”. We’ve tested all of these in the past month, so I can guarantee they work!

Idea 1: Make a Jumbo Jump Rope. The first time I heard, “I’m bored”, I pulled out every scarf from my dresser and tied them into one long rope. A giant jump rope!

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Because Travis hasn’t had much practice even on a regular jump rope, first I encouraged him simply to work on his jumping skills, back and forth over the dangling scarves. This was a super fun challenge!

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Well then little sister grabbed on, and it became a shaking scarf for musical play. Use a rope like this to shake shake shake, then stop/freeze, teaching your child about pauses in music.

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Then Travis pretended he was climbing a rope up, hand over hand, like a ninja! And then mommy got captured. Uh oh, I hadn’t quite planned on that one.

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As you can see, one long line of ropes busts boredom.

Idea 2: Bake a Giant Chocolate-Chip Cookie. If kids announce they don’t know what to do and it’s only 8.45 in the morning, then it is definitely time for a giant cookie. “Let’s make a cookie as big as a pizza!” I said, and I instantly had two happy faces, even my toddler marching around the kitchen chanting “cookie cookie!”

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Luckily I had a mix in the pantry, making this easy for me too. The mix, a dash of almond milk, a little oil, and a little vanilla, and we were ready to pat our cookie into a circle on a pizza pan. After it baked, we even sliced it with a cookie cutter for a snack time full of chocolate smiles.

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Idea 3: Balance a Pen on One Finger. This little challenge turns out to be quite a moment of zen. What worked best? By trial and error, Travis and I worked out the following formula: elbow supported (either on one knee or on the table); pointer finger crooked back; cap removed from the pen; and then finding the fulcrum. Balance!

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I was proud of Travis not getting frustrated, too!

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Idea 4: Do Stuff with Tiny Stones. What couldn’t we do with tiny rocks? This boredom prompt filled a whole afternoon! First we headed outside to the driveway, where we knew there were just the right tiny pebbles near the garage, and the kids gathered them into a bucket.

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They then discovered the storm drain, and spent almost half an hour plinking rocks through the holes and watching the water ripple at the bottom!

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Okay, I got them inside, and now we had so many ideas. First we piled them up and built pyramids.

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Then we decided to get artsy. I hot-glued rocks to two pieces of paper and asked Travis what he saw to finish the drawing. He thought this one looked like a deep-sea anglerfish!

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I made a second into a stone wall in front of a house (meaning this was a boredom buster for mama, too).

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Then we decided to paint the remaining stones. For the blue, we put them in a cookie tin with blue paint and shook until coated. “Loud!” Veronika said. The orange ones we painted normally with a paint brush.

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We left them to dry, and then by evening we could play games that involved two sides, like jacks…

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…or tic-tac-toe (make that tic-tac-rock).

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3 Ways to Celebrate Watermelon

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National Watermelon Month (3)

We learned that the whole month of July is National Watermelon Month (as if we need an excuse to eat it when this fruit is the epitome of summertime), so today we decided to throw a party for this fantastic fruit!

The kids loved getting silly with this. First we needed to decorate, so we made watermelon a banner of… watermelon!

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Color the center of paper plates pink with marker or crayons, then add green around the edges for the rind. Don’t forget the black seeds!

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If you want, cut the plates into triangles and string up in a garland this way like watermelon wedges. We left ours as circles and I festooned the kitchen door with this ode-to-watermelon.

How better to celebrate watermelon, next, than to eat it! For fun, we cut some slices into “fries” and dipped them into yogurt “ketchup”.

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Or, cut a circle cross-section from a whole watermelon and spread with your favorite yogurt. This could be a pizza… Or a cake! Travis decided he wanted his topped with non-dairy cream cheese instead.

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Any favorite watermelon treats in your home? Please share in the comments!

Sprinkler Freeze Dance

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Sprinkler Freeze Dance (2)

This game is perfect for a summer day! You’ll have water to cool off, tunes to jam to, and a little bonding and learning thrown in.

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We changed into bathing suits and set up the sprinkler in the yard… so nothing was out of the ordinary yet. But this time, I cranked up the car stereo so the tunes were playing!

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If the music was on, we boogied. When the music paused, we showed Veronika how to freeze. Older siblings will love showing a toddler how to do this; big brother Travis threw in some fancy hip moves and footwork.

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Veronika started to catch on. And as soon as the music began again, her whole body bopped along.

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As an alternative version, make the freeze about the water speed, not the music. When the sprinkler turns off… Freeze! When it turns on again, bring back those dance moves.

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Veronika’s signature move was stomping in puddles.

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Here’s a quick clip of her moves. She’s got style!

You’ll definitely want to enlist the whole family for this one!

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Melty Masterpiece

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Ice Block Paint (5)

Veronika has already used ice as a paint brush, so now it was time to use ice as her canvas! This is a fantastic art activity for outdoors on a hot day.

Overnight, freeze a cube of ice in a large plastic food container. In the morning, I simply popped out the cube and set it on a tray for Veronika, along with 3 colors of paint.

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She immediately wanted to paint “all by self,” dipping her brush into one of the colors and watching it run over the ice.

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The neat trick here is that the sun will work to melt the ice at the same time your toddler works to paint it, resulting in beautiful drippy colors.

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She painted until it was completely coated in paint and gleaming.

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It was fun to watch the paint run down the sides together!

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We were curious how long it would take to melt completely, and left her melty masterpiece outside in the sunshine. After only about an hour, we had a peach-colored puddle instead.

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An ephemeral but fantastic art project for toddlers.

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