Fun Ideas for Kids to Enjoy

SUMMER

Summer is a wonderful time to bring your kids outside to benefit the beautiful weather. Rather than leaving them glued on watching television or playing games on the computer, allow them freedom to explore new ideas and concepts that can spark their imaginations. Besides, even if kids aren’t in school, they can still learn, experiment and expand their horizons without causing too much damage on your pocket. Try to entertain your kids with varied fun activities to enjoy such as the following:

• Creating a scrapbook journal, especially if you are lucky enough to reside in a locale near recreational areas like a park, you can have your kids pull out their cameras to capture an image of what interests them, or perhaps they can gather and collect, draw and write about what they see around them.
• Take your kids to the library to encourage reading and visit nearby museums. Watch out for informative but entertaining shows these museums sponsor free of charge. Some libraries may also have mind-stimulating activities specially prepared for kids during summer.
• You can keep your kids active by having them ride their bikes or skateboards with friends and getting them involved with sports. Have them play group games and facilitate races too. Or maybe kids can learn how to make a kite and have it fly up on the air.
• Take a hike in the woods, climb a tree (be sure to be safe), create a tree house out of old blankets, go camping or just simply pack up a basket with a blanket and go on a picnic.
• Attend a magic show, a comedy skit or a play.
• Gardening. Using a small area of your existing garden, let your child choose whatever they want to grow and give them the responsibility of taking good care of their own crops. Teach and help them how to best care of it. If you don’t have a garden, consider making a small one.
• Plan a treasure hunting activity and allow your kids to make their own treasure map.

RAINY DAYS

Being stuck with restless kids during a bad weather wherein the rain is pouring hard and the news predicts that the sun won’t be back any sooner, can really be dragging and boring. So here are some ideas to make your kids temporarily forget a bad day’s weather:

• Have the kids helped out in the kitchen and give them a cooking lesson. For sure, they would love to eat the foods that they have helped prepare themselves, especially if they were freely given the chance to place some designs on it. Perhaps the best cooking lesson to start with would be baking bread, muffins, brownies and pizzas.
• Encourage reading.
• If your kids can’t do away with watching television, provide programs that can enrich your child’s knowledge in terms they can understand. Programs that are a perfect example would be The Discovery Channel and Animal Planet.
• Play board games and have a break with computer and video games for a while. Scrabble, Battleship, Monopoly and Twister are some of the classic strategy games that are still enjoyable up to this date.
• Have an old-fashioned indoor camp out if you don’t have indoor tents to read your kids interesting stories.
• Teach your kids how to create their own puppets and organize a mini puppet show. It doesn’t have to be an elaborate one. Just choose a story or a theme and assign a character your child wants to make.
• Help your kids’ craft on something they are interested in. This way, you can help your kids develop their motor skills, creativity and problem solving activities. Some ideas are making colorful paper daisy chains using art papers and clay objects. You can help them gather all the art materials that they need to get started. If it requires a little sewing, maybe you can do that while your kids take care of the details like adding it with glitters, glued-on sequins or rhinestones and paint pens or have them help with the stuffing.

ANYTIME

• Face painting. This can really be an enjoyable activity for kids. They would love to see themselves transform into their much-loved superheros or their favorite monsters. However, first, you must try the smaller designs such as stars, smiley faces, hearts, ice cream cones and flowers for girls and spiders, snakes, mustaches, beards and sports items like basketballs, footballs and baseballs for boys.