Schools out for summer! Beautiful weather, long days, vacations, field trips, and, most importantly, no homework. Suddenly, the kids are at home for a much greater portion of the day.
The family trip will take the pressure off for a few weeks, but how do you keep your kids entertained for the remainder of the hot months?
You don’t want to just feed them a device and let them mindlessly scroll through their childhood. Here’s a helpful list of healthy activities to keep your kids entertained during the summer months.
Camp in your backyard
There are very few things that build lifelong memories, like camping in the backyard.
Here, the point is not having the best, most technologically advanced tent with air conditioning and a working toilet. It’s not about expensive fireworks and flashy equipment.
A simple blanket tent lined with bedsheets and a LED lantern will do. That’s what’ll stick in your kids’ minds. The game of building a tent. Trying to build a fire from scratch. Smores and songs.
For a relatively small price, you can get a projector and a canvas. Making your own movie theater in your backyard has never been easier.
The trick is to spend quality time with your family. The teenagers may not be the most cooperative for this purpose, but they will cherish the moments, even if by force.
If you do choose to build a fire in your backyard, the best choice is to use a fire pit. Whatever you end up doing, make sure you read up on fire safety. It may even be illegal in your state to start fires in your backyard, so make sure to inform yourself first.
Go exploring in your own town
People think they need to go to a remote location to enjoy fulfilling and cultural content. The truth is that every place is infused with history – you just need to know how to find it.
Take a trip to visit a church that you don’t frequent. Explore your town’s museums and art galleries. Go to the community theater, and see a play.
This will instill a healthy sense of local patriotism in your kids, make them proud of their hometown and induce a wish to better their community.
Take them to try out new sports
The summertime is the perfect season for your kids to try something new. Now, instead of them trying out a new mobile app game, you can take them to try out a new sport.
There doesn’t need to be any pressure to perform, succeed, or even be good at anything. Let your child discover themselves and their bodies, see what they like and what could interest them in the future.
This is time much better spent than staring at a phone, browsing the internet, and trying to fulfill the latest TikTok challenge.
Go to the library
Sure, you can download any book imaginable on a Kindle and just call it a day.
But we seem to forget that libraries, physical locations that you can physically go to, are more than just buildings with books in them. They’re community builders, places for people to go and educate themselves and others.
Local libraries regularly organize free events for kids and youngsters. Do your kids a favor and get them a library card. Gift them a lifelong habit they will cherish – the gift of reading and the gift of reaching out to the community.
Go do some volunteer work
No matter what your living conditions are, there are always people that are worse off than you. That’s a lesson your kids need to learn early on. On top of that, planting the seeds of empathy, mindfulness, and solidarity from an early age will make your kids better people in general.
Here are some volunteer charity activities you can try out with your kids during the summer:
- Community clean up – Pick a small intersection and do your best to pick up the pieces of garbage, scrub away the graffiti, and handle larger pieces of debris. Make sure you and your kids wear protective gear, like gloves and masks.
- Visit a nursing home – Provide the elderly and lonely with a bit of love and care and you and your kids will have tenfold returns in karmic points. Teach your kids about caring for the less fortunate and lonely at an early age and they will become better people.
- Visit the local soup kitchen – You can prepare food, or you can help with the preparation at the premises. Either way, this is another excellent way to teach your kids about the importance of empathy and solidarity.
The summertime is the perfect time to teach your kids about the benefits of outreach to the community. A day spent with the elderly in a nursing home, or delivering meals for an organization like Meals on Wheels, or organizing a community clean up.
There is no shortage of great ideas that will make your and your kids’ lives much richer, more fulfilled and wholesome.
Cook with your kids
Kids actually love helping out with cooking and other chores – if you ‘gamify’ them just a little bit. Introducing your children to the cooking process may seem daunting and scary, what with all the knives, chopping, boiling water and hot stovetops.
But if you’re diligent enough, keep a watchful eye and carefully delegate the responsibilities in accordance with their age. Cooking with your kids is one of the greatest things you can do with them. You can browse the internet for kid-friendly recipes that will minimize the chances of injury and maximize the chances of fun.
First of all, it’s quality time with their parents. Barbecuing with your dad in the summer months is a memory every person deserves.
Secondly, you will start them off on a journey that lasts a lifetime, a journey of being self-sufficient and independent, a healthy habit they will cherish for the rest of their lives.
Of course, be extra mindful of knives, hot objects and other kitchen dangers and remember to keep your cool. By making a stressful situation, you can actually have very unfavorable results.
Conclusion
Spending quality time with family. Giving back to the community. Exploring their hometown. Learning new skills, acquiring new hobbies, and trying their luck in a new sport. There are many different activities that can enrich your and your children’s lives during summer break, besides sending them off to a summer camp.
However you choose to enrich your kids’ summer break, your focus should be on showing your children that there’s a world outside their mobile devices.
