Summer Fun: Playing with Water

There is still one more week of school for the kids in our house, but we have heard of many friends who are already enjoying summer vacation.  Hot days and water play are on their way!  Here are some fun water themed activities and games to try this summer!

Create a water wall, similar to an outside marble run.  There is a nice example to get you started at Playing By the Book.

UCreate put together a DIY backyard Water Blob.  This idea was all over Pinterest last year and we are looking forward to finally giving it a try this summer.

Roll 6 and Splash from Toddler Approved is on our summer fun list.  Simple, yet silly enough to be cool! (There are other water themed games included in this link)

Mamas Like Me posted several water games.  We are especially excited about trying the sponge bulls eye.

A favorite summer camp standby with our kids is "Drip, Drip, Splash" played like duck, duck, goose but the duck-er gets to carry around a small bowl of water to drip and splash on the unsuspecting gooses.

There are also many great examples of  Kid Washes around the web.  Here is the one we made last summer.  The kids are ready to get it out again soon!

B.Toys makes a wonderful water toy called H2-Whoa. It comes with 4 water pens that draw on 2 different colored board surfaces.  The picture slowly fades as it dries. Perfect for indoor or outdoor water drawings.

A very simple idea for young children is to fill a paint can with water, provide them with large paint brushes and a stretch of backyard fence to "paint."  This activity kept my 1 and 3 year old entertained for hours last summer.

Ready?  Get set.  Get WET!

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Summer Treasures Repurposed: Flower Blossoms

Use the flowers you have pressed from your summer garden to set up a nature museum in your classroom, practicing labels and classifications.

Add pressed blossoms to sun prints or stationary, like this example from Playful Learning.

Set up a flower dissection experiment using the lesson plan from the Arizona Science Standards or the suggestions from Mariah.

Grandparents.com suggests making bookmarks out of dried flowers. 

Decorate the holiday tree by cutting apart large blossoms to add to the branches or by filling glass bulbs with your favorite dried blossoms.

Pick a favorite dried flower to display on a canvas

Fasten large blossoms to a wreath base to create a seasonal wreath.

Bundle and hang  leftover garden beauty to decorate your home or classroom.  Making a dried flower bouquet is an appropriate activity to use when teaching about the colonial time in history.

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Summer Treasures Repurposed: Stones

As I mentioned before, our family loves to collect treasures from nature all summer long.  This time of year this momma is anxious to make use of these treasures or make them disappear.  Here are some examples of things we found to do using the kids' colorful stone and pebble collections:

Choose 52 of the stones to use in starting a family traditions.  At the end of each week discuss your favorite moments of the week as a family.  Write a key word or two on the stone to sum up the conversation.  Add the week's stone to a mason jar that you display in your home - "standing stone" collection of all the everyday memories of the year. 

One Pretty Thing put together a sweet heart of beach glass, but it could also be done with stones.

Create pet rocks.  Use the pet rocks as characters in your own creative stories.

Sort the stones by size or color.  Create graphs using the stones as place markers.

Replace the store bought unnaturally neon colored pebbles with lovely fresh water stones.

Using tile grout, a bowling ball, and a beautiful stone collection create a garden art gazing globe.

Cover a wooden bird house with a thin layer of cement decorated gingerbread style with favorite stones.

Paint a pile of stones to use as math manipulatives throughout the school year.

{Frog Math with painted pebbles}

Doodle on your plain stones with a Sharpie marker, like The Art of Being Creative, to make a simple reminder of beach days past.

Put together a holiday gift of Message Stones, like these from MomReady.

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Summer Fruit Series: Blueberries

Step by Step Homeschooling has written a post with ideas to compliment the book Blueberries for Sal. 

Itty Bitty Bookworm is a fabulous preschool curriculum that has integrated lesson plans using Blueberries for Sal.

The Blueberry Council website has a blueberry math worksheet printable.

Scholastic has a "Gone Picking" blueberry activity to practice numbers and operations.

Counting God's Little Blessings has a Blueberry Jello Salad recipe that sounds delish!

Hands of a Child also has a K-3 Literacy Packet to accompany Blueberries for Sal.

Have you read the poem Blueberries by Robert Frost?

Martha Stewart suggests using corks to create blueberry prints on fabric. Cute.

Melodies Plus shared some interesting blueberry trivia and jokes.

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Summer Fruit Series: Strawberries

Our family spent time this week picking, tipping, and washing berries before making them into jams and sauces to last through the year.  Yum!  Here are some strawberry inspired lessons, crafts, and activities for you to enjoy.

Muffin Tin Mom put together a strawberry snack perfect for after school.

Visit Strawberryville for some online education and entertainment.

CalStrawberry shares a lesson plan appropriate for 1st-4th graders to look at the math and geography of strawberries.  The link includes a little berry quiz.

These easy to make Strawberry Sachets from Country Living would make a sweet summer gift.

Extract DNA from a Strawberry for this advanced science lesson.  My kids enjoyed this lesson at a special science night at school this year.

Use strawberries to practice adding and subtracting 3-digit numbers with this lesson plan intended for 3rd grade students.

The Strawberry Patch has a wealth of resources for a Strawberry unit including: facts, poems, crafts, taste testing, math activities, and much more!

She Knows suggests 5 Craft Ideas to be made using strawberry crates.

Central Florida Memory links to several lesson sin a unit on the book Strawberry Girl.

easyStrawberryrecipes.com is a fun resource for all the strawberry recipes you might desire.

Sarah's Journal has a recipe for strawberry play dough.

We love the book The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear.  This lesson in predicting is appropriate for K-2nd grade students.

Hey Section 40 explains a thematic writing lesson where students are encouraged to write a short ode to a strawberry.

Engaging Lessons and Activities has a download of math and literacy activities for Strawberry Day available for 1.99.

Below is a brief lesson in drawing a perfect strawberry.

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Summer Fun List Suggestions

Over the last several weeks I have run across many  summer fun list suggestions.  Here are a few ideas {and lists} that grabbed my attention.  Hopefully you will find some inspiration for enjoying the season!

Teach Beside Me filled a box with boredom busters for lazy summer days.

Playing House shares their list (and several links) for summer fun suggestions.

Reading Confetti puts together an A to Z list of summer activities.

Doing Life Together takes their Bucket List literally in the summertime.

Quirky Momma linked up to last week's Show and Tell post with 6 Cool Summer Activities.

Six Sisters' Stuff lists 100 Ideas for Summer Fun.

A List Maker's Life  hangs the summer fun to dos out on the line.

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Travel Games and Printables

For our family, school is out for the summer!  We have many fun things planned to play, experiment with, and explore in our own neighborhood.  However, we will also be spending some time on the road in route to our favorite vacation destinations. Here are some ideas we have gathered for entertaining excited young travelers.

Serving Pink Lemonade created several wipe off car games.

A girl and a glue gun explains how to make magnetic silly faces, which would be fun for back seat entertainment across the miles.

A girl and a glue gun also has a popular post about putting together a travel binder I Spy game.

Apartment Therapy wrote about a fun way to recycle bubble wrap into a travel BINGO that pops!

The Divine Miss Mommy lists 5 Educational Kids Games appropriate for travel.

Yellow Pear Photography put together lovely little travel tins.

The Dating Divas have put together some travel games and printables intended for a date night, yet they could be adapted for use with children.

Do you have a travel trick or activity to share?

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Very Veggie Fun

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This afternoon we picked our first two tomatoes off the little plant we have been nursing in our garden.  It was rewarding for the kiddos.  Unfortunately, rather than getting eaten they ended up squished by Mr. 2yo.  Oops! 

Anyway, it got me thinking about collecting some veggie crafts and activities.

Living Locurto put together the most adorable fresh vegetable bouquets.

The School Vegetable Patch used slices of vegetables to make artistic prints.

These On The Farm Vegetable Puppets from Kids' Activities look like a fun project. (You will have to scroll down the page a bit for this activity)

If you are just starting your garden, perhaps you would like to make markers for your vegetables like these from Kiddie Gardens.  (This site is also a good resource for other home garden suggestions)

I Can Teach My Child used  some favorite veggie characters to make stained glass art for their sunny summer windows.

Danielle's Place suggests several veggie tale projects.  I especially like the veggie balloon creatures.

Catholic Icing explains a very simple DIY veggie toy.

Cheerios Underfoot shares a tutorial for making Larry the Cucumber.

Pam's House has created mini lesson plans to accompany several episodes of Veggie Tales.

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Make Your Own Summer Fun: Textures & Paint

The more relaxed  pace in the summer is perfect for experimenting with activities most likely to get pushed to the back burner during the busy school year schedule.  Get ready to get a bit messy with these do it yourself recipes for fun!

I Can Teach My Child created their own finger paint that is squeezable. Fun!

These Homemade Watercolors are ready to be used for your beautiful summer paintings.

Remember the yum that was lick and stick stickers?  The always clever Jenae explains how to make your own tasty stickers.

Summer festivals are perfect for facepainting.  Here is a recipe for making your own face paint!

Hands On: As We Grow shares a recipe for fizzy, spray on sidewalk paint.

Sippy Cup Central used recycled material and sunshine to make homemade paper.

My Delicious Ambiguity put together lovely squares of textures great for sensory play.

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Time to Play: Summer Bucket Lists & Summer Jars

We all know that the best learning happens through play.  This summer I want to be intentional about making time to PLAY!

Inspired by Jodi Michelle's summer jar project, last night's family fun activity was to brainstorm summer entertainment.  Everyone contributed some of their own wishes and dreams for the lazy days of summer to our list. 

Inspired by Little Wonders' Day, who turned her family's "summer bucket list" into an adorable subway art-ish gift, we grew our list with a few more ideas.

Wanting to put together a list like display that was functional {but still cute} we decided on a spin off of the bulletin board put together by The Stories of A to Z.

My final product:

As we complete each activity I hope to have the kids share a favorite moment or overall reaction that we can write inside the fold along with the date.  By the end of the summer we will have a memento of our attempt to make the most of Summer 2011
.
{By the way…the idea to make super balls is inspired by a link in Show and Tell #59 from Making Memories with Your Kids.  AND you can find LOADS of fun sidewalk chalk recipes here!}

Now that school is officially out for summer we are ready to our Totally Summer To-Dos.

Still looking for other summer list ideas:
Rebecca also put together an adorable Summer Bucket list that is featured in the Sweet Shoppe gallery.

Junk in their Trunk framed their colorful summer fun list!

This might be an idea to file for next year, but I also love this summer checklist for teachers made by the kiddos at Sun Scholars!

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