Fun Summer Activity Ideas

Summer Activity IdeasThis post has tons of fun summer activities you might enjoy doing with your kids this summer! It includes everything from summer camp songs to sing with the kids to crafts, creative math fun to a huge design and draw challenge, a free summer travels packet to fun science experiment ideas!! Hope you find something your kids will enjoy!! ~Liesl

Summer is often the time to do some activities that we don’t get around to during the school year.  My kids love to draw and admittedly, we don’t do enough of this during the school year.  This year, I made the girls a Design and Draw Packet. It has kids design some household items based on some vintage drawings… plus a number of fun art challenges!

I’m polishing that up and will share that on Monday; it’ll be free to download. 🙂  (I’ll update the link here once it’s shared.)

Design-and-Draw-Packet

I also got the kids a really fun, creative journal called Journal Sparks: Fire Up Your Creativity with Spontaneous Art, Wild Writing, and Inventive Thinking. (affiliate link)  It is such a neat collection of activity ideas!! It’s perfect for the pre-teen crowd (my girls are 9 and 11) — even I would have fun with some of these activities! 🙂 Highly recommended for those long, hot summer days!

Journal Sparks - Review

Here are some of the other fun summer activities we’ve done over the years!

A Huge List of Summer Activity Ideas!

Nature Scavenger Hunt: Send your kids outside to complete this scavenger hunt! This printable is free! 🙂NatureScavengerHunt-2013We also have a photo hunt: Have them take photos of the things on the list:PhotoNatureHuntSet up an Outdoor Treasure Hunt with QR Codes! Kids use the QR code reader to find their next clue! (Free printable at this post.)OutdoorTreasureHunt-printableMy kids also have fun setting up their own Mini-Golf Coarse Challenge! 🙂
Teddy Bear AdventuresED and DD did an activity in Girl Scouts a year or so ago that had their minds whirling!! They made a camping/outdoor scene for a small bear.  They were so inspired by this that we then we spent a long time brainstorming all the other adventures Teddy will go on.  DD wanted me to type up a list — and so I’ll share it with you as well in case your craftsy-kid is interested! :)TeddyGoesCamping

Teddy Bear Adventures List Printout

TeddyBearAdventures--List

Craft Ideas:

Your kids might enjoy making Bead Snakes and Lizards. I made an instruction sheet that you can download (free).P1110431snakes-lizards-craftFree printable with instructions on how to make your own bead lizards and snakes:Pony-BeadSnakes-and-Lizards

Here’s another craft my girls love doing each year:

Make a Bead Bowl: Last year, we had a lot of fun making these Bead Bowls. We had read about it online and found really easy to do! It took about 20 minutes.SummerActivitiesSeries - Bead Bowl-HomeschoolDen

Make a Sponge Ball

SpongeBalls

and use it for some Active Math Fact Fun for reviewing those tricky multiplication tables or addition facts!!  This post has 4 active math game ideas!

MathSpongeToss

Make Cinnamon Ornaments with this Cinnamon Clay recipe:

Cinnamon Ornaments

Make your own Paper Mache Mushroom House

fairy-garden

MushroomPlayhouse

Children’s Games from Africa:When we did our unit on Africa some time back, we played a number of children’s games. These might be fun to try out sometime this summer!WestAfricanGames-Queah
A couple of years we learned how to play Kick the Can. This has become one of our family favorites. Even Hubby and I enjoy playing this in the woods with the kids! This is DEFINITELY a game we have to play this summer!!Kick-the-Can2Play SPUD with your kid!How to Play SPUD
Bubble Snake and Bubble Wands: Last year the kids really loved making big bubbles. This is another activity we’ll definitely repeat this summer!BigBuoyantBubbles
Make Marbleized Paper    The kids really enjoyed making marbleized paper last year. The paper turned out really pretty and they used it to write long letters to their  relatives and friends.DSC09413MarbleizedPaper

Summer Activities Marbleized-Stationery

7 Active Summer Games Our Family Loves

Things like  Blongo Ball (affiliate link)BlongoBall-EDand a Slack Line — Like this  slackers 50-Feet Slackline Classic Set with Bonus Teaching Line (affiliate link)

 Sun Sensitive Paper  My kids have fun making Sun Pictures with sun sensitive paper. We’ve done this most every summer!SummerActivities-SunSensitivePaper
15 Fabulous Family Board Games and Card Games15-Family-Favorite-Board-Card-Games
20+ Classic History Movies to Watch With Older KidsClassicHistoryMoviesToWatchWithOlderKids-HSD

Make Math Fun this Summer!!

Math Puzzles

My kids love math puzzles and critical thinking activities. You might want to check out this post about Math Puzzles & Math Brain Teasers. That’s where I shared this Math Riddle Page!

Math Riddles

Math-RiddlesThere is a similar post here:

Critical Thinking Activities – Logic Puzzles, Analogies and More!

 Critical Thinking Activities

Traveling? Don’t forget to pick up our free Road Trip Travel Log. It’s a free 30 page packet of fun things to do on the go (or at home!!!) — from rock collecting and finding all the clouds, constellations to finding all the state license plates and more!!

USA-Road-Trip-Travel-Log-PacketLong Car Trip? You might also want to grab a small packet of these Mini Scratch Art Paper (affiliate link) The box is small and compact (3.5 by 3.5 inches and comes with 125 scratch sheets!)

Mini-Scratch-PadsPick up a pack of modeling clay from the dollar store. My kids still love it (at ages 7 and 10)!! DSC08983ClaySticksSummerActivities-Clay

 Camp Songs at Home!!

Sing the classic camp songs with your kids with this free printable:

Free Camp Song Printable

KidsSongsPacket

4th of July Songs: Patriotic Songs

AmericanSongs

 You might also be interested in this list that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago:SummerActivityIdeas-Patches-ProjectsThis is a list I compiled from various scout badges that kids can earn. You can have the kids select fun things to do and try to work them into your summer schedule… things such as

  • candle making
  • community service (maybe there is a service project you could do that you don’t have time for during the school year)
  • make your own ice cream
  • create your own mini-golf course

Fun stuff, right?!! Here is the original post. You can print this out FREE here: Summer Activities for Kids

Don’t forget that science can be fun too!! We have done TONS of hands-on science experiments and activities. This STEM unit about electricity and circuits was a huge hit with my kids!! It’s one of my best-sellers over at my TpT Store (though my products are all cheaper here on the blog because of the TpT fees).

hands on electricity activitiesThere are tons of experiments you can do with the younger 3-6 crowd (check out the Free Science Experiment Packet)

Free Preschool Science Experiment Activity PacketAnd check out our Science Resource Page for dozens and dozens of other science experiments and activities!

From our Weather Unit (a free download)

Air Has Weigh Science ExperimentFrom our Ocean Unit: (This is another best-selling unit over at my TpT store!)Ocean Current ActivitySalinity Experiments Ocean Unit

See you again soon here or over at our Homeschool Den Facebook Page! Don’t forget to Subscribe to our Homeschool Den Newsletter. You might also want to check out some of our resources pages above (such as our Science, Language Arts, or History Units Resource Pages) which have links to dozens of posts.  You might want to join our free Homeschool Den Chat Facebook group.  Don’t forget to check out Our Store as well. :) ~Liesl

P.S. Our store is getting a bit of a make-over. Hooray!  I can’t tell you how many people have asked me if there was a way to purchase more than one item at a time.  Since I run this blog on my own and always super busy juggling our homeschooling (and homeschool planning), outside activities, and work on the website/business… it has taken a long time to get to this! (Sheepish grin here!)

You can pop over to check out our store here:

Homeschool Den StoreOur packets are pdf downloads. :)

Disclosure: Please note that some of the links in this post are affiliate links, and at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase. If you do use our affiliate links, thank you so much for supporting our blog! Warmly, Liesl

P.S. We also LOVE to read. Here are some of our favorites:

Reading!  Books we Love!!
Of course, I can’t go without linking to some of the wonderful books we’ve enjoyed over the years!25BelovedBooks-ages4-8

Books-ages8-12

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