Keeping your Kids Occupied this Summer – 4 Interesting Home-based Activities

Summer break is a great time to bond with the kids and let your own inner child peek out occasionally. But too much leisure can produce mind-numbing boredom and turn your little angels into tantrum-throwing ogres. Here are four fun activities guaranteed to keep the kids out of trouble and definitely out of your hair this summer. Feel free to add them to your parenting arsenal.

wonder of nature by JON_CF

Go for a nature walk – To add spice to your nature walk, add a theme or goal and stick to it. For instance, you could go to the beach and collect stones and shells to make an art object out of it later. In the forest, invite them to collect at least five varieties of flowers, bugs, plants or leaves. Give them a plan and a purpose so they don’t get bored too quickly.

Play online kids’ games – A simple google search will bring up scores of quality educational websites that offer fun learning games designed to keep kids productively engaged through play. Online learning games cover a variety of subjects - including math, science and language arts – and are tailored to suit kids of different age groups - preschool, kindergarten and elementary grades - and are developed by subject matter experts who know that kids learn best when they’re having fun.

Baking and cooking – Have a designated baking or cooking day once a week and be sure to involve the kids in the process from beginning to end. Give them a variety of recipes and stock up on the ingredients ahead of time. If your little one can read, let him read from the recipe and practice using unfamiliar words. Help him work through the instructions, one step at a time and avoid the temptation of doing it all by yourself. This is a great activity for summer afternoons when it’s too hot to play outside.

Start a summer scrapbook – This is a great way to preserve memories that your family can fondly cherish when the kids are older. Encourage your little ones to take pictures of special days or events and write about them. Encourage them to maintain a daily diary and describe everyday things and happenings. This is a fun way to keep them occupied and create a memory book for the future.

If you have other interesting summer activities for kids up your sleeve, I’d love to hear them!

School's around the corner - did you do anything not on your 'to do' list?

Time flies and the best example for that is the pace at which the summer goes by. We look forward to it and plan a whole bunch of things to do. Stick it on the refrigerator. Think about it. Talk about it. Actually do things on the list. But, most holidays, something gets left out for the last few weeks or days.

So the countdown has begun. Have the kids played enough? Outside, inside, with friends, on their own and with their grandparents? Oh, there's never enough time to play. Did you do something that was not on the list?

Escape the Room by karlnorling

Well, we did something interesting which was not on our list. In fact, my mother organized it for all of us. We went and played an escape room game. We were a multi-generational group - grandparents, parents and grandkids. What a ball we had!

Each one of us participated. Solved sudoku, searched for keys, scrambled through lots of misleading things in the room, and searched for clues. Yeah, all of us. On our knees, over cupboards and under the tablecloth!

We raced against the clock, shouted out stuff, scrambled around, found false leads and tried solving things under pressure. We could not get out within the prescribed time, but we did enjoy the madness!

What unexpected thing did you do this summer?