Oh What Do You Do In The Summer Time?

With the price of everything going up including gas I'm doing my best to stay close to home. When we do leave the house I try to get all the erands ran at once. We've been doing pretty well at this. We went 3 weeks before having to fill the van up as before it was 1 1/2 -2 weeks. However, not leaving the house nearly every other day has caused a boredom problem at home. The kids started watching more cartoons then ever, more movies and playing more WII. It's hot enough outside that I don't want to be out there for very long so I hate to push the kids to do something that I don't want to do. We have a nice swing set but the slide and swings get too hot.

So a few days ago I found this idea on a website for the holidays but I thought we could use it for this summer. I took a mason jar and had the kids glue tissue paper all over it.

They each had a turn to paint the glue and place the tissue paper. Meanwhile on slips of paper I wrote things that we want to do this summer. The plan is for each night before bedtime a paper will be pulled and we will do that activity the following day. It will give us something to look forward to for tommorrow.

Some of the ideas were a little excessive and we may have to put them back in the jar for another time like going camping, going to grandma's house, etc. We are planning on doing these things but they're for a scheduled weekend when daddy can go with us. The goal is to only leave the house 2x during the week. The activities they came up with were going to the park, going to a friends house, go swimming, feeding the ducks, etc. I was impressed with the ideas they came up with for days we stay home all day long. Some of them were toe painting, making a paper sack animal puppet, make a collage of good vs. bad foods, inviting a friend over, potato stamping, a water balloon fight, tracing their bodies and color them, make a etch a sketch, (This is so much fun they love it), and of course making cookies and cupcakes. I've written everything down twice and put it in the jar. When we empty the jar we'll do it again. If you have any fun activity please let me know about them. These activities are something we do together during the day. Something that uses are hands and imaginations.