Flip Flops, Blue (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you don’t have any ideas of what you and your kids will be doing this summer, you are screwed. I know I sound dramatic, but I think it is fair to say that 10+ weeks home with kids who are bored could be akin to mommy waterboarding.  Although there are a few more weeks of school (Praise Jesus!), I have begun thinking of things that my kids and I can do this summer.

In the past I have been able to take advantage of a summer filled with full-day camps but now that I am staying at home with the kids, their summer will be a mix of a couple of weeks of camp, our annual family vacation, pool time and road trips.  That sounds like a lot of activity but I know that there will be quite a bit of downtime in between all of the things that we already have planned, and in my house downtime is the devil’s workshop.

So, I have been researching ideas for easy, affordable summertime activities (Pinterest is especially helpful), and have come up with 30 activities that I plan to do w/ my kids this summer:

1. Let the kids make a lemonade stand.  This is a rite of passage for any kiddie-preneur.

2. Have the kids wash the cars.  A hose and some sponges could keep my kids busy all day and happens to kill 2 birds with 1 clean stone.

3. Plan to see all family members who are within driving distance of our home.  We plan to take roadtrips to Chicago and Boston this summer to visit family.

4. Picnic at the park. The kids love this, and I don’t have to clean the kitchen. Win-win.

5. Paint our driveway with sidewalk paint made from water, cornstarch, and food coloring.

6. Commit to going to the library once a week and create our own summer reading program.  The award at the end of the reading program is an ice cream sundae party for a few friends.

7. Pen pal with friends. This is especially good for my 5 year old who will be starting Kindergarten in the fall and could use some practice writing sentences.

8. Purge old toys and have the kids run a “yard sale” with other neighborhood kids to swap.

9. Eat ice cream for dinner and have dinner for dessert.

10.Let the kids watch as much TV as they want all day,  especially perfect on a hot or rainy day.  This could go down in history as the best day of my kids’ lives.

12. Let the kids do sibling sleepovers.  For some reason, the kids love sleeping together (unless they have to), and this is a lot cheaper than sleep-away camp.

13. Do absolutely nothing (not sure how the kids will like this but it sounds good to me!).

14. Make a list of local museums and try to visit all of them.

15. Give the garbage men and mail man popsicles (for some reason my kids love to do this.)

16. Ride bikes to nearby parks.

17. Visit Daddy at work for impromptu lunches (and maybe drop the kids off with him for the rest of the day?????).

18. Turn the sprinklers on and let the kids enjoy their very own water park.

19. Ask them what they want to do (novel idea, right?).  We are going to sit down and create a list of all of the things that the kids want to do and we will check them off as we go along.

20. Check out a baseball game (major, minor, little, any league).

21. Make a list of local parks that we have not been to yet and try to go to them.

22. Plant something and pray that it makes it out alive.

23. Make homemade ice-cream sandwiches.

24. Do all of the free activities within a 30 mile radius of our home (usually listed in our local newspaper).

25. Move the cars out of the garage and let the kids decorate the garage floor with sidewalk chalk and paint.

26. Go to the pool… a lot.

27. Schedule play dates.

28. Go to movie matinees.

29. Create a star of the week.  Let the kids take turns being the “star.”  That child gets to pick some of the activities for the week, etc.

30. Be thankful that my kids even want to spend the summer hanging out with me, because I am sure when they are teenagers this will definitely not be the case.

What are your your families plan this summer? Let me know. I am always up for adding a few more to-do’s to our list.