20 Super Fun Summer Activities for Kids

Bring on summer! Sunny days, ice cream swimming… And a ton of other super fun summer activities for kids! Most of these ideas on what to do with your kids are frugal and are easy to set up.

Summer Activities for Kids - Simple Ideas for Summer Fun

1. Give your kids a magnifying glass and send them on a bug hunt! Have them make a bug journal as they go. There are a ton of creepy crawlies all around. To make things educational go to the library and borrow a book or two about bugs.

2. They can do the same with plants.

3. Make a rock mosaic. This one is two times fun – first gathering the rocks (if you don’t live in an area with rocks you can always find them at dollar stores, or gardening stores). Now that you have your rocks make a “picture frame” – like draw a square with side walk chalk. Now let the kids create their masterpieces by using only rocks (you can even color the rocks to make it easier).

4. Go to the beach… In your back yard! You could get two small swimming pools from the dollar store and fill one with sand and other with water. Make everything as you would when you would go to the beach – pack snacks, drinks, beach ball, flip flops (crosswords puzzles for you) and let’s get busy!

5. Visit a foreign country… from your living room that is (unless it’s in your budget). If you have a globe you can spin it and let the kids randomly pick a country… Or if you have an atlas have the kids open a random page and pick a country. Have neither – internet has it all – you can go with this random country generator (just set it to 1). Once you’ve got your country do a quick search online – print a picture or two and have the kids glue their own pictures on that picture (like a photo from the trip). Check if the randomly selected country has easy to make traditional recipes an make them together…

6. Build a playhouse outside! There are so many ways you can go about it – cardboard always being a fun and frugal choice!

7. Make a water blob (by Paging Fun Mums)! Such an inexpensive project and so much fun!

8. Buy or even better make a kite! For the less crafty out there you can also have a ton of fun with a light plastic bag (the ones you can get when buying fruits, or those see through garbage bags) and some string – easy peasy DIY kite!

9. Make a time capsule and bury it. Just make sure you make a good map of where you’ve buried it in case you want to find it years later. Me and my childhood best friend did the time capsule thing and now more than 20 years later I kind of wish I’d known where it is.

10. Make sponge bombs and have some water fun! Inner Child Fun

11. Start a photo diary! Have your kids snap a photo of something each day, print the photo and place it in an album along with a few notes about that photo.

12. Sprinkles! Can’t have a fun summer without sprinkles – perfect to cool down on a hot summer day. You can make awesome ones by using pool noodles (while at that there are also a ton of fun pool noodle activities that are just perfect for summer)

13. Make an obstacle course in your backyard!

14. Set up a lemonade stand (classic).

15. Play and explore with ice! Like do these ice experiments! Play Ideas

16. Go to the library and borrow a book about folding paper air planes (you’ll be amazed at how many different ways there are to fold a plane!). Make a few and have a competition to see which model will fly the furthest (or highest, or makes the most loops…).

17. Make your own ice cream. Have the kids plan everything from the name to the ingredients (within reason). If you don’t have an ice cream machine there are many ways you can make a fluffy and delicious ice cream!

18. Buy an inexpensive piece of clothing for kids – preferably white, some textile paints or markers and let them create their very own clothes (or even a clothes line if you find a good bargain).

19. Learn about the night sky! Search for constellations and mark them down on your sky map (there are a ton of them online).

20. Build sand castles! You don’t even have to be at the beach to make them – you can get a ton of sand from gardening and hardware stores for pennies!

Summer Activities for Kids

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