Summer Fun List
25 July 2011 at 08:51 | Posted in Activities for kids | 4 CommentsI thought I’d jump back in to blogging by sharing my summer fun-list. These have been popping up, and I’ve enjoyed reading what other families have planned for my favorite season. Summer is like the dessert of the year, isn’t it? It helps to be cold-blooded like me, I suppose. I know summer is half over, but all the more reason to squeeze out every last drop. A deeply felt thank-you to all who wrote with kind words of support – they have meant a great deal to me.
Nature Play
- Make a mud kitchen – lots of ideas here and here
- Try some land art
- Build some gnome/fairy houses - I didn’t realize this is a”thing,” but I loved doing it as a child!
- Catch some bugs in jars and examine under a magnifying glass
- Make a shell necklace
Outdoor & Active
- Ima-kiddo yoga in the backyard – I need to get my hands on this book (originally in English) to use as guidance
- All the swimming we can get in!
- Explore our local and local-ish state parks and beaches
- Make an obstacle course in the backyard
- Croquet – buy a set? DIY somehow?
- Build a water pouring contraption
- Visit a farm
Art Activities
- Make a fresh batch of playdough, reserving some for mixing with bits of flowers, twigs, and leaves – I use the “playclay” recipe in MaryAnn Kohl‘s First Art, which is amazing
- Sidewalk paints – we’ll use powdered paints in place of food coloring
- Rain art – another idea from First Art
- Splatter art outside on the grass
- Make a travel Shabbat candle box – not really to do with summer except that summer is a good time to do Shabbat crafts (though some clever people have thought up Tisha be-Av crafts)
- Make some garden ornaments – clay? Mosaics?
Kitchen Adventures
- Bottle up some homemade chocolate syrup – like this or this, but with the sugar content drastically slashed and therefore potentially ending up as a big fail
- Experiment with more ice cream and frozen yogurt recipes, to go with that syrup
- Try some new homemade artikim – like these or these (but with all full-fat dairy, that’s how we roll)
- Make a batch of sourdough starter, with the goal of making this challah
- Find more salad ideas – I love my tomotoes and cucumbers in lemon and olive oil, but sometimes one needs a change
- Perfect a honey-sweetened rendition of lemonade
- Try some recipes from my new copy of Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar, a birthday present from my sister!
- Test out zucchini bread recipes, although it looks like I’m going to have to give our zucchini plants a little help in the mating department first
What fun stuff do you have planned for the rest of the summer?
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Hi, I'm an Israeli mom of a toddler. I blog about our holiday projects, favorite recipes, Hebrew books and language learning, and other aspects of Israeli kid culture. I hope this will be of interest to Jewish families, families making aliyah, Israelis living abroad, or anyone at all.
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Sounds like fun! If only we had a backyard and water to spare.
I like the cooking ideas. We do lots of artikim through the summer. I like to keep them special enough that my kids friends think they are better than store bought and better than the junk their parents buy, but healthy and cheap enough that my kids and their friends can have AT LEAST one a day… and me too!
Idea: take a batch of your honey sweetened lemonade and color it with fruit juice in one or two other colors, then make striped lemonade popsicles. The cucumber and mint popsicle on the first page looks refreshing… maybe with some vodka for the grown-ups and lemonade instead of yogurt.
Comment by Yosefa @nonrecipe— 26 July 2011 #
Yosefa, you are an atrik genius! I can’t wait to try your ideas. I want the mint one now!
Comment by BookishIma— 26 July 2011 #
[...] of making the play kitchen, I figure we should also set up a mud kitchen, which is at the top of my summer fun list. I’m not sure what we can use as the base for the mud kitchen, but it may well be lurking in [...]
Pingback by A Tale of Two Play Kitchens – WIP Wednesday « In our small garden— 27 July 2011 #
[...] in the depths of the storage closet. In the meantime, we tried the water pouring wall from the summer fun list…which was a big flop, and not just because the materials I gathered didn’t work that [...]
Pingback by An Ongoing Tale of Two Kitchens – WIP Wednesday « In our small garden— 3 August 2011 #