Simple Summer Schemes: Scavenging

Although we've seen some daunting things outside this summer, we're still trying to get out there at least a little bit.  And to help encourage that (actually, to help encourage me), we needed a specific activity that would provide some distraction from the heat.

I've never put together a scavenger hunt for the girls, and they were SO excited to get started!  It has to be the easiest 'project' I've ever planned.  Really -- you should do a scavenger hunt today!


What You'll Need:
Uhm...nothing, really.
Maybe a bucket or basket or bag with which to collect your treasures?  But that's totally optional.

1.  If you have time, type up a fun list of things the kids will search for outside.  Otherwise, just jot down a few notes on a scrap of paper.  Here's what mine looked like:

 

I had a lot of spare fonting energy or something...


2.  After helping the little ones read the list, head outside!  Let them lead the way; I wanted to go directly down the block and search away from our own yard (can you blame me?), but they stuck close to home for quite a while.  (With faithful lovies in tow, naturally.)

3.  Some add-on options for making a scavenger hunt more interesting for older kids or more time-consuming on comfortable days could include giving them a camera and making it a photo scavenger hunt, or just letting them carry a journal in which they can draw a picture of each thing they locate.  You could also make it harder by being very specific with items for big kids to find: an oak leaf, a Japanese beetle, a parallelogram (what? It's possible...), etc.


4.  Here are some of our finds, over which the girls squealed and screamed each time:

Something purple!

A piece of fruit -- crab apples!

Moss!

An acorn with a hat! (Yes, this one is a bit tiny, but still...)

Something fuzzy!  (They tried to use the dead rabbit for this one, but...)

5.  Oh!  And my girls particularly enjoyed checking items off the list.  Such a sense of accomplishment. 

The items we couldn't locate (animal tracks, a feather, a pinecone), we've agreed to keep our eyes open for to find another day.  Maybe on another scavenger hunt, which they're hoping to do again SOON!  They loved this one.

So what are you waiting for?! 

Get to scavenging!  It's Heavenly House approved!  (A blessing of the most sophisticated sort....)

Simple Summer Schemes: Fishy Art

Most of the things that keep us busy on summer days require little to no planning: swimming, fairy-house making, porching*, reading, etc.  But today's activity takes just the teensiest bit of forethought in the cutting department.  Teensy.  And if you let the kids help you get everything prepared, it whiles away a good chunk of the day!  Perfect for keeping us busy on a long summer morning.

You'll need:
Poster board (or something similar)
Card Stock (or construction paper)
Tissue Paper/Wrapping Paper
Glue
Scissors

Full mom-with-no-creativity disclosure:  We totally picked up a book from the library and chose which cut-and-paste activity we wanted to do this day.  The girls are interested in sea life lately, and this book was filled with underwater ideas.  Inspiration for free!

1. From two different colors of card stock or construction paper, cut out a fish body, fish head, two fins, and a tail.  They might look something like this:

2.  From a variety of tissue papers or wrapping papers, cut out a few dozen different colored ovals.  These will be the fish scales. 

I think we used somewhere around 15-20 scales per fish, depending on how closely they were crowded.  And the cutting went quickly once I realized that I could cut an entire stack of scales at once, rather than singly.  Doy.

3. Glue the body onto the poster board.  (Instead of poster board, we used the cut-off top of an old clothing gift box.)  With little ones, I think it's easier to give them a bowl of glue and a paint brush, rather than a bottle to squirt haphazardly.  But do as you like!

4. Start gluing scales onto the fish body, starting at the rear to allow for overlapping.  Stop scales just short of the fish head, which will now be glued on top of everything.  Finally, attach the fins and tail.

5. Draw a fishy little eyeball with a black marker (or glue on a google-eye if you have a spare lying around) , and there's your fish! 

6. I'll admit that this wasn't the most creativity-inducing activity, but we had a lot of fun cutting and arranging our shapes and painting with glue...

And a little pre-arranged art can be rewarding!  The girls loved their fish creations, and spent the morning giving them imaginary adventures and deciding where to decorate our walls with them. 


What do you think?  Are formulated art projects fun or restricting?  Where would YOU hang this fish?  And most importantly, what sources do you use for inspiring your childrens' art projects?



* I don't actually know if porching is a real thing, but we do it anyway.  Here's the down-low: Go play.  On the porch.  In the shade.  While the sun is too hot to play in the dying yard.  Bring a giant tub of water, some squirting toys, sidewalk chalk, a few snacks...et voila!  PORCHING.

Simple Summer Schemes: Smoothie Pops

For me, summer means searching for and acquiring frozen things with which to keep myself cool.  Any frozen thing will do, really, but with kids, the more fun that frozen thing happens to be, the better.  Popsicles are good, but homemade popsicles?  FUN!  Especially when the kids in question are allowed to be involved with the whole process.

Usually, there's not much 'process' involved with popsicles, but these smoothie pops take a few more steps which help keep the children busy and interested.  Here's the blow-by-blow:

1.  Whip up a quick smoothie.  My favorite yogurt-based version is here, but this summer, I've been loving an even simpler variety.  The recipe is super easy:

2.  Have the kids toss one ripe banana into a blender with one cup (or more, to taste) of frozen fruit.  We love strawberries, blueberries, and peaches especially; the bags in the freezer section of the grocery store are both cheap and packed with picked-fresh goodness.  Add a splash of milk or juice (more or less depending on how pourable you need the mixture to be) and blend the daylights out of it all, until it's smooth and delicious.  (Not that I know, but be sure to keep the lid handy in case the little ones get button-happy before you're prepared.  Ahem.)

3.  Find a fun pouring device for the smoothies.  I used these little cake-decorator contraptions, so the girls could fill the popsicle molds themselves, but a number of things would be just as fun.  Measuring cups, funnels, spoons, whatever.

4.  Let 'em loose with the smoothies and molds!  I mean, let 'em loose in a closely supervised way, depending on the age of your pourers.  Smoothies have a tendency to seep across a table with alarming speed.

5.  If you don't have molds, paper cups with popsicle sticks propped in them would work beautifully. 

6.  The thicker you make the smoothie -- by adding milk or yogurt in particular -- the creamier your popsicle will be.  Use juice or just fruit alone to make it more crystalline and crunchy.

7.  Don't be afraid to let the littlest helpers have fun, too.  If they spill, they're very likely to lick up the drips before you can even reach the towels.

8.  Place the popsicles in the freezer for several hours.  (Lessons in patience, anyone?)  I think ours were in for about 7 hours, and they were perfect!  Which is good, because then came the truly fun part...

9.  The consuming of popsicles on a hot afternoon.  Homemade popsicles that kept us busy and entertained as well as cool and refreshed.

10.  Now it's your turn -- get to blending and pouring!  And let me know how this simple summer activity worked for you!

What are some of your favorite popsicle recipes?  Have you ever let the kids come up with their own combinations?  What would you add to make these either SUPER decadent or MONDO fun?

Simple Summer Schemes: Bubble Painting

Ready for a fun, simple activity?  Me too!

And really, this doesn't have to be confined to summertime, but something about bubbles makes me think of warm, sunny days.  Here we go!

You'll need:

Bubble solution

food coloring

bubble wands

bowls

paper

old sheets

 

1.  Pour a small amount of bubble solution into several bowls.  We used less than 1/4 cup, and it was just right to be deep enough for dipping. 

2.  Add 4 drops of food coloring to each bowl of bubble solution, and stir.  I thought 4 drops was overkill, but when we used less (like, 2 drops), it didn't show up brightly enough when the fun began.

3.  Cover your work area with an old sheet because colored bubbles are about to be scattered far and wide.  Unless you're a true summer-embracer and wish to head outdoors, which would be perfect, you'll want to protect the table or floor you're working on.  It was too windy for us this day, so...

4.  We stayed indoors to make our art.  Have your kids blow bubbles directly at a sheet of paper -- thicker is better because the solution gets rather drippy when little ones are involved. 

5.  But the drips add character to the splotches of circular, popped bubble imprints left behind.

6.  We had tons of fun with this super simple activity!  The girls laughed and squealed each time a bubble popped on their paper, and pretended they were famous artists with crazy, mixed-up paintbrushes.

7.  And the bubbles did fly -- part of the fun was watching the colored orbs float around the table and trying to aim them directly at the paper, which is easier done with gentle puffs of air.  (Something my three year old isn't really capable of, by the way...)

8.  Don't forget to wear splatter-proof clothing.  As for the splattered faces, there's just no covering up that kind of splashed-on color.  Thankfully, it washed off easily.

9.  But not before I seriously considered leaving the primary-colored freckles right where they lay.  Such cuteness that day -- both in speckled, happy, creative kids, and in their bubbled masterpieces.

What do you think?  Have you done bubble painting before?  Any tips?  And what do YOU have planned to keep the little ones busy this summer?

Simple Summer Schemes

This summer, my girls are enrolled in an 8-hour/week summer preschool program. I love the fun of summer preschool because it's usually all about water play and silliness, rather than full days of super-structured learning. I love that they still get to play with their friends into early July. And (be honest), I also love the few hours of writing (or reading, or cleaning, or shopping) time I'm allowed two mornings a week.

But still, that leaves us with lots of free time to wander aimlessly around the house and (now scorched and crunchy) backyard. Though it's hard for me to admit, I have trouble with that free time. I often forget that too much boredom (while sometimes good and constructive) can lead to irritation.

They fight. They melt-down. They whine. I whine.

So, I need plans. Nothing major, but something to do in our hours and hours filled with summer freedom. Something simple. Something to look forward to. Something to spur creativity and imagination, perhaps.

A few weeks ago, the girls and I sat down and made a list of our summer hopes. It's a super-simple, low-key list including things like Throw water balloons and Make our own rainbow and Dance in our bathing suits. Its purpose is just to spur us towards fun things on a daily basis, but I also threw in a handful of personal hopes along the something-to-look-forward-to lines: Visit family in Kansas; Stay in a hotel; Go to the lake.

However, our summer list doesn't include many specific project-type things. And since I'd like to have a couple of those activities planned each week, I need to step up my mom-game.

Therefore, I do hereby clang the gong to announce Simple Summer Schemes.

I have a few ideas up my cyber-sleeves, and hope they go over well so that I have actual ideas to share! So if you're like me and need something to keep your summer days filled with at least a bit of planned fun? Stick around this summer.  I'll share what I've got.

Up tomorrow is Bubble Painting. Be here or be....

Bored :)