Summer: Make It Magnificent, Memorable and Meaningful

Daily Ideas:

Kindness a Day: Target family, friends, neighbors and community with caring acts.

Reading for Fun: (15-29 Minutes) Children engaged in just 15-29 minutes average 5.7million word encounters by graduation. Renaissance Learning. (2016). What kids are reading: And how they grow. Wisconsin Rapids, WI: Author) 

Outdoor Active: (30-60 Minutes):

• Swimming, biking, walking, jogging or hiking
• Playground play.
• Also, classic outdoor games: Tag, Freeze Tag, Kick the Can, Hopscotch and Backyard Baseball, Bocce Ball, Soccer, Kickball, Badminton, Tennis, Volleyball, Cornhole or Mini Golf.
• Keep a Magnificent Summer Journal:
• Take photos.
• Record experiences daily on calendar squares.
• Or photo journal in pen, pencil or digitally in a blog.

Weekly Ideas:

• Prepare a Meal: Create a menu for a healthy/new foodie experience.
• Shop together for the ingredients.
• Involve everyone, at their level, in prep, setting the table, cooking, serving and clean-up.
• Or entrust one child with this experience. Provide only minimal assistance.

Picnic in the Park: Check out a different park each week.

• Hike. Swing. Swim.
• Explore. Take pictures.
• Pack a knapsack snack or lunch. Include a compact blanket for ground cover or as a picnic table cover. Talk about your favorite or funniest features of the park as you eat.

Art from Nature: Collect leaves, pinecones, sticks and other natural materials to create collages, prints, rubbings and 3 Dimensional pieces. One fun idea for young families is to wrap a piece of white paper from an easel roll (buy in craft stores in kids’ craft or teacher section) around a tree trunk. Children then use the sides of crayons to do a rubbing of the bark. If this is too difficult, they can just “color” on the paper.

Family Fun Night: Plan a Scavenger Hunt or Treasure Hunt. Or, play classic board games. Invite other families.

Check Community Calendars: Find free or low cost, fun, family events during the day and evening at:

• Local libraries
• Parks (concerts and kid-friendly entertainment) 

Summer Celebrations and Travel:

Celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Moon Landing: July 19 marks the day Apollo 11 landed on the moon. Plan a special celebration:

• Interview a grandparents and other older adults who watched that day. Ask them how they felt and what they remember.
• Make special 50th Anniversary t-shirts
• Check out: NASA: Apollo 50th www.nasa.gov for videos, photos and audio clips and https://spacestem.nasa.gov for other resources. 
• Practice the moon walk.
• Eat Moon Pies.

Day/Weekend Trip: To:

• A sporting event to stadium of family favorite team
• Historic sites
• Science and children’s museums.
• Basketball fans might enjoy the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, MA. Highlights include the historic role the YMCA played in creating the game at the International YMCA Training School in Springfield in 1891.