Summer Ideas!

This summer is the first summer in a few years that I am not pregnant and I don't have an infant! Woohoo! What that means is I actually have a little bit of energy and motivation to PLAN for the summer and what I am going to do with the kids. Now, I don't have my whole summer mapped out...but I am coming up with a few ideas that I really like.

First of all...I am anticipating a cold and rainy summer. The month of June has been AWFUL and to prevent myself from being overly disappointed...I am just going to anticipate that it is going to be a summer full of lousy weather. The worst part of rainy weather is all of the kids being cooped up in the house...so I've decided to pre-plan a variety of rainy day activities that I can pull out when the kids are stuck inside, and they start getting bored, and they are on the verge of becoming miserable. The key here is that they are pre-planned, pre-bought, and ready to pull out at a moments notice. I know myself...and know that this is the only way to make it work for me!

So here are a few of my Rainy Day Activities that I've started putting together:

1. Build a City - I am collecting boxes and containers of all shapes and sizes and am going to have the girls build a city in our living room. I have no idea if they are going to like this idea or not... but it has the potential to entertain them for HOURS!!!!!!!! And I love the sound of that! So they will take a cereal box, undo it at it's seams and turn it inside out and re-tape it...and then they can draw windows...cut out doors...and do what they want with it. The idea sounds great in my head...but not sure how the implementation is going to pan out.

2. Summer Scrapbooks - This one requires a little pre-thought from me throughout the summer...but I am going to take pictures of all the things they are doing throughout the summer, and on the rainy days they can pull out their scrapbooks (I bought inexpensive ones for this purpose) they they can journal/draw/paste pictures about what they are doind throughout the summer. As long as I have the pictures printed...all other resources are easily accessible. It's just getting the pictures printed that will be key!!!

3. Wii Tournament - My girls would go ga-ga if I let them play the Wii for more than 60 minutes in a day! And to have ME suggest we play some games together would probably make their rainy day a lot brighter!

4. Lego Projects - I haven't looked this up yet, but I remember seeing the Lego website has fun Family Game ideas to do with Lego...so I am going to have some of those up my sleeve. We have a huge bin of lego that we got for Christmas...and this would be a great way to utilize it!

5. Make Puppets and put on a Show - I am going to buy a bunch of tube socks...and then the girls can make sock puppets! This can also be done with paper bags. With the help of felts, crafting supplies, and their extensive imaginations...I can't wait to see what they come up with! And a natural place for them to go after making the puppets is to practice and put on a puppet show! Can you say HOURS OF ENTERTAINMENT?!?!?

6. Paint a Masterpiece - I am going to buy those painters canvas items they have at Dollarama (so much more fun than just paper) and have the girls paint masterpieces! Then find a place to display them in our home.

These are just some of my ideas so far. My plan is to have a great list of things to do on HOT days, COOL day,s and RAINY days so that I'm not constantly trying to "think" of ideas (which I am horrible at doing on the spot). I feel that this would help make summer a little more special and eventful for my girls...especially since we aren't going anywhere grand this year!

If you have any great ideas of how to make the summer for fun PLEASE let me know!