10 Activities to Keep Your Kid Busy This Summer: From My Kid To Yours

Here is the funny thing about Summer. Kids are on vacation but working parent’s still have, um… to work.

If your patience is thin, you are already out of coffee, and hearing, “can I have screen time” has you ready to lock yourself in your home office, check out this list of activities that my 11 year old put together to entertain children. The idea would be you could write these out on a note card, they pick one and then do the chosen card. They shouldn’t require much parent involvement.

Lucy’s Summer Activities List:

Surprise Me– Each kid gets 4 ingredients. Then you all make something. Parents get to judge. Categories to compete in are, the most creative, best looking, and best tasting. Judge the foods in between meetings.

Create A Country– Make up a new country by creating a flag, national anthem, official food (probably Goldfish), and a weird national sport. Then immediately enter into diplomatic negotiations with the sibling nation next door. You can write and draw everything out to present later.

Invent a Beast– Draw, sculpt, or act out mythical beasts that no one has ever heard of. Give them names, backstories, and habitats. One must live under the couch. Another can only eat cheese sticks… whatever you want!

Film and Narrate – Your own documentary about your dog’s (or other pets) every move in a British accent. “Here we see the majestic house beagle… scratching his ear with the elegance of a woodland sprite…” Think Planet Earth, Meerkat Manor, Wild Yellowstone or whatever your favorite planet/animal documentary is.

Gibberish– Only speak in gibberish or a made-up dialect for an hour. Must include a dictionary, common phrases, and hand gestures that are WAY too dramatic. Bonus if you can translate parents email messages into it.

Conduct Interviews- Investigate a mystery. Write up stories. Report on the mysterious case of the vanishing Goldfish crackers. Make a crossword or word search with clues to solve the case.

Create a New Sport- Take two socks, a laundry basket, and whatever rules your imagination can survive. Points awarded for not breaking a lamp.

Produce a Fake Show– Write a plot. Design a logo. Act out scenes. Come up with ridiculous cliffhangers like, “will the marshmallow escape the microwave before it explodes?!”

Develop a New Product– First, create the model of a new made up item then film a complete commercial for the amazing… spoon that screams when it touches soup, or a hat that dispenses spaghetti. A remote that only controls sibling volume. And it MUST include catchy jingles.

As long as there’s no screaming, bleeding, crying or things shattering parents and kids should be able to have a productive day!

Written by Jen and Lucy Singer

Have a fun activity to add to the list? We want to hear them, leave your ideas in the comments!