Get your hands dirty: Summer activities you can do with your kids

It’s summer once again and school’s out! Since we have been stuck at home for the past year, you and your kids may get an occasional cabin fever. Fret not, while this may not be an ideal summer getaway, your family can still have tons of fun crafts and recreational activities at the ready.

Parenting and working-from-home in the current state of the world can be challenging and tiring. With all the virtual learning for your kids, house responsibilities, and professional pursuits you have to carry, quarantine parenting takes more patience, creativity and responsibility than the usual pre-pandemic.

If you have exhausted all Netflix movies and board games, our summertime activities are perfect for an aspiring planter, chef, artist, environmentalist, baker, scientist, writer or anything they want to be! It will also be a great opportunity for you to bond with your kids and get a mental boost and a refresher for you to shake things up! Who knows, you may also learn a thing or two from these activities?

From plant pot painting to teaching them how to decorate a cupcake, we’ve corralled our list of favorite energy-busting activities for every type of kid! Hunker down and read on.

Get Crafty and Write Your Heart Out!

Time to bring out your art and school supplies for an all-out art day! From glitters to colored pencils, from all kinds of paper to stickers, let your little kids bring out their inner Picasso and Van Gogh! It can also teach them how important art is to the world and how it plays an important role in sharing knowledge and encouraging curiosity and dialogue too! Art is a means to communicate, a catalyst for connection, and a tool for intentional expression. Art tells stories and brings people together and by doing this simple activity, it can teach the kids how it is important to express oneself and one’s thoughts and feelings.

Valentine’s may be over but it’s never too late to tell how much you love your family and friends now that the times are uncertain. Encourage kids to write heartfelt love letters and help them design it! Don’t forget to send these letters to the people they miss!                            

Prepare a Sunday picnic!

We know how much you miss the outdoors and how kids also miss spending more time with you when you’re working on weekdays. Instead of the usual lunch inside your home, host a backyard picnic with your kids and teach them how to prepare simple meals! Don’t forget to keep kids away from fire. They can help you though with stirring the pancake batter, preparing a bowl of fruits, and setting the table up in your garden.

Your Sunday brunch spread is a great time for the family to come together and share stories! Make a dessert bar for your kids by putting out toppings such as frosting, sprinkles, syrup and chocolate chips that kids can put on top of their sundae, cupcake or even a DIY cookie pizza!

Slice several thick cookies from a roll of refrigerated sugar-cookie dough. Gently flatten them a bit on a cookie sheet to widen them, bake, and cool for about 10 minutes. Kids would love to decorate these DIY cookie pizzas and unleash their inner Dominique Ansel out!

If you have a garden, don’t forget to top things off with fresh flowers, chill music and lots of sunny disposition that we’re sure your kids would forever remember.

Teach your kids plant care

It’s never too late to start them young with urban gardening and horticulture! Gardening is also a science and little ones will find it fun to discover more about biology, chemistry, nutrition, and botany all on their own. We’ve got plant kits perfect for beginners and lil ones!

It’s fairly simple to teach them the joys of plant care and soon enough they’ll love nature.

Get your hands dirty as you both water, prepare the soil with organic fertilizer, pick flowers, repot and even recycle single-use plastics!

Keep it fun and creative as you hand paint the Terracotta Pots with your little Monet! Gather your supplies such as acrylic paint, brushes, palette, paint markers, pencil, newspaper, water bowl, and towel. Here are some helpful tips for these handmade painted flower and plant pots: 

• Use acrylic paint and cover your work area with newspaper since this paint is almost impossible to remove from some surfaces but it can easily be washed off from skin.
• Place a bowl of water filled half way and a towel nearby to absorb water.
• Set up the terra cotta pot upside down to make it more stable.
• You can also use paint pens for some hand lettering!

When you teach them the importance and benefits of gardening and caring for the environment, kids will learn about responsibility (or deadlines in school!), patience for growth, and care for others more. You can even go beyond that and cook the vegetables you grow with your children and watch the sense of pride they feel in eating what they created! Plants create time and space to nurture yourself. Teaching them how to take care of another living thing can also signal and help them take care of themselves in the future.

Happy Summer!