Feature General
Summer Fun
By Amy Heesacker
May/June 2006

If your family is anything like mine, the first warm days of spring saw you searching for last year's bucket of sidewalk chalk and dusting off the tricycles and "big kid" bikes. My children were begging to play in the sprinkler when the hose water still contained ice crystals! Now that the days are growing longer and the driveways hotter, you could probably use some new ideas for making the most of your outside time. What follows are some fun and easy (and inexpensive) summer activities to entertain your kids (or a whole playgroup) right in your own backyard!

The Obstacle Course
Using whatever you have stored in your garage or shed (e.g., hoses for weaving around; hula hoops/inner tubes for jumping into; balls, buckets, and tennis rackets for making baskets; plastic pools/cardboard boxes for crawling under/through; broom handles for balancing on, etc.) design a course in the grass for the kids to run through again and again. Try filling the plastic pool with water for a splashing finish!

A variation on this theme is to create a driveway bike/tricycle course using sidewalk chalk and objects (e.g., buckets, rocks, paint cans) to serve as safety cones that the riders can maneuver around. A cool variation includes a sprinkler to bike through as they pass over the finish line.

The Scavenger Hunt
Create a list of things that can be easily collected around the outside of your house (e.g., a blade of grass, a leaf, a rock, a pine cone, a pine needle, a flower, a scoop of dirt or sand, a piece of bark, berries, dead bugs if that's the kind of kid you have, etc.) then grab a grocery sack and head out on a hunting expedition. When you get home with the "loot" create a summer memory box by gluing it all to the outside of a shoebox.

A variation on this theme is to create a list of non-collectible summer sights to search for outside (e.g. a flying bird, a butterfly on a flower, a cloud shaped like a buffalo, a friendly neighbor, a mail truck, a fire hydrant, a manhole cover, a squirrel, etc). Then find a tree to sit under and make up a story together that contains all of the items you found (e.g., "Once upon a time there was a beautiful orange butterfly named Bernice...")

The Athens KidsFest Water Game
Last summer my kids couldn't get enough of this game at KidsFest so we came home and created our own. Fill several plastic bottles (20 oz or 2 liter) with water for stability then place ping pong balls or other lightweight plastic balls on the open bottle tops. Fill a clean spray bottle with water and squirt to knock the balls off the bottles. Surprisingly fun!

Another use for spray bottles: fill a bottle with water and tempura paint. Soak an old sheet, pillowcase or t-shirt with water and then use the "spray paint" to make a work of art. To start over simply hose off the "canvas" and start again. For art to keep, buy a stretched canvas when they go on sale at the local hobby shop and use a little less water in the paint mixture.

The Relay Race
Fill a bucket with water and food coloring. Give the kids a variety of "tools" (e.g., measuring cups, large plastic serving spoons, plastic teacups, etc.) to get the water from the bucket to a gallon size water jug on the other side of the yard (a funnel on the top of the jug makes this easier). For older kids you can combine this with the obstacle course for a real challenge!

Savvy (and tired) parents try a "clean up" variation at the end of a long summer day in which kids race to see how many objects they can get back in the garage before the time is up!

Amy Heesacker holds a doctoral degree in Counseling and Developmental Psychology. She is a part time assistant professor at the University of Georgia and lives in Athens with her husband and their children, Javi (4) and Isa (1).