Five Fun and Educational Summertime Activities to Do with Your Kids

Well, we’ve been talking about it all week, Back To School Season is certainly here, but don’t forget to enjoy these final weeks of summer vacation with your kids. Before Labor Day sneaks up on us, be sure to indulge in these five fun and educational summertime activities with your kids.

You can even turn it into an end-of-summer checklist to see how many fun and educational summertime activities you can cram into the final days of summer.

Nature Walks

Nature walks are a great way to get some fresh air and exercise while also learning about the environment. While on your nature walk, make a game out of how many different kinds of flowers, insects, trees, rocks or animals are spotted. Whoever identifies the most kinds will be the winner. After the walk, you can keep some of the flowers, leaves or rocks in sealed containers to look at later or to start a collection.

Grow Plants

You can have a lot of fun while teaching your child about the growing process of plant life by growing a plant or even a garden. Children love to help create things, and watching a plant sprout into life and bloom into maturity can give a child a sense of pride and accomplishment that isn’t easy to find in school. It also helps teach the child about how plants grow, how to care for plants and the value of hard work to achieve a long-term goal.

Use a Microscope

Through the use of microscopes, a child and parent can learn to appreciate the microscopic world that is all around us. Take some of those leaves or rocks from the nature walk and put them under the microscope to see what cannot be seen with regular human sight. Learn of the tiny cells that are in drops of blood, get a closer look at the body structure of various insects and gain an understanding of a world beyond the one that we know.

Go on Field Trips

Just because the kids are out of school doesn’t mean they can’t still go on field trips. Plan trips to educational yet fun places such as science museums, aquariums, zoos and more.

Camping

Camping is a great opportunity to enjoy nature and learn of various survival skills. Camping includes many fun activities such as swimming, hiking, telling stories and more, but it is also a great chance to teach your child about many useful survival techniques. You can teach them about starting a fire, catching, cleaning and cooking a fish, properly pitching a tent, how to deter wild animals from your campsite, how to protect yourself and much more.

There are hundreds of activities that you can do with your children in summer that are both fun and educational. Get creative, take some suggestions from your children, and never be afraid to try new things.

Casey Haslem is a 25 year old writer. Her hobbies are reading, painting and pretending she knows how to write a book. She loves meeting people and making new friends. Writing opens up a whole world of new ideas and possibilities for her.