For many of us school is out for the summer and the long summer vacation is looming before us. If school isn’t out for you yet, your time is coming soon. You will be looking for fun things for you kids to do to fill those days at home.
Across the internet, people are posting their bucket list of summer ideas and activities they plan to do with their children. The lists contain wonderful things they plan to do with their children during the summer vacation.
I have never put a bucket list together for our summer, but decided that this year I really wanted to. While we were traveling last week, I asked JDaniel what he wanted to do during summer vacation and he didn’t have any idea what we should do.
My question was probably too broad for my four-year-old to wrap his brain around so, I decided to gather some resources to help us make our list. I also create a list of things that he could choose from. This seemed to make creating a bucket list much easier.
Here’s what I did to help gather resources and ideas for fun things to do for our bucket list:
Visit the library
While visiting the library can be a bucket list item on its own, we used the library as a place to gather ideas too.
There was information on the summer reading program and the special presentations offered this summer. We will be attending many of the events and definitely do the reading program.
Look for books about your children’s interest or hobbies that may contain bucket list ideas. Cookbooks, crafting books, science experiment guides and outdoor game books are all filled with great ideas.
Search for books you are interested in reading and that contain concepts you might want to create foods, crafts or activities based on.
Find a local parks listings and activities on the internet
Many parks offer special events during the summer. We have movie nights, train rides, and more offered at our local parks.
Breakfast and lunch picnics are great fun to plan at a park. We have several favorite parks, but have others we haven’t been to in awhile that would be great to visit.
Gather brochures for local farms and farmer’s markets. Both are wonderful places to explore and come up with bucket list ideas. You could search for new foods to try or local products to cook with.
Search your newspaper
Your local paper may list upcoming festivals, concerts, and events that are free or nearly free that you may want to go to
Search online for summer reading programs
I found a wonderful list of programs on My Frugal Adventures. Her post is called Free Summer Reading Programs.
Starting Our Bucket List
Once I had a few books and resources to look through, I sat down with JDaniel and asked him which of these ideas sounded good. Based on the ideas I was sharing he was able to come up with ideas of his own.
Once we had ideas flowing, I pulled out our planning document.
Creating the List
Our list is divided into three sections: At Home, Away from Home Any Day, and Away from Home Specific Day. I have seen lists that had categories for Home, Close to Home, Day Trips, and Overnight Ideas too. You can easily come up with a variety of heading for your list if none of these work for you.
The At Home section was divided into several sections. These sections were based on JDaniel’s interest, You may have sections on your list that fit your children’s specific interests too. Our sections were water, boxes, dirt, cooking, and crafts. I knew he would be able to come up with several ideas that fit into these areas without much effort. He had already come up with some when we first started brainstorming. We also added a section for Other. There are so many things we can do at home and some don’t really fit into the sections I had mentioned. Things like build a fort and experiment with simple machines can be home at home or elsewhere.
The Away from Home-Any Day section is where we placed our park visits, the children’s museum, a trip to the splash pad in Downtown Greenville, and activities at the pool that we could do. We also included play dates, a date to get ice cream, and local family visits JDaniel wanted to have here.
The Away from Home- Specific Day is where the library presentations, a trip to see my sister in Atlanta, and other activities that would need to be scheduled or attended on a special day.
How to use the bucket list
Now that we have our list done, for the most part, it has been placed in the fridge. It will be a great thing to go to when JDaniel says he is bored or we need something to do. I am going to treat it as a resource. We will do the things that we decided we want to and skip over the things that don’t seem as exciting now that they are on paper.
Now that we have our list done for the most part and we have placed it in the fridge. It will be a great thing to go to when JDaniel says he is bored or we need something to do. I am going to treat it as a resource. We will do the things that we decided we want to and skip over the things that don’t seem as exciting now that they are on paper.
By the end of the summer, we will probably have done many things on our bucket list and come up with great and fun things to do to make summer memories that we hadn’t thought of at the beginning of the summer.
I will be posting our completed list on Saturday along with a place for you to link up your list.
This post is linked to Alphabe Thursday.
This is a wonderful idea! When my children were young we would make a list of local places we wanted to visit together during the summer. Very often we would go to Manhattan and play “tourist” and visit attractions to take photos and buy postcards and t-shirts, etc. My children now tell me they have fond memories of that. Lots of people that live in NYC never visit the Statue of Liberty or go to the top of the Empire State building, but we did 😉
Our son lives in a small town in Kentucky, outside Lexington. Today, he took the twins (age 3) to the city hall, where children were painting banners to decorate their small town. Keillor and Emaline had a wonderful time painting banners. A little messy, but that’s o.k.!!
Great ideas for moms and their children!
Sounds like a great plan for the summer to me. I really hope that I am not as slammed with work as I am now during summer!
Great ideas! I need to get a summer plan in place, as our school lets out in just 2 weeks.
Sounds fun – I can’t wait to read about the things on your list!
I love your tips and I love the idea of splitting the items up into AT HOME and AWAY from home! We are going to make our summer list this week. One more week of school over here!
Thanks so much for the wonderful tips. They will come in handy this summer!
Great ideas! I love the idea of a summer bucket list and most definitely need to get started on one here!
Love these ideas! They will definitely come in handy for us! All we need now is for it to STOP RAINING so I can get my kids out and DO our summer bucket list. lol.
I love these ideas… I find summer FLIES by! Literally! It’s crazy, once the warm weather is here, fall is already there! This summer, we wanted to relax and “travel”… last summer we had renovations done in the house so we didn’t do much, but this year we wanted the opposite! So, we are going away for a week down south and then a few camping trips here and there… we want to go to the zoo and enjoy the pool! I think it’s a good plan so far! 😉
Great ideas for lil’ ones to keep busy and have fun this summer. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for sharing these great ideas!!
I JUST pinned something similar on Pinterest! Love the idea!
These are some great ideas…about to look up activities in my area!
What a wonderful idea and I am sure it will work out fine. It is so good that he can choose too.
We do a lot of park visiting in the summertime. The kids love it (except on the really hot days, then we hit the pool).
Your bucket list idea is top notch!
No surprise there…
😉
Such a good idea, and it will allow you to include things that you wouldn’t normally think of a day to day basis. 🙂
What a great idea! A “gotta do this before the summer’s through” list is wonderful. What fun doing it…journaling it…photo-documenting it. Making memories. 🙂
great ideas! i’m especially looking forward to filling our summer with beach days. there’s just nothing better!
These are all great ideas! Because we moved, we will be checking out our surrounding areas this summer!
I love the idea of a summer bucket list. I think spur-of-the-moment picnics, kite flying and other traditional summer activities would be fun.
LIsaDay
Brilliant ideas for some summer fun! We were always so broke when the kids were small but made the very best of the free days at the Denver Zoo, the Botanical Gardens and the Art Museum! We would pack a lunch and the kids would have a blast! We were very big on Vacation Bible School and one year the church goers donated lots of money to send to the kids to Water World! My kids thought they won the lottery! Summer fun can be free and it can be a great learning tool also! We always used the free services at our local library and my kids all college aged now still love the library! Have a beautiful weekend and know how blessed you are!
cant wait to see your posts about your activities 🙂
I can’t wait to see your list. My son and I have been discussing things we want to do this summer but have not written them down.
I need to do this! We have so much time off and I have only enrolled my girls in two camps that they really wanted to be a part of. There is so much close to us to do and see. Sometimes, we get comfy staying in our backyard but I know if I got my act together and made this list with them that we could have an amazing summer! Thank you for this!
Everywhere you look summer bucket lists are out – even at Chick-Fil-A today on the kiddie lunch bag… You have a great llist of ways to create a bucket list.
Can’t wait to get started building our own!
Great ideas! My boys will both do the school’s Summer Reading Challenge, and tennis and swim lessons too. Anything to keep them away from their video games!
What a fun idea!
I made a bucket list for my daughter: mop the floors, scrub the toilets, clean the kitchen counters.
She rejected my list.
Hehe!
I need to do this! I always have all of these great ideas, but then as I nurse my coffee on a lazy summer morning, I lose all motivation!
This is a really helpful post for people. Thanks for linking it to this weeks Kid’s Co-op 🙂
My grandlittles and I do this at the beginning of every summer. I like the idea of categorizing the activities…although, to be honest, here in AZ we don’t do much outside during the summers!
Thanks for another brilliant idea!
I bet J Daniel will keep you hopping this summer!
A+