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.