Five Fun Summer Activities to Do with Your Kids
Summer time means lots of playing, hiking, biking, camping, and so much more. One of our favourite times too! However, it also means learning loss occurs as well. But it doesn't have to! Here are some fun and easy summer learning activities to do with your kids.
As a parent, I don’t always want to plan big excursions, so I am going to share some fun, easy, and affordable fun summer activities you can do with your kids this summer.
The awesome part is these fun summer activities will include learning and the use of skills in science, technology, engineering and math (AKA S.T.E.M. skills) to help your child bridge the summer learning gap. "Summer learning gap" refers to the academic decline that kids experience during the two month summer break.
Children can lose up to 2.6 months in Math Skills and up to two months in grade level reading skills during summer holidays.
Here are some summer fun activities to do with the kids that will keep them learning without even knowing it!
Pick one, two, or all five of these fun summer learning activities and you will have your kids learning STEM and STEAM skills. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. STEAM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math. You can modify each of the activities and use them all summer long!
These five summer fun learning activities are a great way to keep kids engaged and develop skills in critical thinking, math, reading, science and creativity.
ACTIVITY #1:
Fun in Under $25
Have your child take the reins on planning a morning or afternoon for the family with a budget of only $25! If they are older, you can increase the budget to $40 or $50. The point is to learn to plan, research, and work within a small budget and not just spend money! This activity will build confidence, excitement as kids take ownership of planning food, snacks, games, a picnic in the family room in front of a movie on the TV or projected on the wall. Kids will use STEM skills in collaboration, critical thinking, budgeting, math, sequencing events, and so much more! Let the creative juices flow! Think of fun places like a local farm, farmer’s market, supermarket, “shop” in your pantry or kitchen, or a dollar store, to make the activity special, unique, and affordable. This activity can happen once a week with different family members being the master planner!
ACTIVITY #2:
How to Make Ice-cream in a Bag in Five Minutes in 5 Steps!
Who doesn’t like ice cream, especially when you can easily make it yourself in minutes! This fun summer activity is perfect for when some of your kid’s friends come over and they can have a fun time mixing the simple ingredients and jumping or dancing around with music playing for five minutes, shaking the bag to make their yummy ice cream.
So many STEM skills are utilized here, including, measuring, planning, sequencing, critical thinking, observation, chemistry, and so much more.
Ingredients for ONE Bag of Ice Cream
· 1/2 cup whole milk, or heavy cream
· 1 tbsp sugar
· 1 tsp vanilla extract
· 6 tbsp salt
· 2 cups of ice
· 1 sandwich sized ziplock bag
· 1 larger ziplock bag
Instructions
1. In the sandwich sized ziplock bag, add the milk, sugar, and vanilla. Make sure to seal the bag tightly, removing as much or the air as possible from the bag.
2. In the quart sized bag, add the ice and salt.
3. Place the smaller bag inside the larger bag and seal tightly.
4. Shake the bag, and keep shaking for 5 minutes or until it reaches the consistency of ice cream.
5. Remove the smaller bag and voila! Open and enjoy the ice cream. Eating it straight out of the bag with a spoon makes it so much more fun!
SCIENCE FUN FACT: When salt is added to the ice in the bigger bag, it lowers the freezing point of wather, creating a a colder environment for the ice cream mixture in the smaller bag to freeze. This causes the ice cream to thicken at a lower temperature than regular ice alone could accomplish.
Nutrition
Calories: approximately 133kcal
Carbohydrates: approximately 18g
Protein: 4g
Fat: 4g
ACTIVITY #3:
How to Make a Lava Lamp in Five Steps
This is a very easy and fun science experiment you can do in your kitchen! And the best part is you most likely already have all the ingredients.
Here is what you need:
- A clean plastic bottle, 500ml works best
- water
- Vegetable Oil
- Fizzing tablets (e.g. Alka Seltzer)
- Food Colouring (I like to use red in one bottle and green in another!)
- Fill 1/4th of the bottle with water.
- Use a measuring cup with a spout to fill ill the rest of the bottle with vegetable oil until it is almost full. Wait for the oil and water to separate.
- Add a few drops of your favourite food colouring.
4. Break a fizzy tablet in half and drop it into the bottle and watch the lava lamp come to life!
- Shine a flashlight under the bottle for the full affect.
SCIENCE FUN FACT:
Oil is lighter than water. The oil floats on top of the water because it is less dense than water. The food colouring has the same density as the water so it will sink through the oil and mix in with the water.
The tablet is quite dense compared to the oil and water and will sinks to the bottom.
When it dissolves it makes a gas called carbon dioxide.
Gas or air, is lighter than water so it floats to the top. The air bubbles bring some colored water with them to the top.
ACTIVITY #4:
Alphabet Scavenger Hunt
Create an Alphabet Scavenger Hunt activity page or booklet with a pad of paper you have at home or pick up from the dollar store. Or you can draw a grid with a ruler on a piece of paper. Write a letter from the alphabet in the top corner of each square to make sure to have room in the square for your child to draw a picture or write a word in it.
Grab a pencil and let the learning fun begin. Younger children can draw a picture next to the Alphabet that starts with the same letter as is shown on that page or square, while older children can write the words.
How to play:
1. Make the Alphabet Scavenger Hunt activity page or booklet and bring some pens or pencils.
2. Choose a venue like a farmer’s market, your local park, zoo, or supermarket.
3. Explain to the kids that they have to find something they see that starts with that letter of the alphabet and then they have to draw or write it down in the spot provided.
4. When the Alphabet Scavenger Hunt activity page is completed, the reward is family ice cream or a picnic!
You can make it a challenge if you have multiple children that there is a prize for the first and second place.
HINT: On the tougher letters like “Q” or “X”, they can look for words around them that have the letter which is a great skill in researching and identification.
ACTIVITY #5:
Master Chef Challenge
Depending on the size of your family, you can make teams of do individual cooking or baking challenges. The task is for each child to pick their favourite meal and recreate it. Once made, everyone is a judge. The best dish is the winner.
How to do this:
1. Choose a theme, such as “Favourite meal”, “Canadian Brunch”, “Italian Dinner”, “Dinosaur Dessert”, “Best Pancake”, “Best Cookie”, etc. Each person chooses to make a simple dish.
2. Set a budget.
3. Go with the kids to pick up the ingredients needed for their special meals.
4. Set up cooking stations for each of the kids/participants.
5. Set the timer for 20 minutes (depending on the dish. Baking cookies or cupcakes will need backing time too).
With younger children or mixed ages of children, I would recommend that the parent make a big batch of pancake mix or cookie dough and then the cooking challenge could be how each child or participant decorates the cookies or pancakes with a wide selection of fixings provided by mom or dad.
SCIENCE FUN FACT: Have you ever wondered why pancakes are round? Well, this happens because of two main reasons: gravity and surface tension. Once the batter is added on to a pan, gravity will pull on all parts of the batter uniformly in all directions, and tension will pull it out into a round shape.
I hope you will enjoy any of the above summer fun activities with your family.
Please do share photos with me if you do!
Smiles and blessings,
Elaine