Our Summer Bucket List
My favorite scene in Frozen is when Olaf sings about summer. Oh, to be a snowman in the middle of summer—now that’s a gig I could get used to (as long as I had Elsa’s magic snow cloud hovering around me, of course). Truth be told, I’m absolutely dreading the summer since the south is about to turn into an outdoor sauna. I won’t bore you by complaining about it more, but today’s problem is the fact that my oldest child and I are complete opposites—Julia could seriously stay outside for hours. HOURS. Going outside is her favorite thing in the entire world, and she wants to be there all the time. Her face turns into the color of a ripe little cherry tomato from playing so hard, and she’ll be practically falling over because she’s so tired, but she’ll still beg to stay outside longer. Toddlers are weird.
Since school’s out (and that means so are most of the other programs for little ones), I need to find some entertaining things for us to do this summer. One can only blow bubbles outside for so long before one (*ahem* me) gets completely bored. While this summer bucket list is primarily for my toddler, I threw a few things on it for myself and for the four of us—she can’t have all the fun!
For Julia (2 years old)
+ Make snow cones
+ Make homemade ice cream
+ Create an indoor fort
+ Run through the sprinklers
+ Make homemade cards and mail them to family
+ Go get frozen yogurt one afternoon
+ Make edible finger paint
+ Have a tea party
+ Make a Fruit Loop necklace
+ Play outside with frozen paint
+ Stay up late one night to watch the fireflies
+ Make sidewalk chalk paint
+ Play with erupting sidewalk chalk paint
+ Make scented puff paint
+ Impromptu afternoon tub time with rainbow shaving cream paint
+ Rock painting party
+ Fly a kite
+ Build a sandcastle
+ Visit a museum
+ Give her a box she can sit in, some washable markers, and let her go to town
+ Make homemade lemonade
+ Trip to the zoo (or in our case, PetsMart)
+ Make a “zoo” at home (idea from the comments below)
+ Bake cookies and take them to the neighbors
+ Go to the splash-pad park
+ Go on a treasure hunt
For the Whole Family/Grownups:
+ Go geocashing
+ Go on a date night
+ Go on a papa/Julia date
+ Go to the beach
+ Go through my stack of unread magazines
+ See a Braves game
+ Make pizza on the grill
+ Go on a picnic
+ Finish Madilyn’s (my) bump date book
+ Walk around the neighborhood
+ Find a new walking trail
+ Finish our bathroom reno
+ Decorate “new” bathroom (!!!)
+ Blog about “new” bathroom (and new pantry and new closet)
Not too shabby, right? And we can actually cross a couple of things off that summer bucket list since we just got back from the beach! Of course things like coloring, blowing bubbles, and trips to the library are just normal give-ins, so they didn’t make the list.
What’s on your bucket list for this summer?
I want to try geocaching! I first read about it in Ken Jennings’ Maphead. It sounds like wonderful nerdy fun!
Geocaching is SO much fun! You’ll love it.
When I worked in daycare one thing I would do was make a “zoo”, I would line up the toys in like they were in cages and then we would go on a train ride and see all the “animals” and have the kids describe them to me. It would usually take up a fair chunk of time and since you could do it at home you could play some fun rainforest type sounds from the computer to add to the mood or have rooms of the house be themed.
Oh man, what a fun idea! I’m totally adding that to the list!
We used to fill up water balloons for the kids to play with!
And I just remembered about Super Soakers too!
awesome. I’ll have to remember to pick some up 🙂
We love geocaching! We try to look things up every time we visit a new place. That’s on my list for the summer too.
LOVE these bucket lists. My family could really use these to enjoy our summer days much more. I love that you attached the directions for some of the crafts so we can find them easily! This is an awesome post! Thanks for linking 🙂 xoxo
Thanks! I knew if I didn’t add the directions to a few of those crafts I’d never remember to find them later 🙂