Fresh Ideas for Summer Fun

Our family loves summer. And we’re always on the lookout for fresh ideas for summer fun.

We normally have a family discussion the first part of June to schedule time for those activities we know we don’t want to miss, like blueberry picking, crawfish boils, fireworks, and reading programs.

And then I print out a summer bucket list of other fun ideas to glean from on the days in between, when we don’t have anything else planned. (That serves as a great motivator to finish summer school lessons early in the day!)

In the past, I’ve worked off lists of my own making, like this or this or this.

But last week I spotted a lot of fun-sounding and easily-executed ideas over on one of my favorite blogs, The Happy Home Fairy, that we decided to incorporate this year.

Although the Fairy provides printables for a lot of her posts, I couldn’t find one for this one. So I created this checklist to serve as a reminder to myself:

Making good progress

We’ve already finished a couple of the suggested projects, including constructing our own “Laser Beam Maze,” which we did yesterday in our entry hall. This was lots of fun! The stairs served as spectator stands as the kids they waited for their turns (we went littlest to biggest).

Of course, with as many boys as we have, everything turns into a competition. (Note my son in the back who’s not smiling for the camera? He was busy contemplating the quickest route through the maze, only the first third of which is visible in this photo):

Long story short, we decided to time how long it took each child to navigate the maze, adding a 1-second penalty for every string they touched on their way through. We started off with times as long as 35:58. But with repeated tries (and by jumping off the banister to bypass the first six or seven strings), the winner cut his time down to 8:57. Pretty impressive, don’t you think?

We were also able to cross “Create a Music Video” off the list. We did that one last week (before we ever even found the Fairy’s list). Wanna see it? You can view it here:

We were making it as a surprise for Father’s Day. But Dad found out early. So we went ahead and posted it on our Family Facebook page.

Lego fans will recognize this song as a slightly off-key spoof of the theme music from The Lego Movie. It’s silly, for sure. But the sentiments are heartfelt.

What fun things do you have planned this summer? We’d love for you to share, as we’re always looking for fresh ideas! And if you’d like more inspiration for making great family memories, all year round, check out our family fun bundle — on sale now!