70 fun summer activities

Being inspired by a few fun activities I found on pinterest, I decided to make a list with my kids of fun things we want to do this summer. I decided to make a list of 70 things we are going to do. We are going to print off the list and do one thing every day. I am going to make sure I have everything ahead of time so I can be ready to go with each activity. Most of the activities are free but a few of them require making a stop at the dollar store. I always want to do fun things with my kids and then the summer comes and goes and I always end up working too much or not doing any of the fun things I planned on doing. I am starting early this year so I can be prepared. Some of them are as easy as making cookies or just eating lunch that day as an indoor picnic and some of them require more of my time like visiting our local pool which they have been asking to do for months now which will require me to adjust my work schedule a little but I need to make sure to enjoy my time with my kids while I can. I will have them draw each week 7 at the beginning of the week and I can fit what they drew depending on my work load for that day. I am glad to have compiled a list based on what I found on pinterest and my kids fun ideas as well.

1. Bug catching day. (Kylie will only catch black ants).
2. Write the ABCs with long red licorice.
3. Cloud watching. Find pictures in the clouds and for older kids what kind of clouds they are.
4. Fossil digging. Get dinosaurs bones from dollar store and bury them and let the kids dig them out.
5. Sponge painter. Get sponges from dollar store and paint with them.
6. Make mini rainbow volcanos. (baking soda, water color and vinegar)
7. Make their own book with illustrations.
8. Balloon tennis. (Paddle is paper plate taped to popsicle stick and hit balloon back and forth).
9. Ding dong ditch neighbors. Get some Ding Dongs (yum) and put a note on them that says "You've been ding dong ditched" and leave them on their front porch and run.
10. Teach the moon phases with oreos and then eat them.
11. Make hand shadows (at night).
12. Do a puppet show.
13. Play pretend. (my kids wanted to do a pretend store with pretend money).
14. Make an annual silly holiday (like on the site I found every August 20 was annual doughnut day so that day would be annual whatever you came up with day.
15. What floats or doesn't float. Get a big tub or pool of water and see what floats or doesn't float.
16. Let the kids plan the menu that day and help cook and let them serve you. (pay for the meal afterward with pretend money).
17. Make necklaces with fruit loops or other cereal that has holes.
18. Name painting. Tape out your names in tape and then paint over it. When the paint dries, your name will shine through.
19. Lava floor. The floor is lava and you can't touch the floor. Have to try to not touch the floor and stand on things. (might be easy with a dirty house) My kids apparently do this all the time.
20. Simple water painting.
21. Rock painting. Turn them into bugs or friends or people or whatever you want.
22. Balloon faces. Use a marker and make faces on balloons. We decided to put a glow stick in them so they shine at night time. (hope they don't pop).
23. Carve a watermelon. We heard this idea around Halloween and couldn't wait until summer to try and carve a watermelon. Hope it works.
24. Have an indoor picnic.
25. Opposite day. My 7 year old came up with this one. The kids have to do the adult stuff like make dinner and the adults do the kids stuff. (we will see how this one goes over).
26. Play school. Let the kids be the teacher.
27. Make a band.
28. Write letters to family members. Use lots of stickers. Draw pictures on them. (grandmas will love this one).
29. Just Dance day. We love the video game just dance. We do it all the time but decided to make a day out of it.
30. Crepe paper obstacle course. Put crepe paper down the hall and the kids have to go down the hall without touching it. Kind of like laser beams guarding a safe.
31. Act out a story (use home made costumes if you can think of them).
32. Make dino fossils out of play dough. Press toy dinos into play dough and let them dry.
33. Fly a kite. Buy some from the dollar store and fly them. Cheap.
34. Have a tea party with mini food. The boys thought it would be fun but had to remind me we didn't drink tea. I had to tell them it was called a tea party even if you didn't drink tea :) Good for them!!!
35. Play dress up and see what the kids come up with.
36. Treasure hunt. Set up a treasure hunt for the kids. Connor asked if the treasure at the end could be real money. Man that kid loves money.
37. Pick wild flowers on a walk.
38. Make a popsicle stick puzzle. These are real fun.
39. Make Giant bubbles with solo cups. Just cut a hole in the bottom and stick the other end in the bubbles and blow out of the holes.
40. Go swimming at our local pool.
41. Trace and color leaves.
42. Have a kid and mom idol. We had a kid idol when we lived in plain city (like american idol for kids). Our kids loved it and always want to do it again. We will each sing a song and judge each other. Would never do it in front of a big crowd but great in front of family.
43. Ice cube paint. Freeze ice cubes with food coloring and tooth picks and then paint with them on paper.
44. Make home made lava lamps. This is found on pinterest. It consists of oil, water, food coloring and alka seltzer.
45. Go on a hike.
46. Sleep over day. We have a sleepover in mom's room. (Chelton will love this one)
47. Mini marshmallow contraction. Use mini-marshmallows and tootchpicks and start building.
48. Pain and roll marbles. Dip marbles in paint and roll.
49. Make cookies. Let them do a lot of the work.
50. Write in chalk on the driveway. Get creative.
51. Have a picnic outside.
52. Have marble races with a pool noodle. Cut it in half and use it to race the marbles down the middle.
53. Balloon toss with hula hoops. Anchor balloons around the yard and write numbers on the balloons that are different points (helium in balloons). Toss hula hoops around balloons and whatever balloon you get it over that is how many points you get. (nice that I have a helium tank for these balloon games).
54. Ninja balloons. Make ninja faces on balloons. Anchor them around the yard and get your water guns out. Let the kids go crazy trying to squirt at them knocking them over.
55. Make a hovercraft CD. This consists of a CD with a bug juice lid or a dish soap lid glued to the top. You then blow up a balloon and set it on the top and it will hover across your tile or hardwood. My kids saw this and have been begging to make one.
56. Make a water pinata. Hang water balloons from a string and them pop them over your head. Instant hit and cool from 100 degree weather.
57. Have a paper airplane competition. Hopefully when Chelton is home because I think boys are born to know how to make airplanes and girls just aren't.
58. Have a show & tell. Kids just love to do this.
59. Go to the park. Better go early before the slides get too hot.
60. Have a movie scavenger hunt. Make a list of things they have to find or do and film themselves doing the things (like someone doing a handstand or a sock with a hole in it and they have to film everything...then you watch it when the movies are over. They get funny and the kids get a kick out of watching it. Iphones work great.
61. Play board games.
62. Make your own movies. Split in teams and have a theme or just let them make any movie they want. When it is over watch the movies and eat popcorn. Fun to see how creative they get.
63. Rent a movie from Netflix (a big treat at our house) and eat popcorn (another big treat).
64. Have an indoor snowball fight with socks.
65. Make a racecar track around the house with masking tape and play with the 1000 cars my boys have. They will probably never want to take this down and will probably play with those cars they never play with.
66. Play monster in the middle. Line up the pillows and they are safe and the carpet is lava. Jump from pillow to pillow and if the monster touches you then you are in the middle.
67. Play red light/green light, mother may I and other fun outside games.
68. Play indoor bowling. Stuff socks inside toilet paper rolls and line them up. Use a ball and then knock them over.
69. Set up indoor mini golf course (luckily we have little golf clubs so we don't need anything for this).
70. Give them $5 and let them spend it at the dollar store. Heaven for a little kid.

Updates

I haven't updated the blog in a few weeks but not much has been going on so I thought I would just update with the craziness of every day life that we have been going through.

I guess you can consider us an official karate family know. Garrett decided to join the ranks and started taking lessons now. He seems to be really enjoying it and was excited that after two lessons passed off his first move and got his first stripe. Connor is excited to be able to help teach him all the things that he has learned too. They are excited to be able to do it together.





Connor is also excited to earn his third stripe as he passed off a move last week that he has been working on for a while called 'short one' which wasn't short at all and was a really long move and was a really involved move. He did great and was so excited to get it passed off. He just has to pass off his defense moves and will be moving up belts.



Kylie has been still taking her dance lessons and is getting ready for her first dance competition in a few weeks down in Parawan. This is how you can find Kylie most days.



She absolutely LOVES listening to music and will walk around listening to their ipod all the time. Once in a while we will ask her to put the earphones on but most of the time she just blares it out for all of us to hear. She loves to sing and dance.

The whole family has got into dancing lately. We recently purchased the wii game Just Dance and have been using it to exercise and have been having so much fun with it and have been getting some really good workouts in with it. We will turn on the game and end up dancing for 60 to 75 minutes without even knowing it. When I first started I would wake up the next morning hardly able to walk or move and sore as could be and now I have been dancing with the kids so much that we can dance for 75 minutes or so and I am to the point where I don't hurt anymore. There are still some dances that if we do they make me extremely out of breath and I still sweat my butt off but I feel like I am getting in great shape just by playing a wii game plus me and my kids are having a blast spending time and having fun together. It has been a great find.

We also had a family party with my side of the family a few weeks ago and we played just dance and it was a blast. My kids told me it was the funnest family party we have ever had. We started off with a family competition where each family had four people represent their family and they had to choose a song and go up and dance and we added up the scores of their dance and each family took their turn. My sister Halley's family was one member short so we even got my dad to join in. Seeing my dad dance to a Kesha song was the highlight of my night. The two families with the highest score went to a finale round. It was the Spendlove's and the Lund's and I'm sad to say that the Lund's took the title and it was their first time ever playing but at our next competition we will win it back. Then we just took turns dancing for a few hours. We even broke out Abba just dance and got me and my sisters all doing a dance and then we got all our husbands to do a dance. That was another highlight of the night. I can't wait to do another party like this again. Our family has definitely been practicing up to beat those dang Lunds!!!

Last Sunday I got ready for church in a new dress I bought (zebra print) and when Kylie saw I had it on she immediately wanted to be twinners. She has a shirt that kind of has a zebra pattern and had to put it on with a black skirt so we both had a zebra theme and when I bought the dress it came with two free necklaces so I bought me and Kylie one that said "love" on it (since we are spendlove girls) so we both put them one so we went to church in (sort of) matching clothes and Kylie asked Connor to take our picture to send to grandma. Do you think when she is 16 she will still want to be twinners with her mom?



Garrett has also been working hard in scouts earning what he needs to in order to advance to the next level by his birthday. He really enjoys going to scouts and has a great time going. He is a good example to Connor and Connor can't wait until he turns eight so he can go to scouts too. He loves when they have pack meetings and the family gets to go.



We are excited for Easter coming up soon and we get to spend some time with both of our families. We have had a TON of snow down here in Fillmore so we are very excited for spring to come. The kids are anxiously awaiting the day when we can set the trampoline back up and they can go outside and jump again.