Long and lazy, summer months are a perfect opportunity for family bonding. With the last day of school just around the corner and the ocean breeze calling from afar, the time is about right to arrange a family schedule for the season. Seize the opportunity and run outside! There’s so much to experience out there, so be sure not to waste your time on meaningless binging and TV dinners. Gather around and make this summer all about family fitness. Here are some ideas to sweat the boredom away together.
Fight Off the Evil Dust Balls with a Cleaning Game
If this year had you surrounded with piles of bills, and the coast seems like an unattainable family goal, there are still ways of keeping busy, entertained and fit. Don’t make your little ones long for the sea, but include a fun activity into your everyday tasks instead. With a dash of your creativity and plenty of their imagination, you can easily turn every household chore into a game.
Devise a convincing story and watch them emerge into a world of fantasy! If the dust balls are covertly hiding under their beds, they can be evil dust creatures invading your house. Your children can be heroes with a very specific feat – liberating the family home from a cunning villain. Team up in a Rescue League with the little daredevils, and show them how to save their toys from an evil dust attack by moving them into the safety of the toy box.
With a clever approach, the whole family can participate in summer cleaning. Through gameplay and make-believe, the kids will burn out their energy, learn a valuable lesson, and stay amused and happy.
Bring Disneyland into Your Backyard
Those lucky enough to live in suburbia never have to look too far on the horizon to bring a bit of seaside into their homes. In case you’re family isn’t so fortunate, try squeezing your budget a bit and rent a holiday home with a backyard. Once again, make a game out of the cleaning session and let your kids learn a bit about gardening.
With the grass freshly cut, a backyard is ready to be turned into a summer theme park. If your kids were impatiently looking forward to a trip to Disneyland, there’s nothing stopping you from bringing Disneyland to your backyard.
Avoid hiring a party organizer, but get creative yourself – find an old kiddy pool and let your kids paint their favorite Disneyworld characters. Blow up balloons and install a trampoline for some afternoon exercise. Organize an arts and crafts project for the whole family and make a set of Mickey Mouse ears from your little girl’s old headbands for each family member. Come evening, your kids will be tired enough for a tucked-in backyard screening of Cinderella before they finally hit the bed.
Propose a Walking Challenge
However vast and exciting the outside world is, kids still tend to get a bit lazy during the summer. Try not to support their idleness, but encourage them to warm up their muscles instead. As busy as our working schedules can sometimes get, there’s always time for a pre-dinner family walk. Still, simply strolling down the park is not a particularly engaging activity for the young ones. To make your kids forget all about their evening crankiness, propose a contest.
Ideas for walking games are numerous, so be sure to find some time to try them all. Make up a Cat Patrol and promote your little ones into feline officers or play a word game and treat the winner with a special ice-cream topping. Find a tile street and devise a skipping game or play kangaroo hoops. The Sashay, The Grapevine and Lunges are amazing for making the walk even more physically challenging. When tired, take a walking pause in the park and play hide and seek for half an hour. With a bit of a challenge, even circling around the block can be an opportunity for an adventure.
Team Up For a Sports Day
Often neglected, physical exercise is one of the crucial parts of child development, but it is also a chance for the family to take a trip to the nearest playground and start a family league. Return to your calendar and mark a sports day – the idea will keep your little ones excited with anticipation, but if you have teenagers in your midst, try to lure them too. Divide teams to be about even and allow your kids to choose a captain for each team (insist on captains taking turns so that nobody feels left behind). Any sports match can be way more interesting with its rules slightly altered, so be sure to spice them up.
Propose a game of blind football where dribblers wear blindfolds, or a running race with an additional challenge to bounce a tennis ball on a racquet or to balance a small potato on a spoon. For reasons unknown, most kids simply adore welly wanging, so don’t forget to include this discipline as well. Use park benches to devise an obstacle course, or bring your own benchmarks for the occasion. With the whole family included, finding joy in movement is as easy as it is delightful.
Dive In For a Treasure Hunt
If Marco Polo already makes your kids roll their eyes, it’s time to up the stakes a bit. The summer is all about atomic whirlpools and cannon balls, so don’t be lazy. Take your little ones to the local pool for some basking fun. Swimming is possibly the best physical activity for a growing child and something you should support and encourage at all times. And, with creative people sharing their swimming pool game ideas all over the web, a visit to the pool seems like the family event of the season.
Whichever game you choose, be sure to explain the rules clearly and stay close to watch for your kids’ safety. Only then can they have fun diving for the invisible bottle at the bottom of the pool or go crazy while trying to avoid “the shark”. Divide into teams and play Pirates together – toss an odd number of sticks into the middle of the pool and let the winner come back to the ship with the most sticks.
Announce a treasure hunt and reward the team that collects the most coins from the bottom of the pool with their prey. And don’t forget to use the breaks for a swimming lesson – the younger they are when they learn the joy of a butterfly stroke, the healthier they’ll remain in the future.
Just when you start feeling fatigued with your everyday tasks, remember that the summer is finally here, and with it, endless opportunities for enjoying your little ones’ new experiences. Get creative and rejoice over their chuckles.