10 fun ideas to do with your grandchildren this summer
Looking for ways to have summer fun with your grandchild? Summer is a time when most children can go to their grandparents’ house for a day, a week or more. So coming up with ideas to help make summer fun can be daunting.
We’re going to offer ten fun ideas to help you get started. Many of these ideas cost little or no money, but the memories you can create will last a lifetime.
1. Plan a day when you can take a walk in nature and pack a picnic. You don’t have to go any further than your own backyard or your local park. Carry a book with you that identifies different birds, plants, insects, or other animals. During the picnic, talk about what you have seen and read about them in the books you have brought.
2. Do you have a favorite family recipe? Or does your grandchild have a favorite food? Spend time with them in the kitchen helping them learn how to cook or bake. Then sit down and share that dinner. Eating a meal cooked together makes the food taste extra delicious.
3. Go pick your own farm to pick strawberries, berries or other fruits. Then bake a cake or other delicious fruit dessert. You could even make your own ice cream to top it off.
4. Do you live near the beach? Go shell collecting or build sand castles. If you live near a lake, try rowing a boat, fishing, or canoeing. If this is not possible, install a small children’s pool in your garden and splash around to your heart’s content. If you too!
5. Set up a lemonade stand and let your grandchild figure out how to spend the profits or how to save them.
6. Go camping in your backyard. Set up a tent, fire up the grill, make s’mores or roast marshmallows, and tell campfire stories or sing along. Catch fireflies in a jar. Point out different constellations, or just gaze at the stars before falling asleep.
7. Make a small area of your garden specifically for your grandson. Get gardening tools that are their size and let them plant flowers or vegetables and take care of this section by themselves. Or get a pot or planter box and do the same.
8. Go to the local library if you no longer have children’s books in your house and choose books that you can read together. Begin by each reading a sentence, then a paragraph, a page, and so on. This is a great way to keep a child reading and ready for the upcoming school year.
9. Do you knit, sew, crochet or paint? Teach your hobby to your grandson. If you’re not a crafty person, get two plain white t-shirts to decorate. You can paint them, attach “rhinestones” or stain them. Have a fashion show of your designed shirts. Just have fun, worry about the mess later.
10. Take some chalk and draw on the sidewalks or in the entrance of your house. Relearn how to play hopscotch, draw your family, your favorite animals or a story.
This is just a small summary of the things you can do with one grandchild or ten grandchildren. Just remember to take lots and lots of photos of your time together.
One thing you can do together or alone is make a scrapbook of your time together. If you make it yourself, you can give the scrapbook later as a birthday or Christmas present as a reminder of what a great time you had.
The most important thing is to spend time with them and have a lot of fun. For a child it is not important how much money is spent in pursuit of fun; it is the quality of the time we spend together.
For more ideas for grandparents, you can visit: http://www.grandparentscafe.com. This site offers information on grandparents’ rights, remote parenting, as well as photos, stories, games, and more.
One of my favorite quotes that I have come across since becoming a grandmother is the following:
“If your baby is beautiful and perfect, never cries or fusses, sleeps on time and burps on demand, an angel all the time… you are grandma.”
~Theresa Bloomingdale’s
