Activities for Kids

A Family Time Capsule

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Preserve the memories of your children’s youth while making a fun keepsake. At the beginning of the summer choose and decorate a container to store all the mementos you will collect to put inside a time capsule. When choosing a container, it should be airtight, watertight and sturdy.

After a container has been chosen the next step is to decide how long it will be sealed for. The longer the better but be warned young children may want to open it up the day after it is put away! The best thing to do is put it in a place that they don’t know about or cannot access. A good time frame is 5-10 years.

Sit down with the children and explain to them that you want to preserve the memories that they are going to make that summer and brainstorm some of the things that can go into it.

Some ideas are:

* Photographs (get some photo-safe envelopes to store them in for protection)
* Crafts
* Toys
* Awards won
* Letters
* If you include any DVD’s or other types of media you may want to consider how they will be used in the future – it is possible they may be obsolete if you are storing your time capsule for 10 years or more into the future.

If you are going to store your time capsule for years and years make sure you leave yourself some form of reminder to take the time capsule with you if you move (especially if you have decided to bury it in the backyard).

Keep the items in the time capsule personal and meaningful to your family. You can always check a history book or newspaper archive to find out about the news of the day – unless of course your family was in the news.

Gardening for Kids

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Here is a summer activity that can last the entire summer. Helping the kids grow their own garden is fun and they will be able to reap the benefits before school starts again by harvesting their own vegetables.

This activity will require some pre-planning and most likely should be started before school is out. The best way to start a garden for children is to germinate the seeds indoors. After it is decided what type of vegetables to grow, get the plants ready inside so they have a better chance of success when they are moved to the outdoors.

Beans, radishes, and carrots are all easy vegetables to grow. Strawberries are a popular alternative to vegetables and are also considered an easy plant to take care of. Have the children make home-made row markers for their vegetable garden using paper and Popsicle sticks. You can have the pictures laminated or do-it-yourself with some clear packing tape to protect them from rain.

Make the garden the child’s responsibility, if there is already a garden plot in your yard give them a section to call their own. Most children can be in charge of their own weeding and watering. This is another good activity that fosters independence and will give the children a sense of accomplishment come the end of the summer – eating vegetables that they grew themselves in their own backyard.

If fruit and vegetables do not interest your child, try a different kind of plant. Growing sunflowers is very rewarding. They can grow up to 8-12 feet tall and the seeds are edible. Or go to the garden center together and let them pick out a small plant or seeds that they want to take care of for the summer or maybe for longer if they pick a perennial plant.

Recycling Box Crafts

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Recycling in itself is a great activity for children, it teaches them how to take care of the environment and how to sort objects into different materials (plastic, metal, paper). As long as all the items are clean and free from sharp edges children should be able to make use of any and all items in the family recycling bin.

As any parent knows, younger children are more fascinated by cardboard boxes than what came in them. This isn’t as true for older children, but they still love to play with and create things out of cardboard.

Some other items that children can use that you may not readily associate with recycling are:

* Birthday or Christmas cards – if you do not keep them year after year kids can cut them up and use the images for pictures or as puppets by gluing a popsicle stick to the back.

* Old newspaper and magazines. The newspaper can be shredded for paper maché or children can cut out individual letters to create a secret message. The magazines can be used to cut out letters too or cut out pictures to make a collage.

* Old clothing such as orphaned socks or jeans that are beyond repair. Use the socks to make sock puppets and put on a puppet show. You can use other recycled materials to decorate the sock puppet. A popular craft made with blue jeans is to cut off the back pockets and sew onto a purse or use both pockets to create a smaller purse.

* Old compact discs that don’t work anymore can be decorated and re-used as
coasters.

Children have great imaginations, let them pick their own materials from the recycling and see what they come up with. Just be careful with glass and other items that could cut or otherwise hurt younger children.

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