5 Fun and Artsy Things to do With Your Kids During the Summer

As we head towards the end of spring and the official start of summer, you are probably already planning those busy days you will have with your kids at home. You may not like to admit it, but it’s possible you even dread it a little. You’re excited, for sure, but a little nervous too. The thing is when it’s warm and the sun’s shining, it’s easy to do things with them. You can take them to the zoo, the beach or even just to the park to let off all that steam and excess energy. When the weather’s a bit dire though and miserable, which is often is in the UK even in summer, then it’s a lot harder to keep your kids entertained.

All parents at some point have taken the easy option and just stuck their kids in front of the television, their games console, computer or even their tablet. We all know that’s not the best way for them to spend their time though. But, what do you do instead? Well, that’s what we’re going to look at in this post. We have five great, fun and artsy things you can do with your kids during the summer on those boring days in the house.

Create Your Own Jewellery

If your household is one of those that just seem to have accumulated a lot of twinkly, sparkly things like beads and things like that, all you need is some string and you can have some fun. For instance, you could make your own custom jewellery. This is a richly rewarding project for your children because there are no real rules. It’s more about imagination than anything else.

Bake Some Cakes

There is something about making a right royal mess in the kitchen, that kids find hard to resist. Not least of when it involves baking cakes and they get to taste the fruits of their labor. Why not make it a mini project for you and your kids, involving the use of different types of icing and frosting. They could even design and make their own decorations for the cake to give it a professional touch.

Paint a Picture

Another messy activity that most kids love is painting. Again, like making jewelry, art and painting are quite subjective. Sure, it’s great when your child paints a picture that looks the way it’s supposed to look. However, the fun is more derived from allowing their creative juices to flow and paint whatever they like. You could turn it into a mini competition, to give them some encouragement and motivation.

Make sure everyone has access to the same kind of brushes, paints and then you all paint what you want. It could also be fun to paint the same thing as one another, then you could compare the results afterward. You could appoint an independent judge, like an aunty or neighbor to pick out the best.

Design and Create Finger and Hand Puppets and Put on a Play

Another fun way to be creative is with some old socks and a lot of crafty decorations. You could all make sock puppets for your fingers and hands. Then after all the creations are completed, you could devise, write and work on a play. You could even run through rehearsals and then invite friends and family to watch it.

Design Your Own T-Shirts

This may not be the first thing you think of, but you could invest in a heat press machine. You and your kids could then use this awesome device to design and create your own custom t-shirts. Okay, so it does involve a small investment upfront, but as it opens a world of opportunities and possibilities for creative applications, beyond t-shirts especially if you download some free svg files. 

About t-shirt designing though, if you’re worried about them using machinery, you could have them more involved in the design. They could make some of the final decisions about what is going to feature on the t-shirts – are they going to be connected to your family or are they going to just have attractive and random patterns? Perhaps if you have a family member or friend that is not feeling well or would benefit from a nice gift, you could design it with them in mind.

There are many more ideas that we could have discussed, but the above five are our favorites. Which will you be trying out first this summer?