It’s ridiculously hot in our area of the nation (southeast) right now. We seem to have skipped early summer, instead diving right into the July/August weather.
The extreme heat (high 90s) makes spending time outside a little difficult, which stinks when you have two little ones that love the outdoors.
In an effort to keep our electricity bill low, we have our thermostat set pretty high, while we use ceiling, box and oscillating fans to keep the air circulating.
But it’s hard to keep two little ones inside all day when it looks beautiful outside.
Today, we put the Slip N Slide in a shady spot, and let them play in the water spray for about 10 minutes. Bonus–our oldest figured out how to get the spray to hit some of our way-too-hot plants!
This cooled them off and kept them from demanding TV for a while.
I don’t think this will keep them satisfied all summer, but maybe it will rain some and cool everything off for at least a couple of days.
Any advice for the rest of the summer?
I don’t know how old the kiddos are, but the library is a big fan of mine, and has been since they were very little. There are often story-times and fun activities going on at the library in all of the towns I’ve ever lived, and it’s generally air conditioned there. So for the heat of the day, rather than running the ac at home, it might be good to go on a library adventure and share in the ac that is already running there. (also, as you probably already know, it’s FREE to use the library, just need to get there).
Other ideas for fun times: Building anything out of anything. Forts out of blankets, mini houses out of sticks, roads/bridges out of leaves, sticks or whatever.
Mud pies!
go swim at the ymca, or other place where swimming is allowed (I used to live in an area where swimming in the creek was safe, but not where I live now).
toys? What happened to playing with a tea set, dolls, cars/trucks, blocks, etc. Oooohhh, and legos are tops!
reading a good book.
Creating a play with the above-mentioned toys. If you have puppets, great, use them. If you don’t you can make some out of magazines, or draw/color yourself and attach to sticks.
Popsicles!
games such a hide and seek or find the object.
I like cleaning games too. Can you find 27 things in this room that don’t belong here? Put them in this laundry basket, and I’ve got my stop watch, see how long it takes or make it a race to beat a kitchen timer. P.s. I got the number 27 from Flylady (aka flylady.net but you can pick whatever number works for you and your children).
cushion diving (what’s hiding in the sofa cushions?)
crayons and paper–re-used paper works great!
paper airplanes (again you can re-use paper to make these).
cooking/food prep –salad mixing, veggie peeling, kids often enjoy preparing something cute like bugs on a log (aka raisins on celerysticks with peanut butter).
That’s all I’ve got for right now, but hopefully this will spark some other ideas as well. Happy Summer!
Candella