Summer Boredom Busters | Garage Olympics

Help! My kids are driving me C-R-A-Z-Y this summer!

As a mom of 3 kids: ages 6, 9 and 12 I totally GET how hard it is to keep kids busy, active and far away from the dreaded ‘B’ word! “I’m bored!” can be the hardest statement to hear… ALL SUMMER LONG…

This is my third year creating a Summer Boredom Buster series. Along the same creative lines of ThinkFun.com and SmartPlayBlog; I love finding ways to insert the ‘learning while playing’ kind of philosophy.

This year I’m featuring a Science Series! We started out with a Bug week and upcoming ideas include learning about small easy to make machines with levers and pulleys, a Gross Out week, and a How your Body Works week (learning about healthy foods in the bargain!).

Examples From Previous Summers:

Kids in the kitchen learning to make Monkey Bread!
Geocaching: What is it?
Kids Summer Crafts: Tons of ideas!
The Master List of All Summer Ideas List!

Recently we held a Garage Olympics.

FIRST we worked up a super duper Lemonade Stand & Snow Cone station.

Complete with a giant poster and all the neighborhood kids we could locate! (We borrowed the snow cone maker – maybe your local school has one you can use?) Each Summer we run 3-4 lemonade stands and the kids choose a local organization to donate their proceeds. This summer we will donate to our town’s Foster Care Foundation.

SECOND we set up a Bubble Station.

You can divide up the kids at this point and move from station to station in cycles, but we found it was more fun in a big group! One person blows the bubbles and the kids attempt to pop all of them before any hit the ground. And then they tried to catch a bubble on their tongue! We talked about what bubbles are made of and they experimented with different ways to blow them and fun items around the house to make giant bubbles or tiny bubbles.

THIRD we played “write your name in water”.

We used dollar store water guns, but spray bottles would work too. They had to figure out the best way to hold the water guns, determine which way the wind was blowing, and we also talked about evaporation on a hot day. The best part was getting each other wet of course!

LAST we had a combined ball toss/sprinkler/water-bucket brigade.

This was mainly designed to get everyone soaking wet. But it also kept them active and taught them a few things. They learned how hard it is to toss a lightweight ball when the wind is blowing. And that a plastic bucket stands up better when it has a weight in it. Plus water cools you down on a hot summer day. We talked about the evaporative properties of water and how animals use water to cool off as well!

What ideas will you and your kids come up with for a summer time Garage Style Olympics!?