50 Activities to do with your Preschooler this Summer

Last summer, in order to make sure our family made the most of every day of our time off (and to save our sanity on those summer days that fell somewhere short of halycon) we came up with a "bucket list" of fun activities to try and complete.  Many of these ideas are simple, free, and the sort of things we would have done anyway, but being able to consult the list when we needed an idea was helpful, and crossing each item off was rewarding.  It was neat to see at the end how many items on our list we had actually managed to accomplish, and to have a reminder of all of the fun we had.

Our preschool summer bucket list was such a hit last year that we decided to make another one this year.  Here is our list of the top 50 activities we hope to have fun with this summer.  While I will be spending the majority of time with toddlers and preschoolers, most of these activities could easily be enjoyed by older kids as well.  Tomorrow, I will print off the the list and set A and C to work decorating it:

1. Camp outside in the backyard
2. Have a picnic breakfast
3. Take a surprise trip to a mystery destination
4. Take a family picture a week
5. Watch a fireworks display
6. See a play or concert outside
7. Go berry picking
8. Have three virtual vacation theme nights where we prepare and eat food from another country, and enjoy activities such as reading a story and listening to music from that country, playing games from that country, or learning a few words of the language spoken there
9. Have a mini-Olympics day
10. Paint outside
11. Go on a hike
12. Run through a sprinkler
13. Try two new fruits, and two new vegetables
14. Make sun prints
15. Make a solar oven, and try and cook in it
16. Throw rocks into the river
17. Buy a treat from a food truck
18. Visit two libraries we have not been to before
19. Make a sandcastle
20. Roll down a hill
21. Leave an anonymous treat on a neighbour’s porch
22. Have a campfire
23. Watch a parade
24. Bake a pie
25. Invite someone new over to play
26. Ride a roller coaster
27. Spend an afternoon lying in the grass and reading books
28. Make nature rubbings
29. Paint rocks and make rock creatures
30. Make jam
31. Play catch outside
32. Go on a flashlight walk around the neighbourhood
33. Visit a fair (check your local momstown for local fairs!)
34. Mail a postcard to a friend
35. Make (and wear!) crazy sunglasses
36. Make homemade bubbles
37. Walk along a log
38. Learn to say “hello” and “thank you” in two new languages
39. Learn the names of two kinds of trees
40. Lie outside on a blanket and look at the stars.  Read about the constellations and try to find them.
41. Have a wacky hair day
42. Participate in one community service project as a family
43. Leave a favourite kids’ book in a public place (e.g. a park bench) with a note for the finder to keep and enjoy it
44. Make campfire bananas or s'mores (or both)
45. Trace our shadows with sidewalk chalk and colour them in
46. Make popsicles
47. Paint with marbles
48. Build a fort outside.
49. Make a kite or buy one and try to fly it
50. Visit four new playgrounds, at least one of which has a merry-go-round

I'll be popping by throughout the summer to share some of these activities as we complete them,  If you have a summer bucket list, or you do any of the activities on our list, I would love to hear about them as well.  Feel free to leave a comment below, or share with us on facebook, twitter.  Happy Summer! 

-by Ann-Marie Burton, mom of 3, founder and president of momstown.ca; Follow Ann-Marie and the momstown team on Twitter @momstownCA, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram.