We’ve passed some of the season’s key milestones – Solstice, the last day of school, St Jean Baptiste – and now we have our eyes fixed straight ahead on a fun-filled summer! With the warmer, sunnier weather comes the chance to get outside more often and take advantage of all this new season has to offer!
The backyard pools will be jumped in. The kids will be barefoot. The evenings will be filled with light conversation and laughter. Staying active in the summer comes so much easier and quite frankly, it couldn’t come a moment too soon!
Why not throw it back old school this year to pair kids’ activities with some gross motor practice and interactive learning? Let’s simplify things a bit this summer, shall we? We could all use a little less stress and a lot more fun right about now!
Here are our top 5 old school summer activities for kids:
Throw and Catch Games
1. We love using bean bags for outdoor activities because they’re so versatile! Bonus: we can easily pack them up and take them anywhere – the park, the beach, or the backyard. Cornhole’s the quintessential summer activity that can include the entire family – young and old alike! Vary the distance from the cornhole board depending on the child’s age and ability. Using alphabet bean bags to spell simple words can be a ton of fun for our kids who could use some phonetic practice during summer vacation. And number bean bags work just as well for practicing number recognition, simple addition and subtraction, and throwing/catching skills all in one!
2. For our youngest learners, larger bean bags can be easier to grasp and catch, therefore minimizing frustration and keeping things fun! Simply draw a target on the ground with sidewalk chalk and aim. Or play hot potato and pass the bean bag as quickly as possible before the music stops.
3. For older kids (or to specifically target eye-hand coordination with any age group), try having the kids catch a bean bag when they place it on one end of an inclined plane and stomp on the other end. The harder they stomp, the higher the bean bag goes. Look at it fly!
Balancing Games
4. For these games, have the kids take off their sneakers or sandals and enjoy the simple feeling of walking in grass or on sand. So much summer sensory input! Walking barefoot often helps children feel more grounded and can increase release of those feel-good endorphins we all need right now. Remember old school egg-and-spoon relay races? They were so much fun but could get a little messy! Place the kids in small groups and have them each take turns carrying their balancing ball (instead of an egg) from the starting line to midway then back again. They can speed-walk or try to run but they’ll need all their attention and balance to pass the balancing ball on to the next teammate in the relay race without dropping it. Good luck!
5. Finally, what old school summer would be complete without stilts? Remember how much fun it was to make your own tin can stilts and learn to teeter around on them? Get creative with this activity and design your own backyard obstacle course to navigate. Watch out for that log! Be careful going around the leaf pile! Walking on stilts requires motor planning and can reinforce gross motor skills, enhance balance, and strengthen coordination.
Summer activities don’t have to be complicated for kids to have tons of fun while learning and building new skills. Enjoy!
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