Here are 10 fun activities to help your family reconnect.
Summer is an opportunity to reconnect as a family. Here are 10 fun activities to help you do just that, without breaking the budget.


I love summer! Despite the mosquitoes and sometimes overly sultry afternoons, I relish the wearing of shorts, tank tops, and flip flops. It's also the season of iced tea, popsicles, and visits to the swimming pool. This is my kind of weather.

Summer also provides a cherished time of reconnection and memory-making for our family. My three children attend the local public school, and as happy as I am of their choice in education, I really enjoy the summer vacation with them at home.

Related article: This 8 Tips Will Help You Combat Ticks, Naturally

Like many families, we live on a budget and family finances get a little tighter during the summer. There's money needed for camps, visits to the pool and museum, softball uniforms, and even just every day expenses - two growing preteens eat a lot of food!

In my quest for summer activities, I've zeroed in on these 10 fun ideas that work for every family no matter your budget:

1. Park Tour

Make a commitment to visit five towns in your area next weekend. In each town, find the city park and play in it. Record each stop with a photo of your family at the park with its defining feature in the backdrop. You may be surprised at how varied each park is. Bring a picnic lunch and a sense of adventure to make this activity complete!

You can expand this by switching up what places you're seeking out - perhaps five county courthouses, or five small town diners, or five downtown business districts. The idea is to explore, as a family, what your local area has to offer.

2. Geocaching

Love the idea of hunting for buried treasure? Then geocaching is what you're looking for. This worldwide game takes people using GPS-enabled devices on a hunt for caches of items hidden at specific GPS coordinates. Sign up for the free app to get started.

The whole family can get into geocaching, but your younger children may not be as interested. If so, draw your own treasure map to a hidden cache of, perhaps, story books or a snack, and help guide your little ones toward their own treasure.

3. Nature Hunt

Take a walk - in your backyard, the city park, on a friend's farm - and help your children discover and collect bits of nature in a bag. It could be pebbles, leaves, wildflowers, features, and just about anything else that catches their fancy. Take them home, and have your child make a collage with their nature items.

Related Article: 4 Naturally Amazing Places to Take The Kids This Summer

Take it a step further, and let your kids use the camera on your phone to capture artistic angles of the tree limbs or close-up shots of blossoms.

Or, bring along a bug net and bug house to collect insects. Right now, we have an earwig named Charlotte, a water beetle named Oliver, and are awaiting the emergence of butterflies from a couple cocoons.

4. Feed the Ducks

Don't throw away those bread ends! Gather up your stale slices of bread, and head down to the local pond to feed the ducks. This is a great time to teach about fairness and sharing, as some ducks are more aggressive than others and like to steal food from other ducks. Have your children draw or journal about the ducks. Get creative with naming each duck.

5. Scavenger Hunt

Don't go on just any scavenger hunt - take it to the next level by searching for items that begin with each letter of the alphabet, or that cover all the colors of the rainbow, or that represent as many shapes as you think of. Break the family into teams, and give each a camera to record their findings.

This is also a great activity to do to pass the time on road trips.

6. Read Aloud

Even older children enjoy being read to. Print out a list of classic, award-winning children's books. Visit your local library for a copy, and take a couple hours each day reading aloud from the book.

This is one of my favorite activities to do with my children - we're on our fourth chapter book so far this summer, The Secret Garden.

7. Chip Away

Here is an activity to keep your kids cool and occupied on those sticky afternoons when it seems too hot to enjoy the summer. A few days before, fill a gallon-sized ice cream bucket with water and place various, small items in the water - some that float and some that don't. Put it in your freezer and allow it to set into a block of ice.

On those unbearably hot days, set the block of ice outside and hand your children tools to use as ice picks. They'll love chipping away to discover the hidden treasures, while keeping cool.

A variation of this is freezing cups or cubes of juice with berries inside and a popsicle stick coming out the top. It's definitely a snack to be enjoyed outside.

8. Star Gazing

Visit your local planetarium or astronomy group, and pick up a map of stars in the night sky. Then, drive out to the country and try to identify as many constellations are you can. See if your kids can make up their own constellation and draw it. Search for information on certain stars, like planets visible during the summer, or the upcoming solar eclipse to keep the learning and discussion alive.

Mark your calendars: The next solar eclipse is Monday, August 21, and several points in the United States are forecast to enjoy a total eclipse in the middle of the day.

9. Homemade Mini-Golf

Make your own mini-golf course with various runs and obstacles. If you're into construction, take the opportunity to teach your children about tools and building. Either way, your kids can have a ton of fun creating their own obstacle courses.

If you don't have golf clubs, make that part of the fun. Consider baseball bats, rakes, brooms, or even silverware as part of the fun.

10. Camp Out

You don't have to go very far for a fun camping trip. Pitch the tent in the backyard! In fact, you don't even need a real tent. Clothespin one of the long sides of a blanket to a fence, or drape a blanket over a table - two of my favorite camping memories from my own childhood! Finish laying sleeping bags at the bottom of the tent, and sleep under the stars til morning.

Make it complete with grilled hot dogs and s'mores. Experiment with the ingredients with the s'mores, like cookies, peanut butter, bananas, and so on.