Summer Fun List: The Beginning

 Since I joined Pintrest, I've been pinning all sorts of cool craft projects, science experiments and other fun things that I think "I'll do that with the kids, someday." However, I lacked motivation to actually do them :) 

Soon, though, I found myself facing down the barrel of a long, hot summer, I decided to make a list of all of those fun things and we would do them.  I wrote all the fun-looking activities on Popsicle sticks (in case we want to use them again next year, plus- they are more fun than slips of paper!). I tried to stick to relatively easy, age-appropriate projects that were either free (using things we have on hand) or not more than a couple of bucks to do.   The idea is that on Sundays we pick 5 sticks with activities we'll do during the week. That gives me time to plan to buy supplies if I need to for some of the projects.  Last week was the first full week of summer and we kicked our list of with our first projects.

Painted rocks! No, I didn't need pintrest to tell me how fun this one would be :)  I threw in some of my own ideas thankyouverymuch.  The girls had a blast and, as you can see, got creative- EJ made a mermaid, mountain scene and a ladybug.  Bear didn't get to paint, but he had a lot of fun carryng around his "eggs" for a few days until they were confiscated after he threw them at someone's head one too many times.

Mini marshmallows + toothpicks.  Once they stuffed themselves with about 50 marshmallows each, they had a lot of fun with this one.  Bear never really got past the eating phase.

 Look closely at the photo above and you can see that Birdy spelled her name- it was the first thing she did :)

Paper Dolls.  This one broke the budget rule in a big way because we had them color printed on card stock, but it was worth it.  Also, I found some sticky stuff that is AWESOME and makes it so they don't have to fuss with tabs!  These particular dolls require that you purchase the download rights, so if you want to make your own let me know and I can send you the file (if I know you...)

Hand Print Mermaids!  The girls LOVED this and they spent a long time decorating and embellishing their mermaids.  EJ's is on the right (she wanted a "Chinese" mermaid, which I thought was cute) and Birdy's is the one with blue hair on the left.  Hint: if you microwave the papers with wet paint, it dries it super-fast.  That really helped them get to the "decorating" phase quickly.

We planned another activity, but we ran out of time and fridge space, so it rolled over to the next week. I plan to brag about what a creative and awesome Mom I am blog about our Summer Fun List projects - both to share some of the fun stuff going on here and to keep a record of them!  If you want any info on the projects we've done, I'm happy to share!