Do you remember lazy summer days spent splashing in a blow up pool with the stickiness of melting popsicles dripping down your hand? The days when you rode your bike with kids kids from the neighbourhood and played hopscotch and raced back home before the streetlights came on? It’s that kind of old-fashioned summer that I’m trying to recreate with this Summer Bucket List. 
Last year, I made a Summer Bucket List for Moms Who Want to Engage because I became aware of how often I watch my kids having fun but don’t actually join in with them. It was the perfect plan for us for that season of our life. This year, I needed something different.
This year has been chaotic. I am feeling the need to simplify and get back to basics. That led me to creating this summer bucket list. The one I made for this upcoming season is one full of ideas that I remember doing in my childhood summers. I hope you are able to find some gems on here for your family.
I have tried to keep the ideas easy and inexpensive. This will help me to create a simple summer full of childhood memories for my kids.
Summer Bucket List:
- Climb trees.
- Go berry picking. (Saskatoons are my favourite!)
- Ride bikes.
- Play horseshoes.
- Eat watermelon.
- Have a watermelon seed spitting contest.
- Count the seconds between the thunder and the lightning during a summer storm.
- Blow bubbles.
- Play mini golf.
- Tent in the backyard.
- Have a picnic.
- Go fly a kite. (I cannot type that without the Mary Poppins song going through my head!)
- Run through a sprinkler.
- Go to a splash park.
- Eat ice cream…with fixings!
- Watch a parade.
- Jump rope.
- Build tin can stilts.
- Fly paper airplanes.
- Fish in the pond.
- Go bowling.
- Make popsicles. Let the kids invent their own popsicle recipes.
- Find pictures in the clouds.
- Skip rocks.
- Tell ghost stories around a campfire.
- Sing loudly in the van.
- Play board games.
- Make a DIY slip ‘n’ slide.
- Play tag.
- Go to a Farmer’s Market.
- Cheer for a local team.
- Have a water fight.
- Go for a walk.
- Make a lemonade stand.
- Play hopscotch.
- Play cards on a rainy day.
- Build a fort.
- Go camping.
- Paint rocks.
- Play in sensory bins.
- Run through long grass.
- Have a hula hoop contest.
- Make s’mores.
- Watch fireworks.
- Collect seashells on the beach.
- Walk barefoot.
- Play on the trampoline with a sprinkler running underneath.
- Build sandcastles.
- Have a three-legged race.
- Participate in the summer reading program at the library.
- Host a neighbourhood penny carnival.
- Make shrinkydinks.
- Read by flashlight under the covers.
- Play dress-up.
- Have fun with face paint.
- Put on a puppet show.
- Play hide and seek.
- Draw with sidewalk chalk.
- Go on scavenger hunts.
- Skip. (you can, but do not have to, sing “Skip to my Loo” while skipping!)
- Get dirty.
- Go to the playground.
- Plant a garden or even just a flower.
- Stay up late.
- Make a tin can and string telephone.
- Have a family fun night.
- Go on a road trip.
- Catch butterflies.
- Dig up worms.
- Write and mail letters to relatives, the old fashioned way, with stamps.
- Help out a neighbour.
- Play the telephone game. (sometimes called the whisper game)
- Make real lemonade.
- Red Rover, Red Rover, we call…
- Have a sack race.
You can print off a copy of A Bucket List for a Simpler Summer if you want to use it to create your own old- fashioned summer for your kids. I’d love to see pictures of how it goes.
If you are looking for other fun summer ideas, you may be interested in checking out my Summer Sensory Activities Series.
You will want to play this in a fairly large area so that everyone has room to manoeuvre. We have found that everyone develops a bit of their own style in this game. Some put their other leg way up high and use it as a counterbalance. Some crouch low to the ground with their whole body while others bend their upper half down. One of our sons places one foot on top of the other before crouching down.
For the decorations, I used our 
Chocolate Unicorn. All that’s needed for this game are chocolate cookies. Each player gets 10 cookies with the goal of stacking them on their forehead. The resulting stack must remain in place for 3 seconds.
Ponginator. For this game, you will need an empty egg carton and ping pong balls. The goal is to bounce ping pong balls so that 8 of them land in the egg carton within one minute.
Ball Drop. Land three ping pong balls in a single cup while standing on a chair. The trick is to not have the balls bounce out or knock the cup over.
Breakfast Scramble. To set up for this game, you will need to cut the front of a cereal box into pieces. Depending on the size of the cereal box and the age of the people participating in your Minute to Win It challenge, you can either cut the box in 8 or 16 pieces. The goal of the game is to reassemble the puzzle within a minute.
Elephant March. To prepare for this game, put a tennis ball in the end of a pair of panty hose or put a tennis ball in each leg of a pair of panty hose. Set 8 cups up on the floor to create a walkway. To play, the player must put the panty hose on their head and knock over all the cups by swinging their head from side to side. This is a pretty funny one!
This is a great recipe for kids to prepare themselves or cook with you. They only require 3 ingredients and a few minutes to bake.
The fairy wands are now ready for eating. We served ours with tea in our good tea cups for a special treat. My girls thought this was the best snack ever! I know it’s not the healthiest snack, but when you make something yourself, you know exactly how much sugar is in it (or in this case, on it) unlike buying packaged snacks.
For kids with autism and attachment issues due to adoption, eye contact can feel threatening. This activity promotes eye contact and safe physical touch in a fun and relaxed way.
Now it is time for everyone present to write words about that child in their body tracing. That child also writes positive words about themselves on their paper. Writing something positive about themselves was hard for some of our kids to do, but once they were able to write one thing, the rest seemed to come more easily.