Great kid ideas you don’t want to miss! & a blog hop

I am going to share a few of my favorite posts wth Great kid ideas for you, from our Summer Series. I am sharing this series with some of my favorite bloggers, so here are a few today. Check back again for a few more later in the week!

 

If you missed mine- 12 free summer ideas for kids, be sure to check it out, as well.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

My friend, Gabby, over at Mamagab.net is introducing us to a great way to make and share busy bags! If you haven’t made them yet, you have to check out this page.

Mamagab says “Busy Bags are fun all-in-one activities that keep little hands busy and learning without tons of attention from mom. Many moms love to use them for keeping the kids busy while prepping dinner while others bring them to the doctor’s office. But when we organized our recent Busy Bag exchange this summer, moms were really thrilled to use them to keep the kids quiet on road trips and flights across the country.

While it’s easy to make your own busy bags, it’s a real time and money saver to host a busy bag swap. Instead of making 10 different busy bags, you can make 10 of the same busy bags, get together with friends and swap. When you’re finished, you’ll all leave with great activities to keep your children busy and learning.”

Here is an example of one of the items that she uses in her busy bag: This is just one of many adorable ideas. You have to check them out!!

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Paula at Beauty Through Imperfection is sharing her 30 best ideas for Indoor summer fun!! This is a hit in our family because our six year old wants to stay out of the heat! 😉 I will give you a sneak peek at them, so that you know what you can expect when you head over to her page.

• Make Personalized Coloring Sheets from Family Photos – This is so easy and fun! My kids love coloring pictures of themselves and the extra detailing on the images can be a great challenge for an older child!
• Make your own Paper dolls – Grab a few clothing catalogs (JC Penny’s HUGE catalog works great!), and cut out some of the images to use as custom paper dolls.
• Make Your own Flashcards – Fun tutorial to make toddler flash cards using pictures from magazines
• Cardboard box – Will it be a garage? a castle? a tent? a fishing pond? The possibilities are endless! I’m amazed by how many hours my son will play with a big cardboard box! We color our boxes and add lots of stickers to give them a bit of personality.
• Have a board game marathon
• Bake cookies!
• Read a story & then act it out togetherFind more great ideas by clicking right here!!

 

 

 

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Whitney at Beauty in the Mess is sharing her 15 free and cheap OUTDOOR summer ideas (right up my 5 year old’s alley- he loves to be outside!)

Here is a sneak peek to what she is sharing:

Tour de Parks. There are several parks in our area and even two in our neighborhood. The kids and I decided that once a week we would go to a different park in the area. Sometimes meeting friends and sometimes just us. Occasionally, Daddy even gets to tag along! The kids have loved this! They can run out their energy, meet new friends, and I get to enjoy making memories with them. When we stay at home, I get so caught up in my never-ending to-do list. I have a hard time breaking away to enjoy those little moments. But when we’re at the park, it’s just us. No phone, no to-do list. We can simply enjoy being together.

Sidewalk Chalk. My kids love to pull out the sidewalk chalk. Sometimes they get carried away and it turns into wall chalk and door chalk, but it usually washes off. Unless they use the pink chalk. Then we just enjoy their art for awhile. I usually draw a hopscotch board on the ground and they hop from square to square. They don’t quite understand the concept of throwing the stone into the square and jumping over that one, but that’s okay. They are having fun.

Bubbles. My absolute favorite bubbles are the ones from Gymboree. But they aren’t cheap. I usually blow the Gymboree bubbles and let the kids pop them. When fill up the bubble blower that the kids use, I put in the bubble solution from the Dollar Store. They love playing with the bubbles and they are working their face muscles and lip placement. This is an excellent activity for my son with Apraxia.

Find out her other favorite activities HERE.

 

 
——————————————/–

Welcome to bloglovin’ and blog hopping Thursday once again! We are so happy to be joining together to bring you the bloglovin’ Blog Hop to help grow our blogs. It’s always a great idea to have many ways for friends to follow your blog.  

 

Each week we rotate one other social media to follow. This week we are adding your blog and Google+ along with bloglovin’! Friends can hop on over to visit your blog.  

 

A huge thank you to everyone who joined us last week. We hope you made some new friends!

Please follow each hostess, and leave us a comment so we can return the follow! Please follow your hostesses and visit other at least 3 or 4 other links!