For years I’ve watched other moms, I’ve watched them share their traditions, holiday traditions, back-to-school traditions, end-of-school-year traditions, all the traditions. I’ve seen the magic in these traditions and the excitement that wells deep in the soul. This made me believe that there is joy in everything, right?! If you can find joy at the beginning of the school year, you can find joy at the end of the school year.
When Hazel started Kindergarten I knew I wanted to start new traditions with her, they always talk about how you only have 18 summers with your kid and all that, so I took the bull by the horns and started some of my favorite summer traditions. Some that my girls remember, some that they don’t till the tradition comes, but in the end they love it, and it makes summer that much more magical!
Also, before we start, every time we do a fun summer activity we make sure we take a picture of it for our summer memory book. Here is a post where I share some details about the book, it will give you different ideas of things to do over the summer as well.
Last Day of School
For this, we get silly string and water balloons. You’ll want to prep your water balloons about 30 minutes before you go get your kids from school, I like to add a little bit of water into the water balloon bucket because Hazel loves to dump that on herself. haha! On our way to pick up on the last day we bring our silly string -make sure you shake it up really well while you’re waiting in the pick-up line. As soon as we pick up Hazel, and have the door closed we spray her with silly string and sing “SCHOOLS OUT FOR SUMMER!”
After we’ve picked her up we head home to the water balloon fight. Once we get home everyone runs out of the car to see who can get to the water balloons first. (I’ve found the more dramatic you make your movements as if you’re hurrying, the more fun they have, so you can bet I’m a pretty big clown at this moment. Haha!
At this point, you’re all soaked and have hundreds of water balloon pieces on the ground, but it’s such a fun moment. Don’t forget to take pictures of it all! We are trying these reusable water balloons this week, I’ll let you know how we feel about them.
Watch Parent Trap in a Fort with Oreos and peanut butter (or peanut butter Oreos)
This is pretty self-explanatory. Usually, on the first night of summer, we break out all the blankets, twinkle lights, and pillows, and make a fort. We turn on Parent Trap -the Lindsey Lohan version- get some Oreos and peanut butter, or peanut butter Oreos, and watch the movie. I like having pizza on hand too for when they get hungry for it.
Summer Bucket List
Kelle Hampton creates my favorite bucket lists for so many holidays, but her summer ones are some of our favorites. I like to print mine on a big custom blueprint paper, the most it’s ever cost was $4. Use this link to see what I’m talking about. This bucket list will give you so many fun ideas to keep summer fun for your kids.
Christmas in July
Another one of my favorite things, we started this tradition in 2020 and the girls eat it up every year. I have a lot of details about it in this Christmas in July post, and it also includes a fun printable for your kids to do. So essentially we spend July 25th doing all the Christmas things. I let the girls get out a box of Christmas decor and decorate the entertainment stand. We turn on Christmas music, bake and decorate cookies, wear Christmas colors, watch a Christmas movie, and lots more. It’s a wonderful day and brings so much cheer. Here are some links to things we use for Christmas in July.
Weekly Library Trips
The library once did a really fun summer reading program -but they recently changed it. Anyways, the girls love going to the library and picking new books to read. Sometimes we do our own summer reading program, and sometimes we just get books and read them, either way, it’s fun to go somewhere else, in the nice cool air conditioning.
Spa Day
The girls go crazy for this day. We get spa facemasks from the store, they wear their robes, put on slippers, put their hair up in a headwrap and play spa music. They lay back on the nugget and I put the face mask on them and cut and paint their nails.
Summer Camping Trip
We like to head up north when it’s really hot down in the valley and go camping. We go to the same place every year, find the same blackberries, look for ladybugs, and visit the same lake where we eat a picnic lunch. We have this magical tent that has a mesh top and it’s completely open to the trees. It’s such a beautiful view to just lay in the tent and look up at the trees. We bring games to play, things to color with, and anything else we think might be fun. Here is a list of some of our camping essentials. Instagram reel of our trip last year.
Head to the Beach
We usually go to San Diego over the summer, again another place to get out of the heat. We play in the ocean and the girls love going to Sea World and riding all the rides. But a beach trip doesn’t need to be spendy. Some of the best things we’ve done are picnics at the beach or just playing and building big sand castles
Go to a Local Farm
Mortimer Farms is one of our favorite places to visit. We pick strawberries, and blackberries, get to see all the cute animals, and play! It’s a quick half-a-day trip – you could potentially make it longer.
Visit with Cousins
Hanna can’t stop talking about how she loves being with her cousins. She loves staying with them and playing with them, she said it is her favorite part of summer. We have a standing “date” with our cousins every year and I will admit, it’s probably my favorite too!
Here are a few other ideas of what you could do during the summer. Sometimes it’s overwhelming thinking about all the things you can do, but then there are moments when everyone is just bored. So use this list as you wish, don’t let it overwhelm you, it’s here to help.
This blog post had a lot of links to different posts and an activity list of things we like to do or have done as well.
Make paintable chalk –Instagram Reel Linked Here
Make indoor Smores, it’s so hot in Arizona that we don’t often have a real fire, plus, these are really delicious. – Instagram Reel Linked Here
Here are some fun summer toys that we like to play with, we don’t have an inground pool so we use inflatable ones.
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