Fun summer activities for kids: ideas you’ll want to try in childcare and at home
In the hot summer, children spend more time indoors both at daycare and at home.
For those wondering, “What can we play indoors with the kids?”, here are some perfect summer activities.
Games using water and ice are especially popular this season.
Cool sensations and hands-on activities are exciting for children.
It’s also a great experience to help them feel connected to nature or to incorporate traditional summer events—these memories really stay with kids.
Try these ideas at home, in daycare, or in kindergarten.
Through summertime activities, let’s help children create lots of fun memories!
- [Nursery/Kindergarten] Water play ideas that kids will love
- Let’s enjoy summer-only fun! Cool and refreshing play ideas
- Handkerchief and Towel Play! A Collection of Fun Play Ideas
- [Nursery/Daycare] Recommended for Summer Festivals! A Collection of DIY Game Ideas
- Perfect for summer: Fun at the pool and water spots! Water play games
- Fun activities with newspaper! Recreation games kids will love
- [Childcare] Fun craft ideas and craft activities perfect for summer
- [Childcare] Recommended for summer and winter! Ice play ideas
- [Childcare] August activities: sensory play to enjoy summer, crafts, songs, and hand play (fingerplay), etc.
- [Childcare] Perfect for June! Indoor play ideas to incorporate into childcare
- [Childcare] Summer wall display ideas: fun summer craft activities
- Childcare: Ideas for activities to enjoy in July
- [Childcare] A roundup of summer craft ideas to enjoy with 2-year-olds
Fun summer activities for kids: 41–50 ideas you’ll want to try at daycare and at home
Water play & mud play
Summer-only fun! Let’s enjoy water play and mud play.
Many kids are usually told to avoid touching mud, but feeling the texture of mud and making mud dumplings is so much fun, isn’t it? After getting muddy, rinse off with water play to get clean—it’s fun, refreshing, and kills two birds with one stone.
You can make a big puddle in the sandbox, build waterways to play with, or fill a tub with water and enjoy some fishing.
Have fun exploring different stations and free play areas!
So cold! Sensory play
Cool sensory play is a summertime classic.
When you touch something cold, the summer heat won’t bother you as much.
Speaking of sensory play, slime is a staple, but there’s also moon sand play and making pretend ice treats from ice.
Don’t just enjoy the finished results—take the opportunity to have fun with the making process, too.
For slime, gradually mix borax solution into liquid laundry glue.
To make moon sand, combine flour with baby oil.
For the ice treats, prepare colored water in various hues, insert popsicle sticks, and freeze them.
Fluffy ice cream
Recommended when you want to make a three-dimensional piece! Here’s a fluffy ice cream idea.
Mix shaving foam with glue and a coloring agent to make foam.
Use a bit less glue than shaving foam to keep it fluffy.
Cut construction paper into a cone shape, draw a pattern, and attach it to the base.
Pile the foam on top of the cone to represent the ice cream, then add stickers or drawings in the blank spaces on the backing paper to finish.
Sprinkling powdered pastel on the foam as a topping might make it look pretty.
Ice Cream Kendama
Delicious ice cream turned into a kendama! Here’s a craft idea where, if you succeed at the kendama, it becomes an ice cream.
Draw a cone pattern on brown construction paper and mark the middle of either long side.
Align the end of a piece of kite string with the mark and tape it down, then roll the paper into a cone shape and secure it with tape.
It’s safer to tape down the stringed area as well.
Attach the other end of the kite string to the center of a sheet of newspaper with tape, and crumple the newspaper into a ball.
Cover it with your favorite color of origami paper from the top and secure it to make the ice cream part.
Draw patterns on the ice cream, and you’re done!
Collage Ice Cream
Here are some ice cream craft ideas that also let you enjoy making collages.
Cut the cup or cone bases out of cardboard, then decorate them by drawing patterns with pens or using colored paper.
For the ice cream scoops, basically cut circles out of construction paper, and have fun adding various toppings with small pieces of colored paper or stickers.
It’s also cute to make “collage ice cream” by gluing torn newspaper or flyers onto the round paper scoops.
Once your ice cream is done, attach it to the base to finish.