Ideas for Summer Fun 2023
Summer is all about relaxing and enjoying unstructured time together! But families and kids thrive on structure and activities and, sometimes, all that togetherness can be a lot! So here are just a few ideas we’d like to share about things that can be done right here in Atlanta or even in your home! Hope these suggestions get your imagination going, too!
Out and About
Visit the Buford Highway Farmer's Market, 5600 Buford Highway NE, Doraville
Don't go "shopping"-- go like you are visiting a tourist attraction
Take your time in the produce section, pick up and feel the different fruits (kiwi, coconut, star fruit, etc.)
Check out the seafood section-- so many kinds of fish!
Visit the Atlanta Botanical Gardens
The Children's Garden is wonderful!
Walk the Canopy Walk!!
Watch bees buzzing in their hive
"Paint" with water on the slate wall
Visit the Splash Pad for cool fun!
Don’t miss Trolls: Save the Humans by Thomas Dambo – an exhibition featuring six of the artist’s enormous folklore-inspired sculptures built from reclaimed materials
At Shows for Seedlings, on the Great Lawn under the shade of the elm trees, enjoy a variety of live performances by some of Atlanta’s most beloved children’s musicians and storytellers on Fridays, May through September at 10:00 and 10:45 a.m.
Visit the Center for Puppetry Arts
Beat the heat inside at the Jim Henson muppet exhibit!
"Charlotte’s Web" puppet show will be presented through May 21st!
Look for Suessical Kids put on by Act3 Productions (over in the Trader Joe’s shopping center!). Scheduled for the weekend of June 9th, 10th, and 11th, this play is put on by kids for kids!
Check out the Fulton County Library! It's a great break from the heat of summer in those afternoons that crawl by! Here's the link to the Library Events-- look for the Alpharetta, Sandy Springs or East Roswell Branches for Family Saturday Matinees, Family Storytime (Wednesdays), Build with LEGOS, Family Game Night, Mr. Damon’s Puppet Shadow Theater, Magic Show, Inflatable Balloon Show,and more-- some things are every week and some are just once! Click here!
Visit nearby playgrounds-- Morgan Falls and Hammond Park, or venture further afield to the Dunwoody Nature Center or Brook Run (it's Dunwoody Food Truck Thursdays all summer long at Brook Run starting at 5pm!) or Roswell Area Park (can you say, duck pond?!).
How about a Sprayground? Two different Spraygrounds are available in nearby Roswell! One is on Riverside Road and one is on Fouts Road in Roswell. For $2, your child can enjoy hopping in and out of unpredictable sprays of water! Check out Roswell Spraygrounds here! (FYI: Children under age 3 must wear a swim diaper)
Check out Warbington Farms and pick your own strawberries! Located in no-too-far Cumming, Georgia, strawberry picking usually begins in mid-April. The farm is open through June 10th with “Hey” rides to see the cows, barnyard animals, a bubble station and much more!
Further away in Oxford, Georgia (about an hour from Atlanta toward Covington) is Mitcham Farm where, in addition to strawberries, blueberries and blackberries can be picked in June & July!
Have you ever ridden the MARTA train with your kids? You really ought to! They LOVE it! Go all the way to the airport!! Then dine at TGIFridays, IHOP or Burger King in the Atrium, visit a gift shop, watch a plane or two and head back home on the train! Especially great on a rainy day!
Have you ever actually visited the Big Chicken? It's an operational Kentucky Fried Chicken located at the intersection of Roswell Rd and Cobb Parkway! Tune in to AM820 on your radio and listen to the chicken talk!!
The Children's Museum of Atlanta is an interactive museum for kids and has a special Toddler and Preschooler section and the museum is fun for the whole family! There are storytellers almost every dat and a Featured Exhibit of Shaun the Sheep Exhibit May 13th - September 4th! Click here for more information.
The museum of the Fernbank Science Center near Decatur is FREE!! Not the planetarium but the Science Center-- dinosaurs, a real Apollo Command Module, frogs, snakes, turtles and more are on permanent exhibit.
Saturday, July 22nd, 2023 at Piedmont Park, 11am-6pm-- the Atlanta Ice Cream Festival! Need we say more?!
How about the Georgia Renaissance Festival? Saturdays and Sundays, April 15-June 4th, 2023, 10:30am-6pm. The Georgia Renaissance Festival is celebrating its 38th year!! They must be doing something right!!
Did you know there’s a drive-through Wild Animal Park in Georgia? Pine Mountain, Georgia, about an hour south of the airport, plays host to Wild Animal Safari with a Drive-Thru Safari, Animal Encounters and Walkabout Adventure Zoo!
Family Bonding
Schedule time for DAD to take the kids to breakfast once a month during the summer (kids LOVE spending time with Dad!)-- Waffle House, Dunkin' Donuts, IHOP are all sources of great fun for kids!
Do a scavenger hunt around the playroom for things that are red (or blue or yellow!)-- kids LOVE spotting things and their confidence grows with each new identified item!
Go outside and look for the fireflies at dusk-- fireflies are magical to children!
Grab a roll of aluminum foil and the garden hose and head outside to make your own river bed! Scrunch the edges of the foil into a winding "river" bed. Use rocks to hold the tin foil down (and maybe create some little obstacles). Turn on the hose and see how your river runs! Let them float grass or leaves or plastic balls down their river.
Let your kids color the sidewalk or driveway with sidewalk chalk! Or make a hopscotch design and teach them how to play-- don't remember? Then, this is a MUST!
Make your own bowling pins with 10 empty water bottles, empty chocolate milk bottles (hey, drinking them is half the fun!), even Solo cups! Any tennis ball will do! Set 'em up and see how many your kids can knock down!
One afternoon, play in the rain! Kids love playing in their clothes in the rain! Have dry towels waiting in the carport or garage, whisk them to the bath (for more water fun!), and have a early pajama night!
Educational
At home, try this Ice Cream Math idea from the Fun-A-Day site (or try any of the other early learning activities)
Try sorting pom poms on the floor! You can ask your child to put purple pom poms in the purple shape or put purple pom poms in the triangle! Find other wonderful activities at Teaching Mama.
Support your child’s phonemic awareness with a variety of games— and you can do them anywhere! Phonemic awareness is the ability to notice and play with individual sounds in spoken words. It’s all about sounds, and is a major component of literacy in preschool and PreK. Rhyming, segmenting syllables, alliteration, isolating and matching initial sounds in words, and blending are all part of phonemic awareness. Here are some phonemic awareness activities you can do at home! This article explains phonemic awareness in another way!
Ask, “What sound does this word start with? Fig.” fff (Don’t say “eff” or “fuh” make the fff sound!)
Then, “What OTHER words start with that sound?” Fun, fickle, fog, fantastic (You can use these words to demonstrate alliteration!)
“What words rhyme with fig?” Big, Pig, Dig
While kids usually have LOTS of screen time, we really love the way this video brings to life a favorite book: Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin by LLoyd Moss. This book has so many layers! An introduction to a variety of instruments, counting in a slightly different way, alliteration, rhyme— even tongue twisters! Look for books that do several things at once and your child will find it interesting for a long time to come!
Did you know that Zoo Atlanta has a Panda cam? Tune in periodically throughout the day to see where the giant pandas are sleeping now!
The Georgia Aquarium has several live streaming feeds!
The Beluga Whale cam is a serene and peaceful glimpse into the underwater life of Beluga Whales.
The Jelly cam shows the constant movement of the jellyfish. Almost as mesmerizing as a lava lamp!
The Shark cam shows these giant predators and the fish who seem to live peacefully with them.
The See Otter cam shows these extremely playful creatures and it’s so fun to watch them!
For a virtual membership to the Cincinatti Zoo & Botancial Garden, you can see a livestream of Fiona the Hippo! Watch her story here in a series of videos.
Cooking Together
Kids love to help in the kitchen. There are lots of fun things to cook together that won't make too big of a mess and have easy cleanup.
Make your own pizza! Get a Boboli crust or round pita bread, some marinara sauce, grated mozzarella and any toppings your family enjoys! Kids can spread the marinara on the pizza with the back of a spoon, pick the toppings they like (or you!), and sprinkle the mozzarella on top! For a twist, use a bagel instead of pizza dough!
Speaking of bagels... get a bag of plain mini-bagels, a variety of flavored, whipped cream cheeses-- strawberry, pineapple, honey pecan, garden vegetable, plastic knives or spoons (really young kids can use the back of a spoon to spread), and let your kids practice spreading cream cheese on the bagels. They can lick their fingers when they are finished! Add fruit and it's a healthy snack!
A variety of muffin mixes only require water and eggs. Kids can measure and dump in the water. Have them crack an egg into a small bowl (so you can check for eggshells!) and then dump into the mix. Kids can stir, stir, stir!! Kids can also spoon the mix into the muffin tin!
Made real mashed potatoes lately-- or ever? Now's your chance! (Get a potato masher if you don't have one.) Get your little darlin to mash away!! Add milk and butter and stir!
How about a parfait-- everybody LOVES parfait! This is simply spooning from one thing to another! Your child can spoon yogurt, then granola, then yogurt, then raspberries (or blueberries or already sliced strawberries) into a tall, clear glass and top off with yogurt or whipped cream.
Throw in a little science and make a root beer float! Vanilla ice cream, slowly add root beer, watch the incredulity!! Tasty, too! Try ice cream varieties and vote on your favorite!
Bake (large) cookies together and then make ice cream sandwiches! Let everybody pour, stir, roll, flatten, make patterns with forks, sprinkle sugar, use cookie cutters-- it's not the product, it's the process!!! If you semi-melt ice cream, spread it on wax paper on a cookie sheet and re-freeze, you can use cookie cutters to make ice cream circles that match the cookies you baked!
How about strawberry shortcake? Use angel food mini-cakes (or lemon mini-muffins in a pinch) and let your little ones put strawberries (whole or sliced) on top. Then, get the Reddi-Whip and top off-- the kids will LOVE the noise the Reddi-Whip makes!
Deviled eggs? Once you've boiled the eggs the kids can help! Put the boiled egg yolks in a bowl, let them add relish, mayonnaise or mustard (whatever you like best!) and let the kids smash and stir! They can spoon the mix into the egg whites and even shake on a little paprika!
Have your little darlin’ shuck corn! Little fingers are actually better at pulling those silky strands off the corn and it will occupy them while you are cooking other things!
Super simple ideas include rolling deli turkey or ham! For fun, skewer with a decorative toothpick.
If your kids are okay with toothpicks, they can make deli-kabobs using cheese cubes, deli meats and grape tomatoes! OR Fruit kabobs with banana slices, blueberries, grapes and strawberries.