5 Ideas for Fun Things To Do That Involve Air Conditioning

With the summer sun rising higher in the sky every day, the temperatures outside are rising so much that you may often feel penned inside with your kids. If you are looking for some fun and engaging ways to keep your clan entertained without getting too hot this summer, here are five great ideas to try!

1. Have an Indoor Treasure Hunt

One way to keep kids entertained without even leaving the house is to have a home made treasure hunt. Make a set of clues for each player, or have each player make a set of clues of their own and then swap. Consider using rhyming clues for small children to make it more fun. Each clue should lead to another clue, and so forth, until the player arrives at the treasure. You can use envelopes to hide your clues, and offer a small price such as a toy or a sweet to the person who solves the riddles and wins the treasure first!

2. Create a Family Recipe Book

Another fun family project that is guaranteed to eat up a lot of time is to get the kids involved in creating a family recipe book. Not only will this be an entertaining way to spend your afternoons during the summer, but will also teach your kids an important skill they will definitely use when they move off to college or the work force. Not only that, by the end of the summer your kids will have a healthy list of recipes they can use to make dinners for the whole family! No more slaving away over a hot stove for mom and dad.

3. Indoor Camping

When it is too hot to go camping outside (or the state park is just too darn far away) consider setting up indoors for a picnic and camp out. Give kids a variety of materials, bedsheets, rope, cardboard boxes, pieces of foam, or even an actual tent, and watch their creative instincts go wild as they build amazing forts of their own. They will get a thrill out of reading spooky campfire stories with a flashlight in their tents. Bonus points for setting up a picnic blanket with crackers, cheese, and apple slices!

4. Head to the Library

The Library is a great place to take the kids when it gets too hot outside for playing outside. Many libraries offer reading programs for kids during the summer that can be extremely helpful in instilling a lifelong love of reading in your children. They will get to earn points and often win prizes the more books they read. Additionally, many libraries offer story time for younger children. Beyond entertaining kids for a few hours letting them roam and read in the library, they often come home with hours of entertainment!

5. See a Medieval Exhibit

For yet another educational opportunity that will keep you cool is to take the family to a medieval entertainment exhibit. Your kids will learn a ton about what life was like back in the middle ages as they see trained actors in period costume, dressed as noblemen and ladies of the court, or in shining metal armor as knights. They will love getting to eat an authentic medieval meal with their hands while watching a real jousting exhibit right before their very eyes.