I
n the dog days of summer, kids
love to cool off by playing in
water, but they get tired of the
same old sprinkler or kiddie pool. Here
are eight easy and inexpensive
DIY outdoor activities to keep
kids of all ages both occupied
and cool!
— by Tiffany Doerr Guerzon
Soda Bottle
Sprinkler
Turn a two-liter soda
bottle into a sprin-
kler! Take a clean,
two-liter plastic
bottle and drill
holes all over the
sides of the bottle
using a handheld drill.
You can use a smaller bit and
drill lots of tiny holes, or use a
larger bit and drill fewer holes.
Next, attach a hose connector to
the end of a garden hose. Attach
the bottle to the hose by screw-
ing it into the connector. Turn
on the hose and let the kids
play! This sprinkler is fun
on its side on the grass,
or toss the hose with
the attached sprinkler
over the swingset or a
tree branch to make a
“shower.”
Liquid
Chalk Paint
For outdoor art that
is a step above sidewalk
chalk, try making your own liq-
uid chalk paint. First, purchase jumbo-
sized washable chalk from your local
dollar store. Now you will need to break
up the chalk into a powder. This can be
accomplished by either putting the chalk
into a sealed plastic bag and pulverizing
the chalk with a ham-
mer, or “grate” the
chalk using the small-
est holes of a cheese
grater.
Add the pow-
dered chalk to a food
storage container, and
mix in water. About
one-half cup of water
per jumbo size piece
of chalk makes a
10 WNY Family August 2019
aim at! One way is to simply draw tar-
gets with washable sidewalk chalk onto
a fence. Draw several circles, starting
with a small “bullseye” in the center,
then add three or four more
circles around the bullseye,
each one bigger than the
last. Assign each circle a point
value and let the kids compete
to see who can hit the most
points! Plastic disposable
drinking cups also make
great targets. Line up
plastic cups side-by-
side onto a deck railing
or stack upside down
into a pyramid shape
and shoot away!
Water
Piñata
nice consistency. You will
have a few chunks, but
the mixture should be
mostly liquified. Repeat
the process with differ-
ent colored chalk until
you have several differ-
ent colors of chalk paint,
each in its own container.
Give the kids paint brushes
and let them paint the fence,
concrete porch, or sidewalk,
then turn the hose on their creation
to wash it away and begin again.
Let the kids release some
pent-up energy and cool off with
a piñata filled with water! Take a
plastic grocery sack and fill about
halfway with water. Using the handles
of the bag, tie the water-filled bag over
a tree branch. The bag doesn’t need to
be sealed. Let the kids hit the water bag
with tennis rackets, plastic bats, or a
cardboard wrapping paper tube. What a
great way to recycle those plastic gro-
cery bags! These water pinatas won’t
last long, but getting wet is the point of
this activity, so who cares?
Water Race Track
or Lazy River
Kids love to watch stuff float down
a stream! Here are two ways to create a
mini river or water race track. For a race
track, purchase a short length of a gut-
ter (the kind on roofs) from your local
Squirt Gun Target
home improvement store. Set the gutter
Practice
up against the seat of a lawn chair in the
When the kids get tired of squirt-
backyard so that the gutter slopes down
ing each other, set up targets for them to
to the ground. Place a garden hose at the
top of the gutter and
turn on the water.
Kids can float leaves,
dandelions, bathtub
toys down the wa-
terway. You can even
set up two “tracks”
side-by-side and hold
a race! Or, make a la-
zier river by shaping
aluminum foil into a
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