GRISWOLDDAD
Parenting, Entertainment, and Travel Tips
CAMPS AND WORKSHOPS
Many companies have fun things to do for kids, most of which are even free. Some you have to get out 'n about to do (which are discussed more in depth on the "Things to Do Out and About" page. Others are website based. Here's a running list I've found:
Home Depot Kids Workshops -
Very similar to what Lowes offers above, Home Depot has their own kid workshops, again building a monthly project out of wood. Unlike Lowes, whose schedule is ever changing, Home Depot is always the first Saturday of the month. These workshops also have the occasional character builds, such as the Minions! To me the big difference between Home Depot and Lowes is that after you build your project at Lowes, you apply stickers to it. When finished at Home Depot...you PAINT!
Bass Pro Shop “Summer Camp” -
Bass Pro Shop has fun, educational "classes" and activities each summer that they collectively call their "Summer Camp". While the classes repeat weekly and the activities are unchanging each week, for the most part, the craft changes each week over the summer, so plan accordingly. Classes cover shooting and hunting, fishing, archery, water safety, travel safety, bird watching , kayaking, backyard adventures, and camping. The activities include shooting a real bow and real arrows, a nerf bow and arrow shooting range, a bb gun range, and usually only one week during the summer, a catch and release pond with real fish!
ALSO, Bass Pro has a good setup of activities and free photos at holidays such as Christmas, Easter, and Halloween. Free picture with Santa and the Easter Bunny! The Christmas setup is especially nice, as it's made to look like Santa's workshop or house, complete with a mailbox to send letters to Santa and animatronic elves!
Google “Summer Camp” -
Google has a summer camp! I just found this today...apparently it's already a week in, but you can still do the previous week's fun activities. There are really neat activities and learning videos led by "expert scientists in each field" that Google has broken out into 4 weeks of fun for kids. The weekly categories are "Ocean Week," "Space Week," "Nature Week," and "Music Week." Each week has correlating activities and learning. Plus kids earn printable badge...s and a printable badge tracker to put them on. This sounds like a lot of fun to me, and it presents learning in a fun way that I don't think my kids will view as a sneaky way for them to be in "school." Basically, it looks to me like they've taken the questions little kids ask and found a scientist that explains it in ways that all ages will understand! Example questions: "How do you live in space?" "What's at the bottom of the ocean?" and so on.
https://camp.withgoogle.com/?utm_source=google.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=spacehpp
LeapFrog “Summer Camp” –
Similar to Google's Summer Camp above, LeapFrog has a series of correlating videos and activities for each week over the summer that teaches everything from geography and types of animals to writing. Each themed week is complete with learning videos, activities to get out and do as well as printable fun activities and articles for the parents to read and even book suggestions based on age for the kids to read.
http://www.leapfrog.com/en-us/learning-path/theme-category-pages/2015-summer-camp
Q4Kidz “Fun Daily Questions Kids Will Want to Answer” -
These really get your kid talking. As the tagline says, these are questions your kid will WANT to answer, plus it proves to be a really fun way to interact with your children and really show their imaginative sides and personality. Question examples: "If you could have 1 superpower, what would it be?" "If your voice was replaced by an animal sound for the next hour, which animal would you choose...and why?"
http://www.q4kidz.org/?utm_source=%3C%3CMCID%3E%3E&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=q4kidz
ReadyRosie “Ready for School, Ready for the World”, Daily learning activities for small children -
I came to this one through our boys' school. To me, some of the videos and activities lean a little young for school age children, but this is perfect for preschoolers. It provides daily fun learning activities combined with a video that really get you interacting with your children in a fun way.
Summer Camps
There are of course countless summer camps with varying content from video game camps and maker camps to cooking camps!