Summer Activities for Kids: Simple Ideas for Creative, Messy & Outdoor Play
Summer days with little ones are made for exploring, creating, getting messy and letting imaginations run wild.
But when you’ve got weeks of summer stretching ahead, sometimes you just need a few easy ideas up your sleeve to answer that familiar question: “What can we do today?”
So, we’ve gathered together some of our favourite summer activities for kids from the SFY Kids Club. From making magical perfume with flowers from the garden to painting pebble bugs and creating a dinosaur swamp, these are simple activities designed to encourage children to explore, experiment and, most importantly, have fun.
Some are perfect for sunny days in the garden, while others can rescue a rainy summer afternoon. Most use things you may already have tucked away at home, too.
Aprons on, sleeves rolled up... let's get creating!
Paint Your Own Bug Pebbles
First comes the exploring. Then comes the painting!
Head into the garden, park or somewhere you're permitted to collect them and see if your little ones can find some smooth pebbles ready to be transformed into colourful little creatures.
Once you've washed and dried them, get the paints out and see what you can create.
Ladybirds, bees, beetles, butterflies... or forget real bugs altogether and invent your own wonderfully weird and colourful species!
We love this activity because the fun doesn't have to end when the paintbrushes are put away. Once your pebble bugs are dry, take them back outside for an adventure. Children can decide where their bugs live, what they eat and what mischief they might get up to.
Perfect for: Arts and crafts, nature-loving kids, colour recognition and storytelling.
Follow our step-by-step Bug Pebble Painting activity to make your own colourful bug collection.
Create a Dinosaur Swamp
A few simple ingredients can transform an ordinary sensory tray into a squishy, gloopy prehistoric swamp ready for dinosaurs to explore.
Made from cornflour and water with a little green food colouring, the mixture has a fascinating texture. Press it and it can feel firm; relax your hand and it begins to ooze and flow.
Add some toy dinosaurs, stones, twigs and spoons and let your little ones decide what happens next.
They can stomp dinosaur footprints through the swamp, bury dinosaurs and stage a rescue mission, create prehistoric adventures or simply get their hands stuck into exploring the unusual texture.
Messy? Absolutely. Fun? Definitely.
Perfect for: Messy play, sensory exploration and introducing simple science through play.
Make Your Own Pretend Perfume
This is such a lovely activity for a sunny day in the garden.
Give your little explorers a bowl or jar and head outside together to hunt for colourful petals, interesting leaves and other little garden treasures.
Back at your mixing station, add water and let the potion-making begin! Children can stir, pour and experiment with their finds — and we like to add a little biodegradable glitter for an extra sprinkling of magic.
There are lots of opportunities for conversation along the way. What colours can you spot? Which petals are the biggest? Which flowers smell the sweetest? How do the different leaves feel?
And perhaps the most important question of all: what are you going to call your perfume?
It's a beautiful way to combine imaginative play with exploring and noticing the natural world around us.
Perfect for: Garden play, nature exploration, sensory play and big imaginations.
Discover our full Make Your Own Pretend Perfume summer activity.
A little note for grown-ups: some flowers and plants can be toxic, so always check that everything you collect is safe before using it. Children should be closely supervised throughout the activity.
Make Your Own Fluffy Sensory Dough
Squishy, crumbly, wonderfully fluffy and made using just two main ingredients — cornflour and shaving foam.
Our fluffy sensory dough is one of those brilliantly simple activities that can become something completely different depending on what you give your little ones to play with.
We added pebbles and toy construction vehicles and soon had diggers scooping, trucks transporting, little hands making patterns and an entire imaginary construction site taking shape.
It's fantastic for sensory exploration and open-ended play, with plenty of opportunities for children to squeeze, scoop, mould, build and experiment.
Perfect for: Sensory play, imaginative play and little construction fans.
Summer Doesn't Have to Be Complicated
We love a big day out as much as anyone, but some of our favourite summer moments happen at home.
A bowl of cornflour. A handful of petals. A few pebbles. Some old toy diggers.
Give children a few simple materials and the freedom to explore, and it's amazing to see where their imaginations take them.
These activities aren't about creating something perfect. They're about squishing, mixing, painting, discovering, asking questions and making a little bit of mess along the way.
So whether you're filling a long summer afternoon, looking for a garden activity or trying to keep everyone entertained when the British weather has other ideas, we hope there's something here to inspire your next little adventure.
And we'll keep adding more activities to the SFY Kids Club, so there'll always be another idea waiting for your little rascals.