50 Ideas for Your Summer Outdoor Bucket List

At the start of every season, we create an outdoor fun list. Together, we dream up some things we’d like to do, write those ideas down and then try to make them happen. Some of the ideas on our summer outdoor bucket list are simple, but others require more time – things like cherry picking or fishing. Of course, more than any other time of year, we also plan for lots of downtime to make room in our lives for enjoying summer’s simple pleasures.

Instead of sharing what’s on our family’s summer outdoor bucket list this year (you can see our 2010 and 2012 lists for past examples), I thought I’d share some ideas to help you make your own. These 50 ideas for your summer outdoor bucket list should keep the kids entertained and inspired all season long.

20 Things to Do in Your Backyard

• Build a backyard weather station
• Chase butterflies
• Create a chalk garden
• Create a mobile backyard beach
• Design a fairy garden
• Dig in the dirt
• Do some backyard bird watching
• Go on a summer nature scavenger hunt
• Go on a summer nature photo scavenger hunt
• Have a backyard campout
• Host an outdoor tea party
• Host a backyard movie night
• Hunt for backyard critters
• Make a nature play station
• Play with mud: Make mudcakes or mud prints, try mud painting or a enjoy a backyard mud bath
• Run through the sprinklers
• Set up a playhouse, fort, cardboard box or other kid’s-only space
• Stargaze
• Take a glow stick walk
• Throw water balloons or have a water balloon toss

10 Ways to Explore in Your Community

• Explore a new-to-you neighborhood park
• Go fish
• Go on a field trip to a local natural history museum, science center, nature center or other museum
• Hunt for a geocache
• Go stargazing
• Make drip castles at the beach
• Pick fresh fruits
• Take a hike
• Tour tide pools
• Visit a state or national park

10 Nature crafts

• Build a dragon cave
• Create with clay and natural materials
• Design your own fairy house
• Keep a summer adventure journal
• Light up your space with recycled bottle lanterns
• Make nature bracelets
• Make pressed flower keepsakes
• Make scented flower petal potions
• Recycle a toilet paper roll into a bird or a bird feeder
• Run with wind streamers

5 Summer Science Experiments

• Create an outdoor LEGO solar system
• Grow crystals
• Make a sundial
• Make a rainbow
• Perform water balloon splatter tests

5 Tastes of Summer

• Enjoy a summer BBQ
• Picnic in the park
• Make fresh-squeezed lemonade
• Roast s’mores over a backyard campfire
• Savor a sno-cone

PLUS ideas for Summer Fun in and Around Los Angeles

• Best beaches for families in Los Angeles
• Summer activities in Big Bear
• The big list of outdoor adventures for Los Angeles kids
• Where to keep cool outside in Los Angeles this summer

Need a few more ideas? Check out my summer outdoor fun board on Pinterest, where I collect ideas for summer play and summer bucket lists from around the web. And don’t miss your A-to-Z guide to summer backyard nature fun.