Pre teen party games

As your kids stroll, task them with finding things in every color of the rainbow: a red car, an orange sign, a yellow dandelion, and so on.

You can turn it into a friendly competition, or simply enjoy discovering the many colors of your neighborhood! Make your backyard picnic feel even more special with this printable picnic set from Handmade Charlotte!

A sponge ball fight is just as much fun, plus you can reuse the sponge balls all summer! To make them, simply cut cheap kitchen spongers into strips lengthwise. Once the knot is secured, pull the ends of sponge strips to separate them and create a ball. Throw several of your homemade sponge balls into a bucket of water, and let the kids go nuts.

This activity requires a water table or large tub that you can fill with water. Honestly, if you have a young child, I highly recommend getting a water table anyway. If you want to stick to homemade, create colorful ice cubes by adding different food colors to an ice cube mold.

Let your child experiment with colors and color mixing by putting the bath drops or colored ice cubes into the water table. Head to This Grandma is Fun to get all the details on bringing this game to life! Give your child a cup of water and a few different sized paint brushes. This is another easy peasy way to spice up your trusty water table. Create some simple fish cut-outs from the foam or sponge, and attach a paper clip to each one. To make it educational, you can add numbers, letters, and shapes to your fish and have your child fish for specific things!

Anyone else have a slight online shopping problem? With this cardboard house craft idea from Whimsy Love, you can repurpose the packaging and feel a bit less guilty about the vice. While Whimsy Love used hot glue to hold together the walls of these houses, some slightly less aesthetic masking tape can do the trick. Help your kids build the bones of the houses, and then let them go wild decorating them with stickers, paint, photos from magazine, or any other craft supplies lying around!

To pull it off, task your children with building an awesome fort with blankets, cushions, and whatever else they can find. Bonus: if you trust the big kids, let them sleep in there all night. For whatever reason, this will be the highlight of their day.

Or any day, for that matter! Spa treatments on deck can include manicures, pedicures, homemade face masks and hair masks, and massages. Nothing makes my daughter feel more like a big kid than doing a fitness video with dad in the living room. Pro tip: hip hop dance tutorials are especially hilarious. You may have spent a night or two or 6, in college playing beer pong You can fill the cups with water, or spoil your kids with something like juice or even chocolate milk.

This brilliant idea comes from speech pathologist Rachel Hicks, M. Best of all, you only need some chalk and pavement! Include characters, a setting, a problem, and eventually a solution. Make the story as silly, surprising, and long as the pavement will allow! Parents with a green thumb can facilitate this enriching activity, ideal for giving children their first introduction to botany.

Ah, sock puppets are a classic. To make this an educational activity, let your child pick their favorite book from the bookshelf. With markers, pipe cleaners, googly eyes, and whatever they can find in the art supply bin, have your child create the characters from their book of choice, using whatever pictures or descriptions they can find in the story.

Then, using the book as their script, have them put on a sock puppet show! From how high can you drop an egg onto grass without it cracking? Have your kids make their hypotheses, and then put them to the test! This is another engaging activity to work with children on their prediction and sequencing skills.

To set up, place small plastic animals in ice cube or muffin trays and fill them with water. Nothing says summer like playing with bubbles in the sunshine which is why they make several appearances on this list. In this craft from Studio DIY, your children can create abstract bubble paintings while they blow! Rocks are one craft supply that virtually everyone has at hand. Have your kiddos collect a variety of rocks and spend an afternoon creating a beautiful painted rock garden!

Think about ink. Learn how ink is made and what makes it permanent. Then get artistic with ink blots , thumbprint art or coffee filter prints. You don't need fancy art supplies to be creative — let their imaginations go wild! Learn about temperature by nibbling chocolate. Discover the science behind melting and cooling chocolate in the "tempering" process as you create scrumptious treats for the whole family to share. Dive into th e coral reef.

Follow the real-life adventures of underwater explorers and test your knowledge of coral reefs with fun online games. Make like glue and stick together.

Ever wonder why glue doesn't stick to the inside of the glue jar? Find out how various kinds of glues are made , then make your own homemade glue with flour, water, sugar and vinegar. Use it to create decorations and family gifts. Experiment with chemical reactions. Oil and water don't mix very well, but add some food coloring and Alka-Seltzer and see how chemistry creates your very own lava lamp! When life gives you lemons — make batteries.

You don't have to be Benjamin Franklin to create your own electricity. It's easy to generate your own battery power. All you need is a lemon, a dime and a penny to make a homemade lemon battery. Create your own fog machine. Fog seems very mysterious, but it's actually just a cloud that's close to the ground. Find out how fog is generated and where the foggiest places on earth are.

Then gather up a bottle, hot water, rubbing alcohol and an ice cube — and make some fog. You May Also Like: 5 fun and free websites for kids. You are leaving AARP. Please return to AARP. You'll start receiving the latest news, benefits, events, and programs related to AARP's mission to empower people to choose how they live as they age. You can also manage your communication preferences by updating your account at anytime.

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