Today my friend and I sat down and planned activities for every Tuesday and Thursday during the summer. We did this last year too and really enjoyed having a schedule (she’s a teacher so she’s all about the schedule!) This year we’ll be meeting up with our mom friends and their little ones at the local zoo, a beach, the firehall, a wading pool, for bowling and for LOTS of nature walks. One of the activities I am most looking forward to is having the kids decorate their bikes and then go riding in their own parade. We’re lucky to have a great park with a paved trail that runs through it. If you have a neighborhood with a good spot to ride this could be a fun activity to get everyone on your street involved in. With Canada Day and Independence Day both coming up this week this would be a great addition to your holiday celebrations.

Our plan is to have all of the supplies out and give the kids half an hour to do the decorating. The supplies we’ll be using are:

• Paper triangles and poles so they can make their own flags
• Cardboard rectangles with holes that they can turn in to license plates
• Foam stickers (letters are fun so they can personalize their bikes or helmets with their names)
• Streamers and garland
• Playing cards with clothespins (to create an engine sound)
• Large artificial flowers
• Tinfoil (because you can create so many neat things with tinfoil)
• Small balloons
• Chenille straws (growing up we always called them pipe cleaners)

For some other ideas, I found these fun suggestions for bike decorations:

• Handle bar bling
• Instant engine (more advanced than the playing card and clothespin)
• Spirited bike spinner
• Personalized number plates

All of these items are available at the dollar store so it won’t be expensive.  If you’re going to do this don’t forget several rolls of tape (masking tape works best), kid friendly scissors and twist ties or zip ties to attach flags, license plates and tinfoil creations.

At then end of the parade route we will be putting up bunches of balloons so they know when it’s time to turn around.

This is a great summer time activity whether you’re entertaining just your own kids, or including their friends.

Hope you have fun with it!