1. Painting

Kids love colors and even getting messy. But as I have Eco-friendly Natural Earth Paints (read here) made up of only natural ingredients, I was stress-free to give him colors and let him get messy in that. Even cleaning up is easy with these paints. Apart from normal painting and coloring, we did a few interesting activities with paints and my little man loved those new experiences.

Who doesn’t love messy coloring?

I am conveniently not going to talk much about the incidence of painting on our trade mill with my lipstick! I was mad at the time and stopped talking to him for a few minutes to control my emotions, but now I can just laugh remembering it.

a. Painting with motorcycle

Painting with Bike

b. Stone, Twig, Shell Painting

My little man still continues to collect his favorite natural collectibles from landscape areas downstairs like stones and twigs. It’s extremely hot, but this guy manages to pick up things quickly on the way to the main entrance from parking. He is a pro by now, he doesn’t need to look around and search for things! He also likes to show me small seedling and sprouts of Neem naturally growing in landscape area as for some time millions of neem seeds are scattered everywhere around.

So I decided to make use of our large collection of natural collectibles for painting. As Ruhaan gathered all these things by himself, he was quite excited to paint them too! He is not yet patient and his motor skills are not developed enough to make designs on stones but a great activity to keep him busy for a few alternative days.

2. Arts & Crafts for Fine Motor Skills

While I was looking for some activities to develop his fine motor skills, I could find nice wooden buttons and beads in the Lulu hypermarket. I strictly didn’t want plastic, those glittery beads, and no plastic straw, as I went plastic-free this July in support of #plasticfreejuly. You can read this post about how to beat plastic pollution. More on that later, but these beautiful wooden beads and buttons provided my little guy a very engaging activity.

He is actually a very active child, to make him sit in one place is difficult. But when I asked him if he could make a necklace for me, which I can wear, he was happily ready to do this activity. This activity was not as frequently favored as others but definitely will help to increase concentration as I am going to keep asking him to do it once in a while.

Wooden beads and buttons stored in a reused tin box

Here is behind the scene photo. He thought this activity can be a little more boring while wearing regular clothes. So he decided to wear a Halloween costume in July! If you saw a kid in any mall wearing Skeleton this summer, then it was none other than my kid!

Behind Scene photo

3. Dress up and Role Play

My son has picked up interest in role-playing these days, it’s very entertaining to see how creative he gets. Apart from becoming a skeleton, he prefers becoming a doctor, and then I am a very sick patient by default. Sometimes he’s the mommy and I am Ruhaan and suddenly tells me ‘No No, you can do that’.

Police are one of his favorite profession, which he preferred after practicing as captain of a ship and then a pilot for a while. But unfortunately, he was the police for the first few days of his summer camp after our 4 weeks of holidays. So now, he’s allowed to be police only at home!

Tiger, The Vegetable Vendor

But out of all his role plays, my most favorite is a little gardener who waters our window garden regularly and a shopkeeper who likes to sell vegetables! I actually give him all fresh vegetables to him to keep in his shop, the ones which can’t be spoiled by handling like potato, garlic, onion, lemon, and take my cotton bag for vegetable shopping as his customer. I think this is the time when we need to show them what are good habits so that later on they don’t have to switch from disposable plastic bags to reusable.

4. Reading

This is the year of reading in UAE and now our book lover family started reading more than before. We love to read some books more than others like there is a bed-time storybook Aunt Sonal gifted Ruhaan. But my little man’s the most favorite book is a very hungry caterpillar by Eric Carle which he made himself in his nursery with the help of his teachers. It’s a really special book for me too, while my little caterpillar is still sitting on my lap and reading it. I heard from many mothers you need to enjoy this cuddly phase while it lasts.

Ruhaan is reading hungry caterpillar some time back, he still continues to read it regularly

We read our books everywhere in bed, in our favorite tee-pee and even when we went on a camping trip!

5. Writing in a wipe-clean book

I found this Eco-friendly wipe-clean book at Daiso and it’s so amazing for repeated writing without wasting paper. We have used it anywhere and everywhere. For drawing, for writing in the car, at the restaurant, on a road trip, on study table when mommy is working. It’s one thing always found in my bag these days. I agree there a plastic coating, but the amount of paper it saves is really countable.

This book is a savior on many occasions and I am totally in love with it. We also have a few more wipe-clean books, where kids need to trace lines, letters, and the number just like their school worksheet. And Ruhaan has used them again and again for almost like a thousand times without using a single paper. You can even wipe them with a wet cloth to clean them properly. I personally feel these kinds of wipe-clean books are great Eco-friendly must-have things for kids!

6. Playdough

It is Ruhaan’s all-time favorite activity. Especially now that I have found natural Veggie sculpting dough by We Can Too. I don’t have to worry about any chemical exposure to his tiny hands and plus point it he can still nibble on snacks while playing with this play dough. But one of the most engaging play-dough fun he had during our stay at home this summer was, when the wheat floor at my home got expired (I couldn’t make chapatis regularly, cooking was the hardest part when he was at home). So in the attempt of following my #ZeroWasteUAE lifestyle, instead of just throwing it, I decided to reuse it to make playdough and let him have fun with it. So I gave him flour, water mixed with some oil and he had an amazing time. We could even use this natural play dough a few more days, I just had to store it in the fridge. Our homemade play dough with no color, nothing, just plain kneaded flour was proved a successful experiment! I even gave him a cookie cutter to make different shapes. Who says you need to buy toys all the time? Just go find child-friendly things in your kitchen.

7. Watching birds

I like to keep food for birds in our window year-round, in summer I keep water too. Ruhaan is very much used to watching birds in our window since he’s baby and the great thing is he still loves to do that. Read here our post about how to bring nature to your home, especially for your kids!

Since his early days as a toddle, when he hears the birds in the window or balcony he would just run closer to watch them and likes to describe it to me what the bird is doing like a live commentary! The funny part is those birds are so used to Ruhaan, that they don’t always fly away when Ruhaan approaches the closed window from inside. Of course, we make sure that our flying neighbors are fed well and we even keep some water for them. Here are some great tips about how to attract birds in your garden, even if it’s a small window or balcony garden.

Dove in our window

This summer a pair of common myna started making a nest in our window garden, which gave us a lot of entertainment.

One of our blog reader commented on one such social media feed about birds, that there is saying ‘Birds sing in the window where there is the peace of mind, nothing happens by chance’ I prefer to believe when you have faith in good deeds it’s easier to keep the peace of mind! Sometimes reader’s comments make your day, knowing your efforts are not going waste.

On his 4th birthday, Ruhaan asked a binocular as a gift. He wanted to use it for bird watching and especially during our frequent travels.  Buying binoculars for kids is a serious business, as the distance between their eyes is shorter than grown-ups and eyes are still developing. But after a lot of research, we found a good telescope for him, a bit costly but definitely a great investment as he can use it many more years till he grows up. The best part is he uses it regularly to watch birds from our window and spot things in the sky!

8. Plan A Road Trip

Now you can either plan a real trip or just get to know more about the world via a virtual trip around the world.

This particular summer, Ruhaan helped me a lot with planning and preparing for our road trip to Oman. Like packing his bag with numerous toys for at least 4-5 times and making sure every time he would pick up a few different toys! 😀 But the most entertaining part of it was map reading. He even talked about a few other countries which are not on the middle east map but our relatives stay there. So now I am looking for an interactive map for our home. My dad used to play a game of finding a city or mountain or even river on the large world map. This used to be a favorite game of traveler father and daughter. I can’t wait to play the same game with my son, but we still have a long wait before he reads that well.

Map Reading

We didn’t fly anywhere but our road trip to Jebel Shams, the tallest mountain in the Arabian peninsula,  was a very refreshing and first long-distance road trip with Ruhaan and first-time successful camping as a small family after a few failed attempts. Read our story of camping in summer in Oman here and what fun outdoor things you can do on Jebel Shams with young kids.

Virtual trips are best, when we are housebound and not traveling anywhere. If we are not traveling anywhere it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t learn about this wonderful world! You can create a lot of games using world maps or regional maps. As a kid, I and my dad used to play ‘find a place (or name) on the map’ and then we used to read more about those places. That way I learned a lot about the world and places on the Earth. You can always read more about that place in books or on the internet and increase the knowledge about geography or the natural world. Here are I and my son playing the same game.

9. Eco Crafts

We generally don’t recycle cardboard boxes, glass jars, or tin boxes without reusing them. I give some of these things to my little guy to make something out of it. Sometimes I help him in craft, sometimes I just let his creativity run wild. We made numerous things over summer, here is an Ice Cream Shop we made out of an empty cardboard box.

Ice Cream Shop out of a cardboard box

Read here our dedicated article about Easy Cardboard Crafts for Kids. You will find there a lot of interesting upcycled cardboard projects and DIY crafts like a shoebox dollhouse, underwater world, cardboard castle, and even a city!

10. Declutter & Donating Toys

The start of summer holidays was during Ramadan so we grabbed the opportunity to declutter our toys and kept some toys from Ruhaan’s early years in a bag to share with some new friends via charity box! I told him, the charity box in the mall was going to take his favorite old toys to those friends personally, so he couldn’t meet them but could send his love to them! Thanks to Peppa Pig, he knows postman well and he related this charity concept to a postman, which is in a way quite appropriate.

Ruhaan was totally excited to send his love to those unknown friends, so at first, he took aside a lot of toys (quite surprising as we were dealing with ‘sharing toy with real friends’ at that moment). But next 2-3 days he removed a few toys, added few and I gave him some time to finally make a bag full of good toys which he is not going to play much later. I had a feeling that there might be a little meltdown at the time of actually donating toys, but my ‘big boy’ donated his toys happily. It is never too early to teach our kids about sharing and donating, isn’t it?

Here is a list of places and charities where you can donate toys and other household things after decluttering.

Donating Toys to Charity

11. The joy of doing nothing (mommy and son version)

Yes, this was the most important part of our successful time together. I let things flow and let him do things which otherwise I wouldn’t. Wake up, but lie down n bed and talk, take your time before brushing teeth. Talking about this, that and getting along on the ride of his imagination. Listening to him, what he wants instead of rushing through a routine. Letting him create mess instead of saying ‘don’t do this and don’t do that’. Taking ‘routine’ lightly for a while. Let him explore things and activities on his own, instead of hovering over him with tips and guidance all the time. And most important asking his help to do little chores. He feels so proud when he drops his shirt in the laundry bag all by himself or even keeps my empty teacup in the kitchen. Being a child of a working mother, I automatically became independent early on like all the kids of working women. So being a stay at home mother myself; I need to take efforts to make him independent; else there is a risk of he starts ‘taking things granted’.

Taking off and wearing his clothes and shoes and tidying up his toys are the things he does very proudly, it not just prepares him for big school but also good time-consuming chores for the days like these.

Tribe, how are you spending your summer with kids? if you are trying ‘No Screen Time Summer’ like us,  how much success you had so far? Are you traveling or are you in UAE? I would love to know…

Also, don’t forget to read these pre-school fun learning play ideas which are mostly indoors and great for UAE’s hot summer!

I also recommend our Top 15 fun- learning indoor places and play areas in the UAE to take your kids in summer. If you are a new reader on Sustainability Tribe, join our tribe!