Explore the World in a DIY Summer Camp

This is such a fun idea to do with your own kids or your own group of kids during the summer — or really any other time.

Leanna from All Done Monkey shared her ideas for a DIY Around the World Summer Camp on Kid World Citizen, along with the activities for a couple of different countries if you want to do it yourself without all the planning.

The idea was to hit a country on each continent rather than trying to cover a whole continent in a day. She lays out ideas for crafts, geography, snacks, stories and more.

This would be a lot of fun to do if your family’s heritage is a different country from where you currently live, or if there are countries your children are interested in.

It’s also a good guide for a unit study or if you wanted to stretch it out you could do a different country each day and a different continent each week, but that would take a lot more planning.

How do you teach your kids about different countries? I’d love to hear your ideas!

[Photo: All Done Monkey.]

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All About Antarctica for Kids

This summer I’ve been sharing some fun summery crafts for kids, and while I already shared a couple of friendship bracelet patterns, there are so many out there it’s worth another look.

Bracelets are a great craft for kids because they aren’t that difficult to make but they do take some time, there are lots of possible variations and the supplies tend to be inexpensive and you don’t need a lot.

In my research on making friendship bracelets, I found that some of the easiest ones are known as the Chinese ladder (no idea why), candy stripe and chevron.

You can also call the Chinese ladder a spiral bracelet, as that’s what it looks like when you’re finished. Melanie from Artzy Creations shares a pattern for this one at Design Dazzle. She uses five colors but once you have it down you can use as many or as few as you like.

The candy stripe in three colors I think is the only kind of friendship bracelet I ever knew how to make. Sarah Maker has a good tutorial for this one using four colors.

Chevron is probably my favorite because it looks fancy and makes a nice wide bracelet. You need two strands of each color you are using so it gets big fast, but is also a lot of fun to make. There’s a photo and video tutorial at The Neon Tea Party to get you started. (Here’s another video from Simple DIYs.)

Of course these three basic patterns are just scratching the surface of what you can do with friendship bracelets.

This simple twisted bracelet from Twitchetts is great for younger kids who might not have the dexterity or patience for all of that knot tying. You can also make them with thread or yarn, and add beads if you like. Or try this one from Panda Hall, which is just made with braided pieces tied together. I love the addition of charms to this one.

Make a fun fishtail bracelet with this video from SoCraftastic. If you need more ideas, check out the designs at Marching North and Red Ted Art. Do you have a favorite friendship bracelet pattern? I’d love to hear about it!

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