Wanting to spice up your summer days? Kids will love making these fun bubble tea drinks with Boba, playing Backyard Scrabble as a family, and inviting friends to a summer Sunshine Party!
How to Cook Bubble Tea
Make delicious summer drinks with Boba bubble tea! My kids love these squishy sweet balls that make smoothies and juice more fun! To make homemade Boba, you have to boil the dry Boba balls until soft and mix up a simple syrup.
Cook the Boba
Add 2 cups water to a medium pan and bring it to a boil. Once boiling, pour in 1 cup of dried Boba balls. The water must be boiling or the Boba balls will fall apart in the water.
Cook the Boba on a low simmer for 30 minutes. Turn off the heat and allow the Boba to cool in the water for 30 minutes.
Pour the Boba into a strainer and rinse with cool water.
Make the Simple Syrup
Combine 1 cup water, 1/2 cup white sugar and 1/2 cup brown sugar in a pan and heat over medium heat until the sugar is completely dissolved. Remove the syrup from the heat and add the Boba balls into the syrup.
Add a scoop of Boba balls with simple syrup to a blended drink of your choice. You can also make milk tea by brewing a strong cup of black tea and adding milk and ice. Enjoy!
Easy Interactive Yard Activities
Enjoy an hour of family fun with a game of Yard Scrabble. To make your game set of 100 tiles, print off each letter on individual 8 x 11 pieces of cardstock using the following scrabble letter quantities.
A – 9, B – 2, C – 2, D – 4, E – 12, F – 2, G – 3, H – 2, I – 9, J – 1, K – 1, L – 4, M – 2, N – 6, O – 8, P – 2, Q – 1, R – 6, S – 4, T – 6, U – 4, V – 2, W – 2, X – 1, Y – 2, Z – 1
Simplify the regular Scrabble game by competing to see who can use up all their Yard Scrabble letters first.
4-3 Players Yard Scrabble Game
- Draw 7 letters each. The first player creates the first word and all players build off of that.
- Take turns creating 1 word per player, building off the first word. Draw from the draw pile back up to 7 tiles at the end of your turn.
- Once the draw pile is gone, continue turns, each player using up their own remaining tiles.
- The first person who uses all their letter tiles wins!
Yard Scrabble is fun for kids to practice spelling. Younger kids can help place letters, even if they aren’t able to spell their own words.
Backyard Bubble Machine
We’ve had so much fun with our battery operated bubble machine. It sure beats blowing bubbles one by one! The kids love setting up their bubble machine and chasing the swirl of iridescent bubbles. Bubble machines are a fun activity to do with friends and easy to set up and keep the bubble fun going!
Have a Sunshine Party
There’s few things my kids love more than a party! An interactive afternoon party play date for toddlers and preschoolers is easy if you just plan a simple paper craft and provide some snacks. We had a lot of fun hosting friends for our Sunshine Party!
This bright little party idea is a fun way to spice up your week and give your kids something to look forward to with their friends. Our party featured fun sunshine wands that double as pencils and yummy low-sugar snacks!
Our “party favors” included colorful stickers, dollar store erasers, and DIY cut-out paper suns. This sunshine wand craft was a perfect activity for toddlers to express their creativity and make something to take home!
Sunshine Party Treats
Our sunshine snacks included bite-sized peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, cut up fruit, grapes, and healthy veggie straws. Our party guest kids loved the finger food selection made especially for them!
I accented the bite-sized triangle sandwiches with cute little paper suns taped to a toothpick — simple but the kids loved them.
To make the party decorations, I printed off a template, which I used to cut out the paper suns. Use our free printable template to make your own paper suns which you can cut out using any color of paper or card stock.
Download this Sunshine Party craft template »
Click on this thumbnail image to open the full sized file. Right click and “save as”.
DIY Sunshine Shapes
I stacked several sheets of colored construction paper and cut around the template shape to make 15 large and small suns. The template makes it easy to cut out as many paper shapes as you need, depending on how many party guests you expect.
Sunshine Wand Craft
For this easy craft, gather together colored instruction paper, colorful unsharpened pencils, stickers, crayons or markers, and a hot glue gun. Let each child decorate their sun and then have an adult hot glue the eraser end of a pencil to the back of the paper shape to create a wand. The pencils can be sharpened later if desired.
Sunshine wands are a really fun activity for an age range of toddlers and older kids to be able to create together. You could also make this craft more involved by decorating the paper shapes with glitter, googly eyes, or paper paint. We just stuck with crayons and stickers.
Let each child decorate their own wand and pick out their stickers. It’s really fun to see what ideas they come up with on their own!
We kept our party to about 2 hours; playtime, snack time, craft time and then the kids were off to their naps. Our Sunshine Party was a fun way to celebrate the end of summer!
We hope you take these fun ideas and plan a party all your own! Your kids will love it!
Hi, I’m Katie! I live with my husband and 3 kids in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. I love Jesus, coffee, creative projects, taking photos and traveling. I’ve previously worked as a web designer, journalist and barista. I hope you enjoy our creative projects and family adventures!
What great ideas. I love the backyard scrabble game.