When the summer heat is getting to you, consider water fun on your own property. Set up a cheap kiddie pool, a slip and slide, or a sheet of plastic, or even a regular sprinkler and let the kids run through it.

Invite their friends over to play and provide an easy-to-eat treat like popsicles. Decorate your driveway or sidewalk with wet footprints or handprints. Play with squirt guns or spray bottles. Have a water balloon fight. Blow bubbles. Make mud pies. Play in the rain. Wash the car and spray the kids with the hose. Let them get you wet, too.

In the cool of morning, evening or on moderate weather days, have a day to enjoy nature. You could call it a nature hike. Visit a walking path at a local park or find a new trail to hike. A nature hike can be just a walk or it can be more than that.

What kinds of rocks, leaves, plants and flowers can the kids find? Have them use a bag to store their favorites. When you get back home, go online and research the names of the plants you collected. Here are some more ideas for fun with nature: take pictures of nature with a camera.

Take the kids to a scenic area with a set of watercolors and ask them to paint what they see. If you live close to the ocean or lake, pack a lunch, sunscreen, drinking water and some beach toys and go there. Spend the day digging in the sand, building sandcastles and searching for seashells. There are all kinds of ways of interacting with nature, like planting a vegetable or flower garden together. Visit a pick-your-own fruits farm. Instead of just having a picnic lunch at the brightest time of day, try having a sunset picnic at a park or beach. On the other hand, get up early, pack breakfast, and have a sunrise breakfast. Walk barefoot in the grass and pick the wildflowers, if it is allowed. Do some cooking outside on a grill or a campfire, or just toast marshmallows. Pitch a tent, perhaps even in your own backyard, and sleep outside. The moon, stars and planets are nature, too.

When thinking of summer activities for the kids there are always all kinds of games and sports. You do not have to join a team or class because they can get expensive, but if you have the resources and interest in pursuing that path, ask the kids if they would like to learn a new sport or activity. The summer is a great time to try something new without the commitment that often comes with starting it during the school year. Go for a bicycle ride around the neighborhood. Teach the kids some jump rope rhymes from your own childhood. There is hopscotch, too. Plan a scavenger hunt or a treasure hunt. For a scavenger hunt, all you need to do is create a list of twenty or so items that are frequently found outdoors in your area. Pass out the list to each of the kids. The first person or team to find everything, or the most items, and wins a small prize. For a treasure hunt leave clues around the house or yard, with each clue leading to the next clue, until they reach the treasure, maybe a snack or small prize. There are many more ideas for outdoor sports and games, like playing kickball with the neighborhood kids. Fly kites. Compete in a three-legged or other race. Create an obstacle course. Play freeze tag. Build paper airplanes and have a flying contest.

With some help from your kids, you may come up with many more ideas.

Water, nature, and sports and games are great sources of cheap and healthy entertainment. The summer time is a great time to be outdoors, but please remember the sunscreen, hats and monitoring the amounts of sun exposure. Older kids with later bedtimes may even be able to enjoy many of these activities after the sun goes down.

 The Essential Beach Toys - The Bucket And Spade.

If you are planning on taking your child to the beach, then almost certainly one of the first things you'll have checked that you had, or bought, will be the traditional bucket and spade. There can be no more classic idea than a small child crawling about on the beach making sand castles, digging holes and forts, burying dad and collecting interesting stones, shells, bits of seaweed and small things that skuttle around at the bottom of their bucket. If you managed to get all the way to the beach without having purchased this essential equipment, then you'll probably have been reminded by the parade of brightly colored shops and stalls all along the sea front selling a range of buckets and spades that will astonish you.

Do you go for small chubby plastic spades, longer handled spades, plastic ones or metal? And what about buckets - is this one too big, too small, is a square bucket better for castles or is a round one easier to use? The choices and decisions make this seemingly easy task one that requires great thought. After all, the whole beach trip's success may depend on the type of bucket and spade that you choose.

For very small children there is a charming array of buckets and spades, although frequently there are fewer spades than there are forks or rakes. This is for a very good reason - small children, such as toddlers, tend not to be very good at realizing what they're doing with all the sand that is on their spade blade. Generally, anything that needs to be got rid of can be hurled into the black void that is the invisible space over their shoulder. This is otherwise known as your lap, the picnic or mummy's head. A toddler armed with a spade will wreak devastation with sand flying everywhere, and this wildly fantastic game is likely to end only when either one of the family wrestles the toddler to the ground, removing the spade with, of course, the resulting flood of tears and wails, or when the toddler themselves hurls a ball of sand into their own face, and then this results in tears and wails.

Rakes, on the other hand, are slightly safer, with the toddler less able to hurl great wads of sand around, but a few flurries. Hopefully they will be more interested in the patterns they can make with it in the sand.

Of course, as a child gets older, spades are necessary as all children love digging holes, and a good sturdy spade will be required. Metal blades are much better for getting through wet sand further down, but are also very good at being used to attempt to slice of toes - whether intentionally or not. Therefore, these are best left for the older children who have a much better grasp of where their toes are, and the need to keep them attached.

As for buckets - a strong handle is all you need, since wet sand or water weighs quite a bit, and you don't want this dropping suddenly and either landing on your child's toe, or over your items. For instant satisfaction with small children a smooth sided round bucket will produce good castles fairly reliably and easily, whereas the more complex ones that have turrets are good for older children who are happier to out a bit more effort into them.