It’s easy to find fun stuff to do in the summer, at least when the weather is nice. Hiking, biking, paddling, camping, swimming, and making a fort are just a few of the many choices. But what about those rainy days when you are stuck inside?
Here’s one idea…save all those partially used notebooks that you bring home on the last day of school and use them to make a silly summer journal series.
Here’s how:
Tear the used pages out of your used notebooks. Use a blank piece of paper (your choice of color) to make a new cover. Tape or glue it to the old cover and then decorate however you please. You could glue some flat things to it such as feathers, pressed flowers or leaves, or you could draw pictures of all the things you hope to do during summer vacation. You could write your name in big bubble letters and decorate it with glitter glue, you could draw tiny insects all over it. You can decorate it however you want.
Open your new journal to any page and begin to write fun things to do on the top of each one and in any order you please. Let yourself be creative and simply brainstorm all the silly/fun things you could do to a journal page. If you are stuck, look around the house, in kitchen drawers, the fridge, in your closet, in the garage, outside, anywhere where something could spark an idea for a silly journal page.
Here are just a few ideas to get you started:
. Poke holes in this page using a pencil.
. Get your hands dirty, then press down on this page.
. Do some rubbings with a pencil.
. Draw a picture while walking on this page.
. Write your favorite word over and over again in
different ways using different colors.
. Collect fruit stickers here.
. Drip something here… ink, tea, paint, then close the
book and make a print.
. Sew on this page using a needle and thread.
. Color this page the color of the night sky, stars are
optional.
. Let your dog chew or make a dirty paw print
or two on one of the pages and add your own
embellishments. Perhaps a dot to dot picture
connecting the tooth marks or a path through the
woods with the paw prints would finish the design?
You can see the list is endless! Keep going with this idea for as long as you want and as you think of things, add them to your journal. Make a bunch of journals and use up those notebook pages! When you need a rainy day, or any day, silly activity, pull out a journal and be silly!
This article was inspired by the book Wreck this Journal by Keri Smith.
Kelly Dupre of Grand Marais is an artist, children’s author, and educator with over 20 years teaching experience with all age groups in a variety of settings. The activities in this once-a-month column are spin-offs and combinations of ideas she has used and learned from teachers, parents, kids, books, and workshops. Only some of the activities has she actually thought of herself! Do you have a project or an idea you would like to see on the Whirligigs page? Let us know! Send your suggestion to starnews@boreal.org.
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