document their FAVORITE SUMMER THINGS

Is it time to get the kids back in school yet? Almost there. Let’s finish strong with a fun project for kids: pictures. Before you shake me off because your kids won’t sit still for another picture, there is a twist. Let them take the shots.

To ride out the rest of the “get your hind ends outside” months, I decided to create a photo challenge for my kids.

You can start this on the first of the month, or any time you want to as your “day one.” Use whatever camera you feel comfortable letting the littles get their hands on. I would recommend a budget friendly kids’ camera, a cheap point-and-shoot, a cell phone or one of those fun small Polaroids that are so popular. Maybe don’t let them get handsy with Mommy’s “fancy” camera — but I’m not the boss here so you do you, parents!

I love this challenge for a few reasons: It fires up their creativity; It gets them moving while searching for the subject; It can squash the late summer “I’m bored” drones; And bonus, you get to capture life from their perspective.

Listed here are the photo challenge prompts. You can snip this out and hang it on the fridge, or grab a notepad and make your own. That way you have the freedom to personalize it to gender, interest and age appropriateness. The kids do the rest. Obviously, this is a just-for-fun project. Nothing needs to be perfect. There will be a lot of finger-in-thelens shots and potentially a thousand selfies. At the end of the month, you just might find a slew of pictures to print and make into another project for the winter months. I’m thinking a scrapbook for my children of their summer photo challenge.

*budget savings tip*

For zero dollars, use a digital camera/phone camera you have and just make a photo album of the project on Facebook. No new camera and no printing cost.

Tag @areawomanmagazine if you do that, because we’d love to see your kids’ creations!

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