Summer Bucket List

Every summer, my son and I like to make a list of things that we want to do before school starts back up. We got together and pooled all of our ideas and came up with this list of 50 things we want to do this summer. Here is our summer bucket list for 2018!

Click here to view a PDF and download.

Pictures to take while you're on vacation

We just love to take pictures! And I love finding lists of things to take pictures of and then challenging myself to do them all! So my son and I decided to come up with our own list before we left for vacation to see if we could do them all. Here's our list:

Click here to view as a PDF and download.

My Favorite Fort Wayne Children's Zoo Photo Ops

I have been to A LOT of zoos. I absolutely love them! So I choose to go to them all the time. I think I went to 6 different zoos last summer. Crazy, right? Well, last weekend, we traveled to Fort Wayne, Indiana to spend the night at their zoo. It was so much fun! But that's a post for a different time. After we spent the night, we left to put all of our stuff in the car, then went back into the zoo and spent an extra 3 hours there. And while we were walking through the zoo, we found so many cool and fun photo ops! Let me tell you my favorites!

Here's a map to give you an idea of where these awesome stops are.

1. The Zoo Entrance
This is clearly the most photographed place in the whole zoo! I watched people sit on it, stand behind it, take large group photos, etc. We loved it!

2. The Tortoise
This turtle is almost the exact same size as one of the tortoises at the zoo! How awesome, right? Plus kids can ride this one.

3. The Peacock
This is just such a fun and inventive photo op! It is 2 pieces connected at the bottom that allows kids (and adults) to stand/kneel behind the body, in front of the feathers, to make it look as though the person in the photograph's head is on a peacock body.

4. Big Wave
This one is right by Stingray Bay. I just love this whole area of the zoo. It is themed amazingly! But we had so much fun with this one. I saw a family on the surfboard with one kid in front and dad in back with a small child on his shoulders. How cute!

5. Shark Head
This one is right next to the surfboard. Again, so fun! There's an opening in the back for kids (and adults) to get inside the shark head.

6. Penguins
Ok, so this clearly had to make the list for my family because penguins are easily our family's favorite animal! And I just love that there was space between two of the penguins for people to step in for a great photo.

7. Butterfly Wings
So these just look like pretty butterflies in a grassy area. However, when you stand in front of the butterfly, you look like a beautiful butterfly! (said in the voice of Heimlich from A Bug's Life, of course)

8. Orangutan
This is a beautiful statue of an orangutan. Who doesn't love taking cute pictures with statues? Plus, how adorable that the orangutan had his hand out and my son decided they needed to hold hands.

9. Komodo Dragon
If you don't look for this, you could easily miss it! So keep an eye out after you go past the Children's Treehouse.

10. The Safari Truck
It's a cute little truck that your kids can pretend to drive. Slightly less boring than the rest of my favorites, but still cool.

11. Sight-Seeing
So this isn't quite like the rest of the traditional photo-ops, but this was just too cute to pass up. They have a couple self-standing binoculars that are so cute to get a picture of your loved ones using. And if you can't use these for some reason, there's also a basket of handheld binoculars.

12. Eggs
How much fun is it for kids to pretend like they're coming out of a broken egg? Apparently tons of fun! Because my son had a blast climbing in and out of them.

Bonus Photo Op:
13. Dinosaur
The reason this is a bonus and not part of the regular list is because you have to pay extra to get to this. While on the train, you see this dinosaur off the side. It's pretty cool! You pass it twice so my recommendation is to look for it on your first pass and then get ready and take your picture on your way back.

I had so much fun writing this post, looking back at our weekend. It was so much fun.

Photography: Shapes

I think it's so fun to introduce photography to young children so of course I would come up with little projects to do with my 7-year-old son this summer. For this one, I came up with a simple concept of adding photography and geometry and taking pictures of shapes. First, I told him that we needed to make a list of 6 2D shapes. He came up with octagon, hexagon, circle, square, triangle, and rectangle. I thought this was a great starting point. Then, I gave him my phone and sent him off to look for these shapes around the house. He was easily able to find a circle, square, and rectangle. It was slightly more difficult to find a triangle, but he still found it on his own. The harder ones I had to help him with. But that's okay! So in the end, we made this cute little collage of our shapes!

Kids Activity: Underwater Photography

Summer break has officially been here for about a month for us! And it feels like we haven't really done anything yet. So we're buckling down, and learning new things.

First on our list? Underwater Photography

I thought this would be a fun one to teach my little boy.
First, we talked about what underwater photography is. His Answer: When you take photos under the water.
I would say there is no simpler way to say it. He's right!
And what can you take pictures of under the water? His Answer: Fish, people swimming, plants
Right again! This is a lot easier than I thought it would be.
Now to the harder part. Can you come up with 3 ideas of pictures that we can take under water when we go to the pool later today? Well, this one took a little longer to answer and even took some pushing to get a full 3 ideas, but here they are:
1. Diving for toys
2. floating on your back
3. Spinning/flipping in the water
Now, I wasn't entirely sure how well we were going to execute all of these so there was a disclaimer I had to explain to him about how taking pictures under water is even harder than taking pictures on land so we might not get great pictures (especially since I was taking these pictures with my phone in a waterproof case).

Well, here goes nothing:
1. Diving for toys

2. floating on your back

3. spinning/flipping in the water

And there you have it. We learned a little something, made a plan, and tried to execute our plan. Overall, it was a great experience. I highly recommend doing this with your little ones.