Creative Ways to Enjoy Family Fun Out of the Sun

Summer in DFW means endless outdoor activities. However, being outside also means being under the beaming sun. While a healthy dose of Vitamin D is great for your overall well-being, too much UV ray exposure can be harmful. The average recommended amount of sun time each day is around 20-30 minutes.

Here is a quick breakdown of the negative effects of the sun: 

  • Sun damage to the eyes
  • Heat exhaustion and heat stroke
  • Sunburn or heat rash
  • Wrinkles/aging
  • Skin cancer

When it comes to your skin and being out in the sun for an extended period of time, sunburn is the biggest immediate cause for concern — especially in the DFW area where temperatures hit triple digits almost every day. 

Keep an eye out for these signs to know when it’s time to seek shade or go indoors to get out of the sun: 

  • You can see pinkness or redness in your skin
  • Your skin begins to feel hot, you have goosebumps or chills
  • Your skin feels painful, itchy or tight
  • You begin to feel abnormally tired or get a headache
  • In severe cases, you can experience nausea or a fever

While there are many ways you can stay hydrated and protect yourself from the negative effects of the sun, there often comes a point where it’s time to find something fun to do out of the heat.

Looking for tips on how to protect yourself in the Texas heat this summer? Check out our blog: How to Beat the Summer Heat: Staying Hydrated and Protected While Under the Sun.

Here are a few family-friendly indoor activities in Dallas and beyond, offering a wide range of virtual or in-person family fun:

1. KidMania 

With locations in Fort Worth, Plano, and Lewisville, KidMania is a great local, family-friendly activity. The indoor facility offers five levels of playground space and climbing walls over 25-feet high. The facility includes a maze with slides, caves, tunnels, a zipline, climbing nets, bungee walls, and more.

2. iFLY

Looking for indoor activities in Dallas that are interactive and recreational? Located in Frisco and Hurst, Texas, iFLY is a fun way to skydive without actually jumping out of an airline. With vertical wind tunnels, iFLY creates a wall-to-wall cushion of air on which you can safely float. Kids as young as three all the way up to adults can enjoy this experience.

3. SeaQuest Interactive Aquarium

Explore more than 20,000 square feet of adventure at SeaQuest Interactive Aquarium, where you can take an exciting journey around the planet (while still remaining in a cool indoor environment). Fort Worth-based SeaQuest invites you to touch, feed, and interact with animals from five continents, providing a memorable experience for all ages. You can even feed the toucans and snorkel with the stingrays.

4. Trampoline Parks

Whether it’s a boiling hot summer day or a rainy afternoon, trampoline parks are a great way to stay active while remaining cool indoors. Help get out your kids’ pent-up energy at one of DFW’s many trampoline parks including Altitude and Urban Air. Each of these trampoline parks offers various locations across Dallas and Fort Worth.

5. Virtual Museum Tours

While summer is a refreshing break from school for your kids, there are still many ways to promote continued learning and engagement for your youngsters. One of the best being interactive virtual museum tours. 

To minimize the spread of germs and promote cultural education, many well-known museums around the world are offering virtual tours for families to enjoy at home. Take advantage of this awesome resource by turning it into a weekly indoor summer activity for your family. You can call it “Museum Monday” and even break out the popcorn and pillows.  

With so many different types of museums that exhibit different cultures, topics, genres, and eras, there is something for every member of your family to enjoy! 

Here are a few of the best virtual museum tours that are available online for free: 

When it comes to engaging virtual museum tours, these are just the tip of the iceberg! With so many exhibits available online, this is an activity you can continue throughout the summer. However, if you want to switch it up, there are also many stunning virtual tours of national parks. 

6. Make Homemade Frozen Fruit Popsicles 

While mealtimes are a great opportunity to get the kids involved, dessert-time can be even better! We recommend making frozen fruit popsicles. They are a true triple threat when it comes to a summertime snack — healthy, sweet, and cold! As well, this frozen treat will stay good for quite awhile in your freezer and you can enjoy them as you wish.

Many of today’s popular kid snacks unfortunately contain a lot of added sugar. However, when you make your own fruit popsicles, you can supply your family with a healthy snack and help keep their diets within the recommended daily sugar limit. On average, store-bought frozen pops contain 8 grams of added sugar. When you make your own, you can completely eliminate added sugar and only have the natural sugar that comes in real fruit.

Here are a few additional advantages of homemade popsicles: 

  • Save money — When you make your own, you can stretch your ingredients and get more for your money with the natural products you buy at the store. 
  • Meet daily servings of fruits and vegetables — With the freedom and ease to choose what to add in your popsicles, you can help your kids get the recommended serving of fruits and vegetables, which is around 1-2 cups a day. 
  • Boost the nutrition content — With homemade popsicles, you can add healthy ingredients such as Greek yogurt or whole grain granola to boost overall fiber, protein, Vitamin C, and nutrient content.

Lastly, and maybe most importantly, making homemade popsicles builds memories that you’ll cherish forever!

For some delicious, healthy creations you can easily follow at home, check out this list of five healthy fruit popsicles recipes.

7. Have a Campout Inside

With unpredictable weather, lack of outdoor space and other outside hindrances like bugs and mud, camping outside isn’t always the easiest and safest activity. That’s why indoor camping is the perfect solution for summer nights. 

To increase the fun factor, let your kids decide how they want to camp, whether it’s to build their own fort out of sheets and pillows or use a tent. This is a great hands-on opportunity for your kids to get creative and improve their problem-solving skills. Not to mention, they will need to cooperate and communicate with each other. 

As an idea, each time you camp indoors, give your kids a new challenge to overcome for the fort. For example, one challenge could be to build a fort with a secret entrance and another could be to build their campsite without the use of chairs for support. 

Along with smores and lanterns, no indoor camping night is perfect without a movie! Here’s some old and new kid-friendly movies that also teach empathy, kindness, and other valuable lessons: 

  • The Lorax
  • Inside Out
  • Trolls
  • Wonder
  • The Secret Garden 
  • Kiki’s Delivery Service
  • The Secret World of Arietty
  • The Iron Giant

As a last tip, install one rule for camping out inside: all participating members must help clean up in the morning!

8. Temporary Chalkboard Wall

We all know that fear of finding your kid with a marker in their hand and bright red scribbles covering the corner of your living room wall. With a temporary chalkboard, you can allow your kids to have a safe place to explore their artistic side and have some fun with color. Science shows that drawing promotes development by helping kids display emotion, explore new ideas, and visualize thoughts and concepts. 

In recent years, many companies have come out with removable chalk wallpaper that you can tack up and take down as you wish. Additionally, you can cut the wallpaper to the size you wish and only use the space you want. Summer is the perfect time to designate an otherwise unused wall to an imagination space where your kids can create away. 

Beat the Heat This Summer

By getting creative with these indoor summer activities, you can make sure that your kids don’t get too much sun exposure but still have a fun time this season. Not to mention, many of these can promote learning experiences while they’re out of school.  
Along with growing their imagination and creativity, it’s also important to continue their physical activity. However, on hot days it’s not always the safest to run around and play outside. For some cool ideas, here are 10 ways to stay active at home with your family.

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