What Are You Doing This Summer? - Los Angeles,CA

My daughter will be at the YMCA most of the summer. They offer swim & tennis lessons for a pretty reasonable price.

Once they are registered for camp, you can do daily or weekly camps.

When my kids were small, some of my friends and I would gather one day and plan a summer schedule. Our local movie theater offered free movies at 9am. they were older movies, but the experience is still the same. (usually G rated).
Bowling lanes also have free or discounted rates during the summer, so we would take advantage of those days and times.
Local museums had the same thing. Sometimes the library had museum passes and we would take advantage of that. Craft stores have summer classes for kids and adults.
Of course there was that beach day, usually in the morning because it would rain in the afternoon.
And if the day started with rain? well then we would go outside and play in the rain of course!
We make ice cream, baked cookies,(very messy and time consuming, perfect!)
If you have girls, paint each others nails/toes.
We made a lemonade stand.
Planted a vegetable Garden.
Played board games, cards, etc. Under a wonderful tree on a blanket with a picnic basket. Preparing the basket was a lot of fun too.
Check out books in the library of summer time activities, or learn how to do something new, ceramics, painting by numbers, clay art, wood working kits, whew! Lots to do. team up with other friends and brain storm.
Good luck!

You're in a major metropolitan area. You have world-class museums, and all museums these days have discovered that younger kids are future patrons, so there are LOTS of kids' programs all summer long, and not all of them are paid camps! Look for one-day workshops, kids' tours, and even "kids' packs" or special backpacks that kids can borrow to take around the museum and use to explore exhibits.

Libraries offer a ton of free kids' events and programs where we live. There is much more than just story time. There are craft events (one time only, not necessarily an ongoing class), movie events, summer reading programs with very good rewards for reading (amusement park tickets, ice cream, etc.).

Get online and seek out the events above and plug them into your calendar. Some may cost a nominal fee but they're worth it. Camps aren't all that's out there. One-time events or trips to the museums on your own schedule can be great.

There are so many many free things to do. Look at your city, park district, county conservation districts, stores (Bass pro shops especially), the library, Barnes and Noble. Plus lots of movie theaters do dollar old kids movies in the summer. I have a complete calendar for the summer filled with multiple things to choose from each day.

Too bad I have had more work than I can handle (work from home) now that the kids are out of school :( Has made for an awful summer so far.

My kids always got together with friends from school. Since none of them lived nearby it took some coordinating but we had kids over a lot (and they also went to their friends' houses.)
We belong to a pool and went there, often.
We went to the beach, the library and for hikes and bike rides, picnics, etc. in our local regional parks (all free to low cost, and much more exciting than regular parks because there were trails, lakes and creeks, not to mention the occasional herd of cows or goats.)
Sometimes we went ice or roller skating, or to laser tag or bowling, and usually with friends (kid AND adult friends, mom needed company too!)
All my kids took low cost, once a week classes at the community center (cooking, art, woodworking, theater/dance.)
At home they watched TV and played video games, maybe some reading, drawing and crafts.
The rest of the time they spent either playing on their own or fighting with each other and driving me crazy :-)

One thing our kids can do together is Vacation Bible School. Don't know whether this is appealing to you or not, but most of the time it's free. Some churches char $10 or $20, but most are free. My kids love them.

My son is 7 and we put up a badminton net and he and the neighbors have been learning to play and we've been playing as well. It doubles as a volleyball net for kids.

The kids had a water balloon game with a dollar store kit. He had his first sleepover at a friends and then we had the boy come over for the afternoon.

I look up happenings in our community on the internet and yesterday we went to a great parade in a nearby town.

I'm off of work for two weeks and then he will be in summer camp on my work days (3 days a week). My sons favorite thing to do is to play with the neighborhood kids so he does that quite a bit. They go between all the houses and there is usually someone to play with. We go to the beach library, different pools, differnt parks.

We' re going to Jellystone park and renting a cabin in wisconsin dells in July. Kind of like camping, but with beds and air conditioning!

Take the kids out to the zoo, museums, or head off to semi-local amusement parks such as Scandia, Castle Park, Raging Waters etc. Take them on a scavenger hunt of your neighborhood - or other interesting areas.

Go visit grandparents. Send them for 2 weeks with grandparents without you. Visit cemeteries of where their ancestors are. Go to story time at libraries. Have a picnic at a neighborhood park or in your own backyard. Clean garage. Zoo. Make cookies from scratch. Visit convalescent home. Visit a nearby college campus. Take a road trip. Etc.

We have six camping trips planned (two nights each) We are going to family camp for a week. We will spend a day strawberry picking. We will go on a farm tour. We will do a few day trips to the beach. The kids will have two weeks of swimming lessons. One has a week of soccer camp and the other has a week of band camp. We will go bowling, to the movies, mini-golf and go-carting a couple of times. We have a zoo membership so we will probably go to the zoo once a week. We will go to the local nature preserves. We will do some hiking. The kids are going on a guided fishing tour. We will go Saskatoon berry picking. We will go to several different museums. They will continue weekly music lessons when we are in town. We will go to the Y. We will go to a waterpark once or twice and to an amusement park for a day. We will go to the library often. The kids will hang out with friends. We will check out a bunch of parks. We will go to a few of fairs, in town and out of town. We will go to the Planetarium. We will go to a couple of baseball games. We will go to at least two fireworks displays. The kids will have campouts in the backyard with their friends. We'll spend a few days hanging out playing video games. Most of our activities are either cheap, free or things we have coupons or memberships for. We always seem to run out of summer vacation long before we run out of activities.

ooh man!! i wish my oldest son's La Crosse camp was only $100!! It's $335!! for ONE business week!!

What else are we doing? We are spreading my mom's ashes the last weekend in June. Then spending a month with my dad in his motor home traveling the western United States...

August will be soccer and la crosse camps and getting ready for school in September.

At 5 and 8 - our best summers were spent at the pool, water parks (oh yeah, I got a Groupon for 2 water parks for August!) and water balloon fights in the back yard!

If you're really in LA what is there that you couldn't do?

You are surrounded by museums, libraries, the beach, natural areas, zoos, amusement parks, water parks, theaters and festivals. As others have stated there must be millions of one day events geared towards kids.

My children are older but we pretty much do what we've always done in the summer. A couple vacations and then we go for walks, play tennis or softball, go swimming, hiking, to the beach, the aquarium, museum, library, berry picking, cook and bake, read, read, read, watch or go to movies, ball games live or TV, garden, chores, crafts, board games, puzzles and of course a lot of social time with their individual friends.

I love the fun and slower pace of summer, have fun!

Our area has $1 movies each week, the science museum is fun, we do a trip to the local amusement park, we'll take a small trip to some water slides, picnics and biking to the park to climb trees, local lake swimming, we'll go to the beach a few times, I'll teach them more cooking and baking, we will go to outdoor concerts too. At least that's my plan. We'll see how much I can fit in with work and all.

Camp - 8 weeks of it. She loves it and can't wait for it to start. I can't imagine anything else.

My kids are 14 and 11. Last year we had our own pool but we moved so we don't have one anymore and miss it. You sort of need one in AZ. So we have spent most days at our friends pools and a couple days I made a facebook event and took the kids to a public pool. It's only $1 to get in and you can bring in your own food and drinks and there are slides, lazy rivers and diving boards, more than a private pool. And 5 families we knew met us there so it was fun. I'm also having them pick out a new recipe and each of them is cooking dinner. We also spend an hour a day reading and they spend some time on the computer playing games. We also have a dollar theater so we are going to those too. In AZ, we are limited in our outside activity since it's so hot. I've been trying to do a number of things and so far it's worked out well.

Last summer the kids had camps, swim lessons, or VBS every week - it was a lot! This summer we are taking the chill path. They have one week of camp/VBS set up, and we may do another week of VBS with their friends at another church.

Otherwise, next week we are headed to Lancaster for a dance finals competition, and we may do Hershey while we are there. We have season passes to Busch Gardens Williamsburg and Water Country USA, so we are going to try to go down on my Friday's off of work.

Honestly, the summer is pretty much booked already with relaxing, and I'm going to try to keep it that way. I would LOVE to get to SC to spend a long weekend with my sister, brother-in-law, and niece...so hopefully we can make that work too.

Do your kids like arts and crafts? Baking? Reading? Journaling? Library? Zoo? Museums? Beach? Nature trails? Water balloons? Chalk? Bike riding? Trampoline?