Summer camps, mega theme parks, and kid-friendly resorts have turned family vacations into expensive and exhausting endeavors. Whether you need to recoup from your travels or you're opting to spend the summer months close to home, you can help your child enjoy a fun-filled vacation right in her own backyard.

Start with these ideas, then let your child's imagination take over.

1. Encourage playing dirty.
   Pull out old play clothes, set off a piece of the yard that is "his" (far from your prized roses), and let him dig into the earth. Set up a fence around his piece of the yard using sticks connected by lengths of thick string.
   
   Depending on your child's personality, he may want to set up a construction site, build a fort, search for treasure, or plant his own garden (carrot tops, green beans, and sunflower seeds are easy first-time gardening projects). Let him decorate his section of the yard with colored rocks, pictures, and signs painted on planks of wood.  
2. Let nature inspire you. 

   Bring paints, glitter, glue, and imaginations outside. Plan several summer projects with your child, from scenic paintings that take an afternoon to crafts that take several days to complete. In addition to using her creativity, nature-inspired projects also offer your child opportunities to observe and learn about science. 

   
   

   Make a sun catcher:

• Collect flowers and leaves of different colors and shapes.
• Press the materials between the pages of a book for a few days until they dry out.
• Together, arrange the pressed flowers and leaves in a sandwich bag along with glitter and bits of tissue paper. Leave spaces between the materials (so the plastic will stick together when heated).
• Place the bag between two sheets of aluminum foil and press the foil with a warm iron.
• When you peel away the foil, you'll have a sealed bag that your child can trim into a circle or other shape.
• Poke a hole in the top, attach a piece of thread, and hang in a sunny window.