This summer add fun at parks to your list of activities. Check out local and state parks and look up facts about National Parks. If there’s a national park near you plan a trip to explore it. Be sure to use sunscreen or protection from bugs if needed. 

• Play at the park. Bring balls or games, enjoy playgrounds, and explore nature trails
• Hold a park cleanup day. Bring garbage bags and gloves and pick up trash.
• Take photos surrounded y natural beauty
• Take part in recreation offered at the park
• Volunteer if that’s available (check with park rangers)
• Bring a bird or plant guide and see what you can identify
• Play hide and seek
• Bring snacks or a picnic meal and enjoy eating outdoors

Before heading out, let everyone fill a zip bag with trail mix. Put out fixins like puffed cereal, nuts, small candies, small pretzels, mini-marshmallows, and dried fruit. Let each person choose what to put in their bag (limit the sweeter options).

Add a trail mix devotional. On the trail chat about how the foods can remind you of Jesus. Here are some ideas:

• Cereal is made from grain. Jesus told us he was like a kernel of wheat in John 12:23
• The peanuts remind us that God uses the foolish things (sometimes I feel like a nut!) even when they may appears crazy to the world. Suggest looking up 1 Corinthians 1:26-27 while munching nuts. 
• The colorful rainbow in the colored candies included red of Christ’s shed blood, brown of the earth God made, green of growth and yellow of light! 
• The pretzels, shaped as arms folded in prayer, remind us God answers all our prayers. 
• Through forgiveness, God makes our hearts like soft and white as marshmallows (Isaiah 1:18).
• Raisins, preserved fruit, remind us how 1 Timothy 6:18-19, that tells us to store up the right things for eternity.

Check out Natonal Parks!

Look up national parks in your state ad region. Plan to visit one if it is close enough for a day trip or you want to make it a vacation trip. Look up https://www.nps.gov/findapark/index.htm where you can click on a state and find all the parks and then click to find out more about any of them.

CHeck out books in the library on National parks to find out how and why they were started. MAke a plan to go to one or more in the coming years.