My kids will be finishing school on May 18 this year, which means only 16 days of actual class left. I am trying to come up with a great homemade summer activity to keep my kids happy and productive. I have 4 kids ages 10, 8, 6 and 4 (the youngest is the only boy). I am looking for some fun ideas to keep kids reading, learning and having fun.

Last year I made a BINGO card for each child. There were 30 spaces to fill on each card and I put a different challenge in each square. Some of the challenges were physical like "learn to tread water for 3 minutes." Other challenges were to write a poem about your family, create a menu for a week, read specific books, learn to do laundry, etc. Naturally the younger kids had easier challenges. Anyway I encouraged them to go for a "blackout" on the BINGO card which would earn them a whopping $10 (my kids don't get allowance and so this was BIG money to them). They had 2 weeks to complete their individual BINGO card and there was an additional incentive for early birds who finished prior to two weeks. My kids were highly motiviated and worked like crazy to complete the challenges. I will probably repeat the BINGO cards again this summer but I would like to see if anyone has a homemade summer fun plan for kids. I liked the BINGO cards but I tried to reward them after 2 weeks so that they wouldn't lose interest. I am looking for something that can be worked on all summer long.

I think I might do a Chuckie Cheese style reward program where you earn a certain number of tickets for each challenge you complete and then redeem the tickets for prizes. They could redeem their tickets instantly or hold onto them and go for a bigger prize.

If anyone has any feedback or additional ideas I would love to hear about it. I am looking for some good "challenges" that they can work on this summer.

Have you checked with your local library is they have a summer reading program?
The library systems around here have if you read x amount of books or for older kids, x amount of hours, you get various rewards. Some of the rewards are bookmarks, trophies, tickets to baseball games, movie passes, etc.