Is your family looking for a fun new activity…try Geocaching!

Join the World's Largest Treasure Hunt! Geocaching is an outdoor recreational activity, in which participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or mobile device and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers called "geocaches" or "caches"at specific locations marked by coordinates all over the world -- even right here in Corinth and surrounding areas!! Check it out: https://www.geocaching.com/play

It's fun for the whole family. Kids don't have to put the phone down because they need a device, to read the coordinates, to find the cache. There is a great deal of learning about nature, maps, direction, team work, puzzle and problem solving. It gets you outside, moving and visiting new places. It's free and world-wide, so you can do it anywhere you go. Be prepared by carrying small trinkets; sometimes the container will hold a signature log, but sometimes it will hold "treasures" for trading. Create an account to log your finds. Read other peoples notes for clues when searching. Another cool part of this game is the "trackable" - these carry a bar code that when searched in the system will show you where the item has traveled. When found, you move it to another cache, log it and continue its journey. A fascinating activity that is healthy, engaging, educational and super fun!

Here are ideas to keep kids happy and busy during the summer months.

• Build a fort/sandcastles

• Catch butterflies

• Cheer for a local sports team

• Clean up a local park

• Climb trees

• Dig up worms

• Do a water balloon toss

• Draw with sidewalk chalk

• Eat watermelon and have a seed spitting contest

• Finger paint....with your toes!

• Go berry picking

• Go bowling

• Go camping

• Fly a kite

• Go for a walk

• Go on a nature walk

• Go swimming

• Go to a splash park

• Go to the playground

• Have a dance party

• Have a healthy picnic

• Have a hula hoop contest

• Have a sack race

• Have a three-legged race

• Have an ABC scavenger hunt: Write the ABCs on the edge of a paper plate and give one plate to each child. Walk around the yard or neighborhood. When they see something that starts with that letter (EX: Bird - B), mark off the B on their plate

• Have fun with face paint

• Jump rope

• Learn a new sport

• Plant a garden or even just a flower

• Play cornhole

• Play dress-up

• Play flashlight tag in the backyard

• Play Frisbee

• Play hide and seek

• Play hopscotch

• Play horseshoes

• Play mini golf

• Play on the trampoline with a sprinkler running underneath

• Play tag

• Put on a puppet show

• Rent a canoe

• Ride bikes

• Run through a sprinkler

• Run through long grass

• Wash the car together

Try these easy summer recipes.

Hummus

Yields: 6 Servings
Prep time: 20 minutes

This classic garbanzo bean dip is easy to make and a versatile dish. Serve hummus with fresh summer raw vegetables, on a piece of whole wheat pita bread or tortilla, on crackers, or as a sandwich filling.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups garbanzo beans, cooked (chickpeas)

• 2 cloves garlic (minced)

• 1/4 cup lemon juice

• 1 tablespoon sesame tahini (sesame paste) or substitute peanut butter for a sweet taste)

• 2 tablespoons olive oil

Directions

1. Mash the garbanzo beans until smooth (if you have a blender, put the beans and lemon juice into it and blend)

2. Add the garlic, lemon juice, tahini and oil. Mix well.

Ingredients:

• 1 pineapple

• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil

• ½ teaspoon iodized salt

• 2 teaspoons ground black pepper

• 1.75 pounds chicken breasts, diced into 1-inch pieces

• 1 lemon, supremed

• 1 cucumber, diced

• ½ red onion, diced

• 1 tablespoon honey

Directions:

1. Soak 8 wooden skewers in water for 15 minutes.

2. Heat grill to medium-high heat.

3. Remove rind from pineapple and dice into 1-inch pieces.

4. In a small bowl, combine oil, salt and 1 teaspoon pepper. Add chicken and pineapple; toss to coat.

5. Alternating chicken and pineapple, pierce onto skewers.

6. Grill for 8 minutes each side, or until chicken is cooked thoroughly.

7. In a medium bowl combine lemon, cucumber, onion, honey and 1 teaspoon pepper.

8. Serve lemon-cucumber salsa over cooked chicken skewers. Serve over some whole grain brown rice or over a fresh summer salad.

When your skin is exposed to sunlight, it makes vitamin D from cholesterol. The sun's ultraviolet B (UVB) rays hit cholesterol in the skin cells, providing the energy for vitamin D synthesis to occur. Vitamin D has many roles in the body and is essential for optimal health. For example, it instructs the cells in your gut to absorb calcium and phosphorus — two minerals that are essential for maintaining strong and healthy bones.

In addition, only a handful of foods contain significant amounts of vitamin D. These include cod liver oil, swordfish, salmon, canned tuna, beef liver, egg yolks and sardines. That said, you would need to eat them nearly every day to get enough vitamin D. If you do not get enough sunlight, it’s often recommended to take a supplement like cod liver oil. One tablespoon (14 grams) of cod liver oil contains more than three times the recommended daily amount of vitamin D.

It’s important to note that the sun’s UVB rays cannot penetrate through windows. So people who work next to sunny windows are still prone to vitamin D deficiency.

Midday is the best time to get vitamin D, as the sun is at its highest point and your body may manufacture it most efficiently around that time of day. This means you may need less time in the sunlight at midday. Darker-skinned people have more melanin, a compound that protects against skin damage by reducing the amount of UVB light absorbed.

Darker-skinned people need more time in sunlight to make the same amount of vitamin D as lighter-skinned people.

You need to expose a sufficient amount of skin to sunlight to maintain healthy vitamin D blood levels. Wearing a tank top and shorts for 10–30 minutes three times per week is sufficient for lighter-skinned people, while those with darker skin may need longer.

In theory, wearing sunscreen may reduce the ability to produce vitamin D, but short-term studies have shown it has little or no impact on blood levels. That said, it’s unclear whether frequently wearing sunscreen reduces your vitamin D levels in the long term.

Although sunlight is great for making vitamin D, too much sunlight can be dangerous. Some consequences of too much sunlight include sunburn, eye damage, skin aging and other skin changes, heat stroke and skin cancer.