Tips and tricks to keep you busy this summer

Here are a few  ways to have a really cool summer:

* Create your own funky water cooler. Take a matka and paint it with your favourite acrylic colours. This way you will have your own portable water cooler and you will save electricity too. Make sure you don’t cover the entire surface of the matka with colour, it will not cool the water then.

* Create your own summer book club. You can tie a rope across two trees or a pole or any kind of strong support. Then, take an old bed sheet and put it across the rope, tie the four corners of the bed sheet to form a tent.  Keep all your collected books inside and form your own summer book camp with your pals.

* If there’s something that is abundant in the summer, it’s the sunlight. How about using the sunlight to cook food in your very own solar cooker? To make your solar cooker take a small metal box, say of 2 by 2 feet, big enough to fit one of your vessels with lid. Colour the interiors of the box black and colour the vessel and its lid black from outside.

The colour black absorbs the maximum amount of heat, so food will get cooked faster. Now add rice, veggies and spices, and cover the lid and place it inside the metal box. Cover the box with a piece of glass (as a lid) to avoid heat loss and keep your cooker in the sun. All you need is a mirror as big as the box in dimension. Adjust it so as to reflect the sunlight onto the metal box and the vessel.

* Summer can be a good time to sharpen your mind. With the heat at its peak outside, sit inside and play mind games that will sharpen your skills, like chess, checkers, or Scotland Yard.

* Make your paintings with cool colours like blues and greens and put them up in your house. It will surely make the home pleasant and cool.


(The writer is the host of ‘Art Attack’, on Disney Channel.)