Category Archives: Activities

A variety of ideas and discussions and opinions on family/kid activities.

Why Didn't You Tell Me??????

cover of There Is A Bird On Your HeadLast week I talked about summer reading. Yesterday we ventured back to our local library. I was on a quest to find some books to read with my almost first-grader that wouldn’t bore me to tears and that he would enjoy reading as well.

I am just so angry I could spit. Pffft. I’ve been here for nearly 3 years and a sizable chunk of you all come by here regularly to join in on the discussions… Will someone please explain to me why I didn’t know that Mo Willems is writing some crazy great stuff for the learning to read set? Crazy great. Crazy. Great.

Of course I new the name and recognized the titles, I don’t live under a rock (though we are in Maine). I even heard that some were winning awards (slight understatement). But I just hadn’t ever held one. Not one of you grabbed me by the shoulders and screamed in my ear “GET THESE, READ THESE, SHARE THESE -YOU WILL LOVE THEM LIKE CHOCOLATE.” You should know by now that that will get my attention. I am just not sure that I can forgive you without accepting bribes. (I love chocolate and Mo Willems books.)

Clay (6) came home from the library with There Is a Bird on Your Head! and I Am Invited to a Party! We sat in bed, reading alternate pages and seriously laughing our fool heads off. Then Aidan (8) came up, and we made him read them to us and again we howled, our laughter clearly invading the entire neighborhood. But there are a gazillion more Mo Willems books that my deprived young children have not had the pleasure of loving. I wonder what it would cost to buy them all on Amazon tonight? *Sigh* I am a loyal library patron. I will go back tomorrow and see what else they’ve got. And I will beg them to buy them all if they don’t already have them.

And if your kids are coming up on a birthday anytime soon… and the Hatchlings are invited…. you now know exactly what they’ll be getting.

Oh, and I love Mo even more now that I know that he blogs…

What ELSE have you been keeping from me? It will be better for all of us if you tell me now.

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by Megin Hatch

Photo of the cover of the book There’s A Bird On Your head graciously provided through The Fair Use doctrine, some rights reserved.

Our Own Private Wisconsin

empty coffee cup on wooden tableI would have killed for a cup of coffee last weekend. And I almost did.

We moved to a quiet quasi-suburban section of San Francisco a few months ago, forsaking a neighborhood surrounded by probably 20 coffee shops within walking distance to one with exactly zero. So if it’s a desperate Saturday morning and I’m out of coffee, it’s into the car I go.

I hate taking the car out solo for one-stop errands, but hated it all the more so because Bo, the cat who lives down the street, has the unfortunate pastime of sleeping under cars. I had just started to back up when I saw him haring out from underneath and stopped short. I’m a slow driver so there probably wasn’t any real danger, but just try to tell that to my adrenal gland.

At least I didn’t need the coffee so much anymore.

Still, the incident of the suicidal cat was a rare flash of terror in this otherwise healthy, sedate neighborhood. Many things changed when we moved up here, among them:

  • People come over for dinner here.
  • Neighbors know our names, and my daughter’s, too.
  • Everyone comments on our garden, and the neighbors’ gardens. (And on the neighbors themselves, for that matter.)
  • You can walk down the block barefoot — no chunks of concrete, canine “surprises,” or broken glass lie in wait.

On the down side, though:

  • People rarely leave their houses without good reason, although that may relate to the fact that July in San Francisco rivals Antarctica — it’s freezing!
  • Everyone in this neighborhood comes from roughly the same socioeconomic level.

That last drawback brought back to me an old question: in what kind of neighborhood do I want to raise our two-year old daughter Fern and her sister on the way?

I loved our old Bohemian, diverse neighborhood in a dense part of the City. Fern interacted people of different races and classes unaware of any difference. Every day, we’d chat with the day workers waiting for jobs to support their families; most of the stores featured their owners right there behind the counter; retirees and students and everyone in between mixed at the corner grocery. And, this being San Francisco, there was even a smattering of the surprisingly wealthy: a Lexus and a beat-up pickup would share the same street.

Then again, the semi-suburban lifestyle is growing on me. Just today I helped hunt for one neighbor’s lost cat collar. I loaned another my ladder so she could sneak into her own house. And I dropped in on a third for a glass of wine — just went over unannounced like I’ve heard they do in the Midwest and the South and small towns everywhere. It’s like what people say about Wisconsin: people are just nice here.

The choice is stark: by choosing a safer, more comfortable neighborhood to raise our family, are we teaching Fern that people should live nearby others of the same background? But by choosing an urban setting would we imply that neighborliness is not that important?

We’ve made our decision: we’re in the quiet, friendly section of town now. But I walk the fence when I can: even here, I will try to expose Fern and her sister to people that aren’t just like her. Ultimately I want to show them that our community is defined by a heck of a lot more than a tax bracket.

And, in the meantime, I’ll be brewing a lot of coffee at home.

by Doodaddy

Photo graciously provided by bullish1974, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved

Mom & Dad Get Away

empty chairs by the pool against a starry night skyMr Incredible and I just got back from several days without our kids.   It was nice, it was relaxing, and even though I did miss my kids, it was a wonderful way for us to reconnect and spend some down time.  We do have date nights every few weeks or so.  But, having days and nights away does not happen very often.  In fact, I realized, as I drove off, worrying a little bit about how my youngest would do, that this was the first time I have left Jack Jack at someone else’s house for more than just an evening.

I don’t really think that I needed to worry.  I was leaving the three kids in the capable hands of my parents.  I knew the older two would be fine.  But, what if Jack Jack woke up during the night?  Would he panic, looking for me?  Or how about in the morning, when he usually climbs into our bed and snuggles with us for a while before hopping up to begin his day, what would he do then?

I tried not to think about it and vowed to only call once, in the morning, at a time when Jack Jack is usually a happy camper anyway.  When I called, things were fine, as I knew they would be.  And they were fine the next night too.  My mom said that Jack Jack just had a minute or two each morning that he was upset and wanted his mom and dad, but he was easily redirected.  So, I was relieved and I was able to relax.

Relaxation is hard to come by these days.  So, when the Mr. and I planned this little get away, we planned on it being as relaxing as possible.  Our plans were to lay by the pool and read and maybe have a drink or two brought to our pool chairs.  We planned to lay at the beach and read.  We planned to dip our toes in the surf.  We planned to watch what we wanted on the TV and sleep in comfortable beds.  We planned to order room service breakfast and not leave our room until we were good and ready.   We accomplished all of these things.  It was wonderful.

We also enjoyed the things that we did not do.  We did not have to build sand castles to keep our kids occupied.  We did not have to turn our heads and nod everytime a kid said “Mom!  Watch Me!”  We did not have to break up squabbles among siblings.  We did not have to choose resturants based on the kids’ menus.  We did not have to worry about how late we stayed up because there was no one to wake us up at the crack of dawn.  We enjoyed not doing these things.  It was wonderful.

And yet, we did miss our kids.  We watched families playing in the pool and at the beach and talked about what our kids would have liked about this resort.  We wondered how my parents were keeping up with the three kids.  We talked about how our day at Disneyland with the kids had gone.  But, even though we did miss them, it was a much needed break.  It was a well deserved break too, since we were celebrating a 10th anniversury that is coming up soon.

As much as we love our kids, we, and all parents, need that time away, as a couple, to make sure that we don’t lose touch with the most important part of our family, the foundation.  Sometimes that time is just an evening.  Sometimes it is a few days, or even a week.  We had not had a week since our Honeymoon and the last time we got away for a couple days was when I was pregnant with Jack Jack, over three years ago.  But, times like these are important to our relationships, to our families and even to our kids.  How do you and your spouse find the time to maintain your relationship?

by In The Fast Lane

Photo graciously provided by sandcastlematt, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved

Summer Reading: It's Not Too Late

a woman reading a book on a dock with her feet in the waterIt’s *gulp* the end of July and we are finally getting into the swing of summer. One of the activities that we let slide for the first bit of summer was reading. It wasn’t intentional, but bedtimes were pushed back, company was plenty, and routines were discarded in favor of freedom. However, we’ve jumped back on the horse and we’re all spending more time reading now.

Disclaimer: I am a mostly stay at home mom and these suggestions come from that vantage point. So, apply this to your weekend, tweak, add, share your own ideas for how you fit reading into your family’s summer schedule.

Here’s what we’ve found helpful:

1. Lots of libraries offer different summer programs to engage kids in reading, and they can be great. They have different programs for different aged kids and they often help classmates connect and allow for socialization while participating in the reading program. Some libraries are better at this than others, but it’s an excellent resource for folks who respond well to structure.

2. Aside from the programs, visiting the library on a quiet or rainy day can also be inspiring. Often during the school year my library trips are squeezed in before or after bus pick up or on our way to another errand. In the summer, it’s great to simply make the library your destination.

3. TD Banknorth offers a summer reading program which combines encouragement to read with encouragement to save money. They are offering any child under 18 who reads 10 books this summer $10 to be deposited into their bank account. Are other banks doing this, too?

4. Comic books are not evil. My 8 year old fell in love with comics after a friend of ours passed down the DC Encyclopedia to him. He’s never looked back and I can’t begin to guess how many hours he’s invested in that book, as well as the Marvel version that he later acquired, as well as creating his own series of comics.

I don’t buy books. Or, I rarely buy books, because I am an avid library patron. However, the other day my son asked if we could go Borders to buy a new book. He’s been saving his money and really wanted the next in the comic book series he’s been reading. We counted up the money and the 3 kids and I headed to the book store.

It’s my opinion that reading comic books and reading novels require different skill sets. Both are valuable- valued- in our house. Both feed my son’s hunger for creativity. So he bought 1 comic book and 1 novel. That was Sunday, and by Monday night he’d read them both.

Back to the list:

5. My kids love to host ice cream parties and invite the whole neighborhood over to partake in the gluttonous feast. Everyone brings a different topping and the parents socialize while the kids (ranging in age from 1 to high school) play pick up games of soccer and duck duck goose. The goal we’ve set is to finish our summer reading (I admit to pulling arbitrary numbers of my ear for this one), so that we can host a huge enormous ice cream social before school starts.

6. Reinvent the routine. If your usual reading time is at bedtime but you find that your longer summer days make it difficult to complete evening reading before implosions or meltdowns occur, switch it up. Institute a quiet time before or after lunch or dinner where everyone curls up with a book.

7. If you’re going on vacation, do some family research and prepare for the trip, even if its a vacation you’ve taken 100 times before. This is great for older kids and can draw together lots of skills including reading. My sister and her kids just joined us on the east coast (from San Francisco) for 3 weeks. They spent time in 3 different states and covered umpteen hundred miles on their trip. Geography, math, reading, social studies, science, etc, etc, etc.

Younger kids will also enjoy reading a cluster of picture books about your destination. For example if you’re headed to the coast check out some books about the ocean. If you are heading to Maine (call me!) and check out some books about the state.

8. Set an example. Read, talk about reading, set your own goals for summer reading and then meet them.

9. Involve siblings. Have older children read to or make book recordings for younger siblings, cousins or friends. This also makes a GREAT birthday gift for young kids, and provides the older children with opportunities to inspire beginning readers.

10. Read and listen to other people who are passionate about reading:

Just One More Book Podcast
Swimming in Literary Soup Podcast
Planet Book Club
Kids Reading Circle
Planet Esme

What works for you?

If you like what you read here at GNMParents, why not get your updates in an RSS reader (orange button above the header) or in an email (enter your address in the sidebar). Both are free and convenient!

by Megin Hatch

Photo graciously provided by Lori Greig, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved.

My Sports Dilemma

boy sitting on bar of football goalpost at Michigan statiumI took TechnoBoy and The Mercenary for their very first sports physical today. At the tender age of 10, they’ll be starting football practice in a few weeks. I have to say, the whole thing is a little unnerving. I didn’t start any formal sports until I was in the 7th grade. Okay….I’m realizing that was only a couple of years older than the boys are now. It sure feels like I was older than they are now. I wonder if my parents felt like I was hurtling through childhood faster than they could catch their breaths.

And football. It sounds so, I don’t know, official. Big men play football. Not my little boys.

Right?

No, I guess not. The weird thing is that I am looking forward to part of it. The part where they pursue a goal, overcome obstacles, and work with other boys as a team. That part I like. The part where they might be injured? Not so much my favorite.

I don’t have issues with kids playing sports. In fact, I encourage it. I was just plain awful at sports in school and my self-confidence suffered every time I was the last kid chosen for teams. I want the boys to have some basic skills, to be able to keep up and play competently with kids their age at whatever sport they choose. I also like how kids have so many opportunities to try out different sports at a young age; it’s good for them to sample and have a wide variety of experience.

At the same time, I’m concerned that they’re already approaching an age where the competition gets so serious that if they’re not downright gifted in a sport they won’t be able to make the team. Kids are able to play soccer as young as 5 years old (full disclosure: MY five year olds played soccer this year). By the age of 10 or 12, a child who’s chosen to play the same sport has a tremendous amount of experience under his/her belt.

What do you think? Are sports for really young children a good idea? Are we broadening horizons or adding stress to their little lives? Do sports build their confidence and competence, or push them along toward adulthood too soon?

by AmyL

Photo graciously provided by Kathy~, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved