| Happy Holidays! Now What Do I Do with My Kids for Two Weeks? |
By: Mary Lee Shalvoy, Education columnist
On 12/17/05
The next few weeks will be filled with merriment and festive holiday cheer…most of the time, anyway.
| "We have several museums and galleries in our town that are free or just request a simple donation." |
If you are in my situation and have three kids home on a school break, plus another two kids you are watching for a friend who works full time, then you also have weeks filled with noisy, active, antsy and hungry captives. How will I cope?
I have decided that playing the Xbox (in our case, PlayStation) every day for eight hours with mini movie or TV breaks is just not going to happen. I am not going to let this vacation break the bank entertaining kids or break my spirit either. Thus, I embark on this fortnight armed with a positive attitude and a list of inexpensive activities to draw from each day.
This group of children ranges in age from 8 to 12. I have decided to let each have a turn picking one activity for the day. Of course, we will do traditional holiday things like creating the gingerbread village and taking in the city hustle and bustle, but there is so much more to keep kids engaged, while providing life lessons on cooperation and just “getting along.”
In my pursuit of activities, I realized that holiday breaks don’t have to mean a break from education. I am not suggesting that Mom has to crack the whip and force kids to pull out those extra workbooks and practice equations or multiplication tables. At the same time, “education” doesn’t have to mean the end to all fun and games. There are many ways to infuse activities with some reading, writing, and ‘rithmatic, as well as history, art and science, without much angst. Here are some suggestions from my holiday break activities list:
Take them outside on a Science trek.
If you live in a moderate climate, check out what your local zoo has to offer. Although some animals might be hibernating, you might see others in action. We visited a zoo recently and witnessed the lions actively playing with each other, unlike the summer months when they lazily lie around. Zoos are filled with information about animals and their habitats. I’ve also found the crowds to be much smaller at this time of the year.
If you live in snow country, you can conduct science experiments with snow. Visit a fabulous site called www.weatherwizkids.com for great outdoor learning experiments. My favorite with snow is called “Examining Snowflakes". This requires black paper or fabric, a magnifying glass and some snow. Freeze the black fabric, stick it outside to catch some snowflakes and look through the magnifier. It’s as easy as that! You will be able to see the different shapes of the flakes and since no two are alike, it should take some time to really examine some differences. I would add a bit of an art lesson to this activity, having the kids draw what they see using silver or white markers on black paper.
Why stop with Science? Visit www.mathcats.com to find some math activities set in the great outdoors. Staying indoors, use your baking time to teach about measurements. To get the older kids really thinking, have them bake something using metric measurements.
Cultivate Art buffs.
Plan a day to visit a local art museum or gallery. If you avoid the gift shop, this field trip can be quite reasonably priced. We have several museums and galleries in our town that are free or just request a simple donation. You might be able to catch local artists’ at work that could lead to inspiration for art projects at home.
When I lived in New York, I had my kids read the Newberry Award-winning book From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg and then take them through the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see if any of the places where Claudia and her brother, Jamie, hid still exist.
Teach some etiquette with thank you notes
What does everyone get at this time of the year? Presents! To please your Aunt Margaret’s etiquette sensitivities and to keep penmanship and grammar and syntax somewhat fresh, have your kids write thank you notes. I must admit that I have been lax in getting my children to follow up with a nice note after a generous gift and I feel remiss. It is an art that has lost its importance in our busy lives and I plan on reincorporating it. Heck, I’ll even let my kids use the computer to type the notes. They can always use the practice.
If you have trouble remembering how to write a formal or informal letter, check out www.englishplus.com or even rely on Microsoft Word or other word processors for letter templates.
Finally, I did promise my kids that we would have a “Pajama Day” where we eat popcorn and watch movies. It’s good to remember that it’s fun to “do nothing” once in a while.
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