Journeyer’s Chronicles

Today The Engineer’s school is having a curriculum day. I completely forgot about it until dinner last night, even though I had it written on our calendar. Cinderella will be at preschool until after lunch, but The Little Mermaid will be home as well. My plans for the day have been thrown a little into disarray, but it’s nothing we can’t handle!

The Little Mermaid is happy to play with her dolls and the dog while I busy myself. However, The Engineer is a little less easy to please once he has had enough of his Lego’s. Mind you some days that never happens. I have had to occasionally remind him to eat because he’s been so intent on building something or other. If he does get bored, it can prove disastrous. We now have most of The Thinker’s tools locked away (the ones that can do damage anyway). Despite that The Engineer manages to pull things to bits on a semi-regular basis if I’m not paying attention to what’s going on.

So, I grabbed my dog-eared copy of 501 TV-free Activities For Kids off the bookshelf last night for some inspiration. I referred to it quite often when the kids were younger, but hadn’t thought of using it for The Engineer since he started school. It’s a great book, full of simple, cheap and fun activities. They are broken up into themes and then listed in order of age appropriateness. Each activity is accompanied by a set of icons, so you can see at a glance whether it’s for indoors or outdoors, requires supervision or requires special tools or resources.

Here are 10 things to do on a day off school I’ve picked out for older kids (6-9 years).

1. Start a gardening diary. Draw, paint, press flowers or take cutouts from old gardening magazines to create a scrapbook of the garden throughout the year (or a shorter timeframe) from a child’s perspective. They could also do some simple research to find plants that they could grow. This is one I’ll be doing today, as we have just planted out our first vegie plot. The kids are quite excited about it, so I’m going to try and harness some of that enthusiasm.
2. Sevenses. We used to play this one at school. All you need is a ball and a wall. Throw the ball against the wall:
   • 7 times catching it with both hands
   • 6 times catching it with one hand
   • 5 times letting it bounce once
   • 4 times bouncing it under your let then against the wall
   • 3 times bouncing it into the wall
   • 2 times clapping before catching it
   • 1 time touching the ground before catching it

   

3. Secret messages. The old writing with lemon juice trick. Using a cotton bud, write a secret message. To reveal it, wet the paper.
4. Make an “I Can” book. The child draws pictures of all the things they can do independantly now. Make a nice cover and staple the pages together to create a book.
5. Write a coded message for them to decode. Write a message using the following code. Replace each word in your message with the word preceding it in a dictionary. Tell them what the code is and then let them decipher the message.
6. Let them loose with a camera. Digital cameras make it so easy for kids to take and print out their own photos. Perhaps create a scrapbook page or montage of the photos they’ve taken.
7. Adding up holes. In one side of a largish cardboard box cut a number of holes, different sizes but big enough for a tennis ball to fit through. Number the holes with the largest number for the smallest hole. Each child tries to throw the tennis ball through the holes, say five times. Keep note of the scores they get for each throw, then ask them to add up the scores.
8. Go on a stay at home shopping spree. Allocate your child an imaginary allowance. Make it pretty big, say $500. Then they get to trawl through the shopping catalogues “buying” things and coming in under budget.
9. Find a route on the street directory. Copy a page of the street directory and ask the child to plan a route from point A to point B. You could also use a smaller scale map with distances on it and ask them to calculate the distances, find the shortest route, and so on.
10. Scavenger hunt. Make a list of 10-20 items to find in the backyard, at the park, at the beach, where ever you are. If more than one child is playing, set a time limit. The one with the most items at the end of the time allocated is the winner.

How do you keep the kids occupied when you need to get something done?

Photo: Friends, Strobist: Basketball Group Assignment 2007-03-28, 318_1838