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What to Do When Summer Gets Boring

Banishing boredom

What to Do When Summer Gets Boring Two weeks into summer vacation, Harry dons his best pitiful face and turns it on you. "I'm really, REALLY bored. Are you listening to me, Mom? Dad? Anybody?"

Banish boredom from your house this summer with activities that cross-pollinate and resonate with your Harry. Adventures that complement each other put skills and knowledge in a broader, more real-life context. When projects are related or are natural outgrowths of each other, that initial spark of interest jumps from one activity to another. That moves projects along and gives them a better chance of lasting to conclusion.

Below are some interactive, sensory-stimulating, whole-body, whole-family summer activities. Some are cross-pollinating summer-long campaigns. Others you can do when you have fifteen minutes to spare. They are all designed to keep academic skills perking during those long breaks from school. Copy this entire chapter and paste it on the refrigerator before Harry can begin singing his old boring song. Age appropriateness is noted throughout.

Summer-long optionsAll-Summer-Long Activities
Have a family book club. Read the same book at the same time. Schedule club meetings at two-week intervals to discuss the books, maybe over dinner. Which characters did you like best? Did the story keep you interested? What was effective about the author's style? When pressed for time, select shorter books to give everyone time to complete them before the next club meeting. The frequency and quality of the book discussion is almost as important as the book selections. This activity helps kids learn to critique story elements and authors' styles-exactly what elementary through high schoolers need for writing book reports at school.

Start a family newsletter. Put Harrys of all ages in charge of keeping in touch with family and friends by e-mail this summer. Younger kids can focus on individual e-mail messages. Older ones can put together family newsletters and distribute them by e-mail. Most word processing software gives computer-savvy or more ambitious Harrys the option to lay out the newsletters and insert images. This reinforces more sophisticated computer skills. At the least, this activity strengthens keyboarding, composition, grammar, and spelling skills.

Make a family history. Designate Harry the family historian. Put younger ones in charge of maintaining folders or scrapbooks of summer events like movies, museum trips, family parties, or vacations. Paste photos, postcards, movie stubs, museum brochures, party invitations, travel itineraries, and receipts for favorite new toys in this permanent family record. These scrapbooks make for excellent sharing when Harry returns to school. Younger kids can also practice handwriting and creative skills by writing a narrative for each set of items.

Older students can sort family photos by person, date, or event. Put a scanner in Harry's hand and have him scan the photos and move them into page layouts. These two steps alone could take all summer. Ask him to collate his pages to add to his younger brother's family history scrapbooks. Frame and send individual pages as gifts for the entire coming year.

Teach cooking. Find math in measuring and determining portions and nutrient contents. Find science behind why yeast makes bread rise and why sparkling water bubbles. Find history in family recipes, art and design in food presentation, and cultural awareness in preparing ethnic meals. Planning meals, budgeting, buying food, preparing, and serving also demand organizing and that most important skill of all, cleaning up the mess. Cooking can even instill responsibility. Those who learn to cook over the summer can make a weekly dinner for the family during the school year.

Note that microwave ovens are prime opportunities for younger, computer-reluctant Harrys to learn to operate a simple computer program. Computers and microwave ovens have lots in common. They both have computer chips and preloaded software and controls so Harry can tell the device what to do. The microwave, however, is simpler because it has only a few controls like a timer and a clock.

Work on food allergies. A summer cooking project might also provide the perfect opener for investigating your suspicions about whether your child's hyperactivity might be food related. Harry can become his own food-allergy detective with a simple elimination diet. You can help by planning cooking projects around his new foods. Find excellent guidelines written for elementary-aged kids in Tracking Down Hidden Food Allergy by William G. Crook, M.D. Available to order at 800-227-2627.

Learn a foreign language. Summer is the perfect time for learning a second language together. Access the many computer programs available free online. Select trips, television programs, ethnic grocery stores, museum exhibits, local festivals, and events that highlight the language of your choice. Be on the lookout for words in your chosen foreign language in newspapers, books, and magazines. Borrow or buy books in two languages, and then read the dialogue aloud in both languages to learn grammar, sentence structure, and vocabulary. Incorporate foreign expressions in your daily conversations and cook meals from regions that speak your new language. Bring all your efforts together by having a family book club discussion about your Chinese book selection while eating Harry's interpretation of chow mein.

Build endurance. Involve Harry in exercises that build strength, stamina, and lung capacity. Go hiking, tree climbing, rock climbing, bicycling, running, jogging, skipping, jumping rope, playing hopscotch, and swimming with kids of all ages. Get a younger Harry a mini-trampoline or set up a badminton court in the backyard and have family tournaments. Harry can perfect his body control and movement strategies merely by learning to avoid the azalea bushes when he lunges for the birdie. These full-body, high-movement exercises are also excellent outlets for kids with attention disorders. Older kids might learn fencing over the summer, which builds strength, stamina, balance, and eye-hand coordination.

Form a visiting artist collective. Ask the parents of four or five of Harry's friends to join you in inviting artists to teach a small group of kids this summer. The artist doesn't have to be a professional. It can be one of the parents in your neighborhood, or a friend or family member who is interested in graphics arts, interior design, jewelry making, beading, weaving, knitting, sewing, quilting, gardening, house or wall painting, pet grooming, bicycle repair, carpentry, wood carving, or picture framing. Classes can meet for an hour once or twice a week. Parents can take turns chaperoning and learn a new art along with the kids.

Organize collections. Whether Harry collects stuffed teddy bears or CDs of his favorite rap groups, organizing, sorting, cataloguing, and storing collections is a great summertime activity. Make it a writing exercise by having him maintain a collection notebook in print or on the computer. This should include notes, comments, and/or opinions about individual items. This could take all summer.

Plant a vegetable or flower garden together. There are many life lessons in gardening that kids of all ages can harvest. Nature is never short of surprising revelations. Gardening also teaches design, spatial and visual planning, sequencing, scheduling and long-term planning, and follow-through-the same skills middle and high school kids need to complete a long-term report. The plant selection process puts kids in touch with weather conditions and soil quality as well as care and maintenance schedules. If it is a vegetable garden, it will also show Harry where vegetables come from. It's not surprising that some kids think green beans come from cans in a supermarket.

This would be also a fine time to teach Harry how to safeguard his health and preserve the environment by investigating and using natural fertilizers and nontoxic pest-killing methods. As a finishing touch, Harry can prepare his harvested vegetables as part of his weekly cooking performance.

Introduce Harry to traditional crafts. Cross-cultural experiences will expand Harry's awareness, spark his creativity and teach him tolerance. Seek out local or large festivals and events that highlight the crafts of another culture. Because traditional artists learn their crafts within their own communities, they provide a personal insight into the culture, too. Check for festivals, events, celebrations, or parades in your local newspaper or on community bulletin boards. This idea dovetails nicely many of the others above. From the Hispanic cultural festival, Harry can learn the recipe for a dish he can cook using vegetables from his garden project and serve it on Tuesdays in the fall when he cooks dinner for the family as they discuss a book everyone just read about El Salvador.

Redesign his bedroom. This is a superb lesson in how to sustain his skills during a long-term project, a skill Harry needs if he's in grade four or above. Designing and planning a bedroom also anticipates the increased homework load for kids transitioning into middle or high school. Have Harry, the junior contractor, prepare a design proposal that includes a color palette, floor plan, window treatments, and floor cover. He should make a budget based on his predictions about supplies and outside contractor needs. His proposal should include a time line for completing each phase, which portions he can do on his own, and those requiring assistance from others. Instead of budgeting for new furniture, challenge Harry to explore what he can accomplish with simple materials like boards, cinder blocks, and boxes, or by refinishing or repainting his old dresser.

Fifteen-minute motivatorsFifteen-Minute Summer Activities
Read books aloud together. Choral reading focuses attention in kids with attention deficits. It provides moral support for shy ones, oral support for stuttering ones, and motivation for those who are reluctant to read. If it is done after a discussion about a character, it makes the character's personality resonate with life. If it's poetry you read together, Harry gets the benefit of hearing rhyme, rhythm, and the beat of language, which will smooth his oral reading skills and enliven his writing. Choral reading works, too, for primary-grade kids or those new to English because it reinforces phonics, pronunciation, and the rules of punctuation. Fifteen to twenty minutes a day provides an entertaining and nontaxing way to keep reading skills sharp all summer long.

Practice handwriting. Though the computer is taking over much of what was once handwritten, there are still critical times, like on standardized tests, when kids of all ages need to put pencil to paper and make legible, meaningful marks. If Harry has a problem with his handwriting, don't let this important skill fall by the wayside, even if he is in high school. Poor handwriting skills can have a negative effect on an elementary school student's self-concept. An inability to write smoothly can also affect a young one's desire to compose his thoughts on paper. Hairy handwriting, like stinky spelling, gives a false impression about an otherwise dazzling kid, no matter his age.

• For preschool and elementary level. Do some old-fashioned handwriting activities for 10-15 minutes each day. They help primary graders develop small-muscle control and improve eye-hand coordination. Have Harry make letter garlands across a page of lined paper. Start with one letter at a time, like a whole row of loops that look like the letter e linked together. Make a bigger garland using loops that look like the letter L. Make garlands with points like in the letters t, u, and v, or humpy garlands with shapes that look like the letters n and m. Kids begin by making two or three letters together and work up to four or five. This is an excellent exercise for beginning writers and those making the move, typically in second or third grade, into cursive writing.

• Grades three and above. Investigate calligraphy. This stylistic writing demands good small-muscle control, posture, and breath control. Colored markers with a wide tip or a piece of chalk held at a forty-five-degree angle will help kids easily achieve the characteristic thin and thick lines of calligraphy.

• High school: Though you might never get an older Harry to make garlands or write in calligraphy, you can get him to practice his handwriting over the summer. Insist that he leave written notes about where he is going and when he'll be home. Ask him to write you a note to remind you that you need to take him to the dentist tomorrow, and tell him you'll remember better if he writes the details. If in these notes, you see that he consistently misspells a word, leave him a note that includes that word spelled correctly.

Mind their mannersNo-Time-At-All Summer Activities
Work on good manners. Use the months of summer to teach elementary and middle school kids how to write thank-you notes, for example. Help Harry create and print appropriate stationery by hand or on the computer. Together, compose a general letter of thanks he can use as a template. Then, make copies, leaving blanks for personalizing each note. Show him how to correctly address, stamp, and mail his letters promptly.

Focus on the small niceties, too. He can learn the proper way and when to open a door for someone elderly or handicapped, or merely another person entering or exiting around him. Or how to answer the phone and write a message down or to be considerate of the time he's on the phone or on the Internet. Teach elementary school Harry table manners, too, like posture, passing plates of food, chewing in public, and the proper use of his knife. Good manners reflect well on the whole family.

Rely on these activities whenever Harry is bored and looking to you for something to do. Use them to bring the family together in entertaining and educational ways. But don't crowd out spontaneity. Engineer some downtime in your summertime, too. If you go where the wind blows and where the creative urges lead, this could turn out to be a summer of adventure and self-discovery not only for Harry.