Summer at home activities for tweens

[jgenie]

Ok so we have this dilemma. Long summer and often at home. No pool.

This is my strategy.

First—I’m grateful because this time around we have some vacations/ camps planned for the kids that break up the weeks a bit. Last year they were all either the week after school got out or before it started. That means less weeks on end of being at home!

Second—I do work. I can go in early in the morning while the littlest sleep. My older two will get “tips” for helping out watching the little ones. They are tipped for their ability to help them be productive!

Third—we got a switch for Christmas. I plan on letting my 3 oldest play daily—only one hour each. To do so, they are required to do two categories of things. The first category they must complete each day before playing. It’s mostly cleaning their rooms, showering, taking care of their “zones”, getting dressed for the day. The second set of requirements will take place in the afternoon. I’m working on a point system to allow certain activities (almost all fun) to gain points that permit for the gaming the next day. Reading, khan academy, board game, bike rides, swimming, any outings or service projects, extra chores, sports practices, instrument practices, time petting the cat, working on merit badges etc.

The reason I’m doing it this way is so that the kids have a minimal requirement to be allowed to game each day BUT when the gaming hour is over, they have a whole list of good things to do that will allow them to game the next day. Then they aren’t “bored” and have a list of stuff to do but they don’t blow through all the fun stuff because they just want to game.

I’m excited to try this out!

We will definitely have excursions every day too. But for us they’re usually modest—head to the park, the library, a friends house, etc.

Sounds like a great plan! My kids love going to the library. Our library system is quite large. We’re planning to visit as many libraries as we can this summer. We have a typed list and we’ll mark each library off the list as we visit. It’s fun to see the different libraries and it’s free!!

[DualvansMommy]

Kids are younger, so at the ages they’re at now I find it easy to have them entertained with my town rec camps. They’ll do that M-Thursday’s from 9-1pm for the bulk of July. This year, we’re mixing it up with DS1 with 2 weeks of full day soccer camps, one week in July and one week in August before our shore vacation.

But I know a lot of tweens as mommy helpers in my neighborhood. I used them two summers few years ago when my kids were in their baby and toddler phases. Perhaps that or sign them up to different programs at libraries? As we have a very comprehensive county wide library system with fair amount of programs for that age.


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[niccig]

Ok so we have this dilemma. Long summer and often at home. No pool.

This is my strategy.

First—I’m grateful because this time around we have some vacations/ camps planned for the kids that break up the weeks a bit. Last year they were all either the week after school got out or before it started. That means less weeks on end of being at home!

Second—I do work. I can go in early in the morning while the littlest sleep. My older two will get “tips” for helping out watching the little ones. They are tipped for their ability to help them be productive!

Third—we got a switch for Christmas. I plan on letting my 3 oldest play daily—only one hour each. To do so, they are required to do two categories of things. The first category they must complete each day before playing. It’s mostly cleaning their rooms, showering, taking care of their “zones”, getting dressed for the day. The second set of requirements will take place in the afternoon. I’m working on a point system to allow certain activities (almost all fun) to gain points that permit for the gaming the next day. Reading, khan academy, board game, bike rides, swimming, any outings or service projects, extra chores, sports practices, instrument practices, time petting the cat, working on merit badges etc.

The reason I’m doing it this way is so that the kids have a minimal requirement to be allowed to game each day BUT when the gaming hour is over, they have a whole list of good things to do that will allow them to game the next day. Then they aren’t “bored” and have a list of stuff to do but they don’t blow through all the fun stuff because they just want to game.

I’m excited to try this out!

We will definitely have excursions every day too. But for us they’re usually modest—head to the park, the library, a friends house, etc.

I like this idea. They have to do some other things to earn the game time the next day. Are you going to do a checklist for the second category? I’m thinking several things on a list and DS has to complete so many to get the game time the next day.

Left to his own, he’d sleep until noon and then he’ll be on the computer the rest of the day.


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[TwinFoxes]

Actually *at home* as in not out in the neighborhood playing or at the pool I do let them use screens a lot more than during the school year (they only get screens on the weekends during school). We also play games, and they are still into pretend play. They love to read and like to draw too.

Of course they also are on the swim team and so we go to the pool every day for practice (no screens before practice), plus we go back to the pool almost every afternoon, and they have meets multiple times a week. We have lots of kids in the neighborhood so they play outside a lot. I take them on outings to various places for activities (library, into DC for museums, fairs and festivals). But when they're actually at home they do a lot of screens. It's not unlimited, but I'm pretty lax.

I think finding things for tweens at home is hard. If you can get them out of the house it will be much easier to curtail screen time.

[carolinamama]

My kids get a lot more screen time in the summer but not until they have finished a checklist. I've used it for the last 2-3 summers and it works well. It includes 1/2 hour of reading, 1 hour of outside play or creative play during bad weather, acceptable completion of daily chore, cleaning up bedroom and getting oneself ready for the day. Frequently the outside or creative play extend past an hour if they get involved in something with friends. We also do summer swim team, with practices in the evenings since our neighborhood school is year-round. Each of my kids will do one session of sleep-away camp and then a week here and there of other local camps. This year we are traveling more during summer so, sadly, I think it will fly by much too fast.