My Education Junction

How Do You Beat Summertime Boredom?

It’s too soon to even ask this question-assuming you live in a normal household. Do your children suffer from summertime boredom? Mine do, and honestly I have no idea what to do about it. All winter long we wait desperately for summer to come. The kids are bouncing off the ceiling and walls wanting to go outside and play. Slowly the weather gets nicer and the temperature gets warmer, and we spend more and more time outdoors. But June hits, school is, out and suddenly I begin to hear all kinds of excuses as to why no one wants to go outside. It’s too hot. The pool is too cold. There are too many bugs outside. On and on and on.

When I was a kid I spent all day everyday outside. Both of my parents worked, and my grandmother watched me all summer long. Growing up, I was fortunate to have a pool in my backyard. I would swim from 9am until around noon. I would get out of the pool briefly to eat, and I would be back in until 4. I didn’t have any siblings until I was 11 so I had to find ways to entertain and amuse myself. 6 or 7 hours in a pool everyday is a long time but I did things like diving for pennies or pretend to be in the Olympics. On the very off chance I did not want to swim I would find other things to do like catch bugs and butterflies. Sometimes I would catch field mice- which is something my mom absolutely hated.

Nick and I have made a few videos I will be posting later this week- if YouTube ever gets them on their server. He likes to make things and cook. I have no problem doing that but those things fill minutes not hours of the day. So I am sitting here trying to figure out what we are going to do to fill our day- something local, something that doesn’t involve farm animals, and something that does not involve cartoon network. We live is a small farm town so our weekday trips involve feeding goats, fish at the trout farm and petting cows. My kids are all farmed out. I am all farmed out.

What in the world are we going to do all summer long? I better go figure it out…..

Update 6/26/07 - I was really hoping someone would pony up some ideas here. Alas, no takers. Lucky for you I bought a book that should keep us busy the rest of the summer.