Blair from WiseCraft is telling us that summer vacation is coming quickly to her house. Preparation is everything - so why not try this idea that Blair recommends:'I am accumulating a small but essential stash of things which I plan to put up on wise craft soon. From experience, I know to enter summer vacation fully prepared with the right mental mindset, or its just not fun for anyone around here. Yes, those long days of relaxing in the summer sound magical and great to my kids right now, while they are sitting in a classroom for a couple more days, but we moms understand the reality. There will be plenty of days when they complain of being bored. Its going to happen. That's when the "stash of things" becomes my lifeline. Pulling out an activity, craft project, or simple game idea can get us all on the having fun track again.'
'One thing I've pulled out for years are the Boomerang audio programs for kids. You can get an idea of what these audio program are here. These started out as cassette tapes I got in the mail years ago, being played on a kid's tape recorder. My kids were only kind of listening at that stage, it was more for background entertainment as they played. But these episodes have grown up with them and, now that they are older, they not only enjoy these but have referred to them on several occasions for schoolwork. We then graduated to CD's and now we're getting our downloads directly from the Boomerang site, which are in turn loaded into the kids Ipods. (I love the "nonpackaged" aspect of this, there is no paper, no wait, its instantaneous.) On days that we are hanging out at home, the kids retreat to their rooms for a bit of downtime after lunch, with Boomerang audio stories in their heads. As a parent, I love the "back door" approach of Boomerang and its way to make learning fun for kids, they are learning and listening but its nothing like being in a classroom. Plus its something that the whole family can enjoy listening to together, the stories are rich and imaginative, the facts are fascinating, and the kid's who do all the telling are real kids, not actors. (No kidding, they are friends from the neighborhood of where Boomerang is recorded in California.) A list of episodes and what episodes are filled with can be found here.'Hooray for Summer!
