It is summer and your kids are home. Camp is over and you have to be Mom, Teacher, Cook, Entertainer and everything else. Now, to get through these last of summer fun you need some good tricks up your sleeves. This will help you put up with the hot and sticky summer days and the nudging for Mom to get things moving. Here are some ideas for what you can do right now with your sweaty and bored brood and their friends.
Stay at Home
If you have AC and you’d rather stay home than face the heat you need to find some activity to entertain the kids with. Start by promising them a good game and a treat if they tidy up their room and the house. This means picking up their toys and putting them in place. You can help them and get some cleaning done at the same time. When the house looks nice again you will have better peace of mind to start some game with the kids.
Possible Games
Board games are great for days around the kitchen table. Place some snacks and cold drinks and sit down together. If you have smaller kids you can set them up in their baby chair or with something that will keep their hands busy like carrot sticks or stickers and paper. Start a good game and get into it. Kids love when Mom is in the game for real. No acts. Beat them and do it with a smile!
Good ideas for board games are Memory, Lotto games, dice games and creative games where you are supposed to guess things and come up with stories. A great idea here would be a game like Rory’s Story Cubes but only if the kids are big enough to make their own stories out of pictures.
Coloring Books
When mixed ages are around the table you can bring out some coloring books. Let some kids color and other place stickers on the pictures. For older kids there are great games with paper and pen. One is very simple. Each person draws one part of a body without seeing what the others are adding. Each one folds the paper to cover the picture he made. In the end you get a very funny figure to laugh at together.
Face the Heat!
You can also head out to the park and let them burn off some steam. Ignore their objections and just go out to see what happens. Even older kids will find something fun by the swings so just get out there and see what you will find. Hopefully there will be other bored and hot Moms in the park to suffer the last days of summer with!