Raising Kids With Character

On the last day of the school year I was driving my 7-year-old to his final day of classes and in the course of our conversation he told me that he didn’t want school to end! I offered to teach him math through the summer if he really wanted, but he didn’t go for it. No, it usually isn’t the schoolwork that kids miss, but friends, the predictability of each day, the activity and the general lack of boredom. I know most kids wouldn’t admit that school is a source of fun and entertainment but let’s be honest, it is! And not only that but it’s meaningful as well.

So what does a kid do on her summer break? And what does a kid do on summer break when it RAINS to boot?

I think we can agree that a few more hours of screen time isn’t the worst thing in the world, but even though they won’t admit it, that’s a pretty lame way to spend the summer. In fact, I daresay that one of the reason that kids think that TV and video games are so much fun is that they have slaughtered their imagination right along with the first-person enemies.

Art is the opposite of screen-entertainment. Let me explain why: It’s because when we create art we are forcing our imagination to create as opposed to merely having images thrust upon it. Our imagination is definitely a muscle that needs to be exercised and, no, I’m afraid figuring out how to bust out of a digital fortress does not qualify as imaginative muscle building.

Now I’m an artist so I’m fairly creative when it comes to giving my kids ideas for projects (my issue is that I need to join them in the activity more often) but what does the unartistic parent do? It’s simple really, you read blogs. There are TONS of blogs out there for family projects… and I do mean tons. Get a Pinterest account, just make sure you eventually take a break from pinning and actually try some of it out! (And if you fail, make SURE you post it to pinterestfail.com, I mean you’re not really an artist so you should still be able to laugh at yourself. I’m KIDDING!)

I occasionally head to Pinterest when I find my well is dry, but I can think of some activities that I would enjoy with my kids right off the top of my head. Here are three.

1. Paint a rock. No, don’t head to the Whiteshell to paint a rock, find a rock and make it into a face, or an animal. There are people who do this and sell it, yikes right? I guess if you have a budding entrepenuer you might suggest they set up a stand on the road and sell their creations (our 12 year old made 55 buck before I told him to stop selling his doodles to all my VERY kind friends.) You might want to dip them in white primer first or they won’t show much for colour. The round rocks you can make into faces and animals and if you can find some triangular or jagged rocks make them into mountains. Here is a website (instructables.com/id/How-To-Paint-Animals-On-Rocks) devoted to rock painting, you know just to get the creativity flowing.
2. Make ransom notes. This is entirely art per se but it does sound like a lot of fun doesn’t it? Turn it into a game – get your kids to secretly kidnap each other’s stuffies and then create ransom notes by cutting letters out of newspapers and magazines. (This idea has surprised even me… I’m going to DO THIS with my boys… they’re going to love me!) There are probably websites devoted to hostage taking and ransom note writing, but I doubt it will take much for our kids to come up with their own methods.
3. Make a website together. This is a good way to trick kids into being creative because they THINK they are getting screen time (which strictly speaking they are.) Make a website as a summer photo journal and have them add pictures throughout the summer… or to sell your over-priced painted rocks. (I wouldn’t recommend creating a stuffies hostage site that may garner the wrong type of attention.) There are a couple of website builders for kids, the first one (kidswebsitecreator.com) is ironically ugly considering it sells itself as “Stunning websites made simple” but it does. The other one is called doodlekit.com and in typical current fashion it offers free services but then offers several paid packages, be careful which you choose!

There you go! Three rainy day activities that you might not find on the regular crafty kids sites. Let me know how they turn out!