Surviving At Home

OK…so it was really an hour sitting in the middle school auditorium with my youngest getting bored and taking a few walks with my husband. It was performance night for the fourth graders at our school who had the privilege of working with a professional actor/director from NYC preparing short plays about American history. My daughter’s class wrote their entire play about American Indians and they were very impressive. The other plays were about building the Brooklyn Bridge, building the Erie Canal, and Theodore Roosevelt and his desire to preserve the environment.

Each child had such excitement in their voice and joy on their face to be onstage doing their part. It’s quite a learning experience to learn how a play comes into being, starting with a blank piece of paper and ending with a perfect performance complete with costumes, props, and scenery. Talk about off-off-off-off Broadway! Thank goodness our principal and PTA believe in the value of arts education!

When creating a game plan for keeping your children busy during the summer months, don’t be fooled into paying outrageous prices for specialty summer camps. Instead, I like to look for fun activities that require minimal or no cost and put those on my calendar first.

Your local library is a fabulous resource. Many will host a summer reading program or contest for school-age children and they usually have suggested summer reading lists for different age groups. This is a great way to encourage your student to continue reading and to also challenge himself with harder books or different genres.

Our library continues their storytime hours during the summer and there’s usually a waiting list because those sessions are so popular. Among their other varied activities are: craft classes, magic shows, Meet the Author nights, and American Girl activities, just to name a few. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have a Harry Potter event planned for when the new book comes out.

If your library has limited or no programs planned, why not suggest a few? Or volunteer to organize a particular activity that you believe in. It’s a wonderful way to delve into community service, you would provide a service to others in your town, and you would teach your children a valuable lesson about helping others.