8 activities to do with your kids this summer

The annual hunt for activities to do with kids during the summer holidays started early this year. With the onset of the second wave of the pandemic, the usual summer camps and interest classes are no longer an option for many parents. During the first wave of lock-down earlier this year, I started experimenting with some suggestions I had read from books and from the internet, and wrote about them in previous posts. Here is a compilation of 8 activities to do with your kids at home and outside this summer.

1. End-of-term Kondo-routine

My daughter’s school term came to an end after a short 3-week resumption of lessons at school. She had accumulated a large pile of worksheets from the long months of learn-from-home. This week, I tasked her with identifying the books and worksheets she would like to keep and recycle or shred those that she wouldn’t.

I instructed her to divide her stuff into three piles: shred, recycle, retain. Worksheets with her name and handwriting go into the shred pile. Instructional materials from the school and books she had outgrown go to the recycle pile. For each subject, a couple of her favorite works go into the retain pile, as would reference materials she still finds useful. In the beginning, she asked me which pile each should go to every few minutes. It took a while for her to get the idea that she needs to make the initial sort, while I would only review after she had completed the first sort.

She also ended up feeding the shred pile into the shredder. It was tedious work sitting in front of the machine feeding papers into it. But she had seen my wife and I did that with our papers. So it wasn’t that difficult persuading her that she needs to own this. Further, she also identified a pile of unused school-labelled exercise books and writing paper that can be used in the next school year. All in all, it was a good end-of-term routine to start.

2. Bake and cook together

This is likely the most popular of the 8 activities to do with your kids this summer. As with many other families during lock down, this is one of my daughter’s favorite activities. She made her first cake to celebrate Mother’s Day for my wife. She did the flour sifting and measuring and stirring etc. Recipe was of course provided by her mother. The banana walnut cake was actually quite nice, with loads of walnut and bananas thrown in.

Since then, she had helped to bake almond cookies and sponge cake, pan-fried buns and dumplings. And she has progressed to kneading the flour, stuffing dumplings and wrapping them up.

3. Share thoughts about a book or a podcast

Of the 8 activities to do with your kids at home and outside this summer, I find this the easiest to do. I like to share with my daughter things I learnt, typically from podcasts I listened to during my runs. One fact I shared this weekend was about nuts. It turned out that almonds, pistachios and walnuts are not really nuts in the botanical sense. Also, peanut butter is neither made of peanuts nor butter. To reciprocate, she told me about Brazil nuts. She pull out a book and showed me that Brazil nuts contains more selenium than any other food, and that too much selenium can lead to hair loss. I did not know that, and I told her I was glad I learnt something new from her.

Occasionally, I would also share more philosophical thoughts I learnt from books. During breakfast one weekend, I shared with her a quote by Goethe that I found insightful.

“There are two things children should get from their parents: roots and wings.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I explained to her what “roots and wings” meant. I wasn’t sure if that totally sunk in, and think I’ll need to repeat the message and explanation many more times verbally, and more importantly through actions.

4. Organize Zoom parties with her friends and relatives

One of my daughter’s classmates had a birthday party using Zoom a couple of weeks ago. The birthday girl invited about ten or so friends to join her for an afternoon of chatting, riddles, and Kara-ok. Other than getting them used to using video-call tools that adults use in real-life work situation, the occasion also provided an opportunity to learn useful event management skills. For example, the host needs to research for riddles and music that will be used during the video party. She also needs to manage the event so that it flows from one activity to the next.

Every few weeks, we would also video call my or my wife’s family on WhatsApp. These allow my daughter to stay in touch with her grand-parents and cousins who are literally oceans apart. I would prefer that we go back to our annual visits and get-together in person. In the current travel restrictions amidst the pandemic, however, video calls are probably the next best thing. A side benefit is she gets a frequent reminder of different time zones when trying to arrange the calls.

5. Watch Heidi on YouTube

In the book How to Raise an Adult, Julie Lythcott-Haims, a dean of freshmen and undergraduate advising at Stanford University, identified a checklist of 8 developmental milestones an 18-year old should be able to do. She advocated orphans as role models for inspiring kids to accomplish these milestones. She quoted Malcolm Gladwell who cited Obama, Clinton, Sotomayer and De Blasio as “eminent orphans” in real life. For fictional orphans, she mentioned Harry Potter, Oliver Twist and Jane Eyre.

I would add to the fictional list Heidi, the girl heroine in the eponymous novel by Swiss author Johanna Spyri. The lass definitely checks the above milestones, even at age five. We just finished watching the 39-episode serialized animation of the story on YouTube with my daughter. It is very well made and the quality of the videos is great on TV. In one of the episodes, Heidi managed to exchange a fossil for a loaf of bread to give to Peter’s grandmother – that’s milestone #7 “Earn and manage money” checked.

6. Create her own private YouTube channel

We had watched nursery rhymes animation on YouTube with my daughter while she was still a toddler. Her then favourite was Twinkle Twinkle Little Stars by Super Simple Songs. I just realised it now has over 1.4 billion views while the channel has more than 23 million subscribers.

When she was older, I would also watch read aloud stories from BBC’s Cbeebies with her.

So when her school progress report said she needs to improve her reading, I thought what better way than to ask her to do a weekly recording and post it on YouTube for family and friends to watch. For privacy and intellectual properties considerations, we kept her channel private.

So far she had read aloud three books and we are recording a book review. My wife has also started her on learning how to sing Katy Perry’s Roar. It would make a good theme song for any girl, said wife. Prior to this, I didn’t realize the official music video for Roar has over 3 billion views on YouTube!

This article is about 8 activities to do with your kids at home and outside this summer. The activities described above can be comfortably done at home. Depending on where your locality is, venturing outside the home may or may not be feasible. Where we live, we can also do the following activities outside the home.

7. Unstructured play in the neighborhood

In the Popular Science summer issue, which is available free online, the article “Let Children be a little Wild” caught my eye. The argument was that unstructured and mostly unsupervised play fosters higher-level thinking skills and social skills.

This echoes the argument in How to Raise an Adult, that high-structured childhood correlates with less executive function capabilities and breeds orchids and teacups. The author cited the Swiss mindset, which drove a HR manager Suzanne Lucas to write “Why my child will be your child’s boss”.

Every week, we arrange play dates with a neighbor living in the same block. We alternate between our home and the neighbor’s. Most of the time, the kids decide what to play and how to play, with minimum adult intervention. All the parents need to do is to provide the toys and other play materials.

The idea of unstructured play reminds me of the movies Captain Fantastic and Leave No Trace. There are some very touching moments in these, especially for fathers. I’m not sure if my wife and I are ready to put our daughter out into the woods, but we’re already sending her on grocery trips semi-supervised.

8. Send them on grocery trips

On Lythcott-Haims’s list of 8 developmental milestones an 18-year old should be able to do is #7 “Earn and manage money”. I started my daughter on managing money a few weekends ago. She was given $50 and tasked with shopping for the ingredients for one meal.

I walked her to the supermarket, pointing out key landmarks along the way. I intended to stay outside the supermarket while she did her shopping, but she sought my help as she could not reach the packets of beef on the upper shelf. She went to the till after picking up the tomatoes and potatoes. The bill came to just under $50.

I told her she could keep the balance, and use it to pick a non-sugary item from the mini-mart on the way home. We went through all the shelves of the mini-mart, and she realized that there wasn’t a single item that sold for less than that. When we reached home, I wrote that balance on a card, and told her she could keep adding the balance for subsequent weeks, and use the total when she finds something appropriate.

It was a great trip, and it helped that she carried the shopping bag all the way back home without complaint.

Conclusion

So there you have it, all 8 activities to do with your kids at home and outside this summer. The pandemic lock-down has inevitably limited the scope of out-of-home activities. While awaiting relaxation of these restrictions, have a go at the above. Please also share what other activities you have been doing with your kids!