As a child, I loved summer vacations. Two months seemed like an eternity after the long school year, and the days were formless and free.
As a parent of school-aged children, I don’t love it quite so much. Two months still seems like an eternity, but that’s because all I can see are rudderless days punctuated on the quarter hour by squeals of protest and whines of “I’m bored.”
I spend many of these days looking balefully at my children, reminding them that I am not their entertainment director, and sometimes repeating my father: “Boredom is a failure of the imagination.”
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But what about that imagination? Can children who have sat in a classroom for nine months be expected to suddenly stretch their creative wings and fly?
After tests and sight words and structured routines, can muscles that have been left unused for large portions of the day be expected to be strong and healthy?
When I was a child, I spent hours playing, outside and in. As soon as I was old enough, I read chapter books. Sweet Valley Twins. Cam Jansen. The Babysitters Club. The Wind in the Willows. And later, The Cat Who… series and Dorothy Sayers mysteries.
When I wasn’t reading, I was often thinking and dreaming, expanding the stories I had read and changing the endings. My imagination was sparked by the fire of someone else’s. Their writing ignited my creativity.
I wanted this for my children, but knew that it would be a hard sell. This was mostly because I had let the iPad usage get out of hand.
What once was never used became more common in the house, until my two-year-old was crying for it like an addict whose stash had been confiscated.
That was a wake-up call.
I put away the devices. Within a few days, no one asked about them anymore. A couple of episodes of Pinkalicious or Super Why seem to satisfy them now, and I am happy with the content and that we can watch it together, making it more of a shared experience.
Once the screens were out of sight and out of mind, how could I inspire my children’s curiosity and creativity?
With a challenge, of course.
There’s nothing my kids love more than a challenge. It’s how I motivate them to clean their room, and I figured it could work in this case, too.
I didn’t want them to just read the popular fiction they read now, though there’s nothing wrong with it. A lot of these books were fun, but empty calories. I wanted them to supplement their reading with books that engaged their minds and inspired them to wonder.
We started with curiosity.
I started reading the Boxcar Children Mysteries to the kids as a group. My 5, 7, and 9-year-old children listened and discussed each chapter after dinner as we tried to solve the mystery. Before the last chapter, I asked for their final guesses. The one who got it chose the flavor of the smoothie I would make for everyone.
Bragging rights and small rewards go a long way.
Afternoon reading is a time for my children to read to themselves and to each other. Everyone takes part, and when the older kids are reading Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See to the younger ones, I can take a break and read or write myself.
Instead of the kids discussing what they’d seen on the iPad, they are discussing what they are reading. It does this bibliophile’s heart good.
In the mornings when the kids were fresh and focused, I would read them a book that would stretch them a little. We started with Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
I was worried that it would be boring to them, as so many things described were different than things today. But the historical differences gave us all an opportunity to talk about important topics, like needs vs. wants, materialism, family values, and frontier living. It was a learning experience for us all.
So what about the challenge?
I admit that it got off to a rocky start—as in, I made it too easy. Originally, I created a reward system based on how many pages were read. The kids were rewarded for every 200, 500, and 1000 pages read.
This sounds challenging until you realize that the The Cat in the Hat has 61 pages, and that most early reading books only have a few words on each page. My five-year-old was cleaning up, as were her older siblings when they read to the younger ones.
Obviously, this needed to be revamped.
So I created a challenge based on a homemade calendar. Each child made their own with three check boxes under each day. They would have to do a minimum of 30 minutes of reading to get the check.
For one week of consecutive check-marked days, they would get to choose a Level 1 prize. For two weeks, a Level 2 prize. And for three weeks, a Level 3 prize.
I got some dollar-store popsicle sticks and a marker and created a reward list to display for them to choose from.
So far, I have made smoothies, painted toe nails, and let someone choose from the “toy box” (a collection of leftover birthday and Christmas gifts that I save for rainy/summer days).
In exchange, my children are reading more, spending more time together, and learning. It is the best trade I ever made.
Besides reading, they are also playing more games outside and creating artwork at the table. They are making puzzles and stories, and doing it as a group.
They still fight, they still say, “I’m bored,” and they still make me wish my coffee was stronger, but I am excited to see their excitement—for books, for learning, for their own imagined worlds. And if that means I need to take them to Five Guys once a month, well, I guess I’ll survive (large fries, please).
How do you inspire your children’s natural curiosity and imagination? How do you fill the long summer months? I’d love to hear what your family does in the comments!
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