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Our lazy days of summer haven’t been too lazy yet. We’ve had family visit, spent a week with art camp, and worked on math. There’s so much we can do, and even for those (like us) who are on a tighter budget this summer, much of it is free.

If you’re looking for things to do as a family, check into some of these:

Library Programs:  Many times libraries will bring in presenters for programs. They might be magicians, animal handlers, scientists, musicians, or puppeteers, and the hour-long program can be a lot of fun. Some libraries also offer free craft classes for kids.

Kids’ Movies: Check with your local movie theater to see if any free movies are being offered. Our area has three theaters that offer free movies in the summer, usually once or twice a week. One of our local universities is even offering free kids’ movies in the evening.

Concerts: Often, community bands will offer free concerts in the summer. Check the Sunday paper or your city’s website for more information.

Festivals: Our state has festivals going on all through the summer, from the Peach Festival to the Watermelon Festival to Fourth of July Festivals. Take along some extra water and enjoy the arts, crafts, and music.   

Parks: Enjoy the outdoors with your family with a picnic at a city park. Pack your food in a cooler, take along a Frisbee or football, and enjoy!

Zoos and Museums: Depending on where you live, entrance into the local zoo and museums may be free as well. Check your city’s website or visitor’s guide for more information. You might even want to get a group of friends together and make it a field trip!

Whatever your family does this summer, be sure to slow down and enjoy it!

This past week, we’ve been visiting with relatives, so our schedule’s been a bit off. The children participated in a lot of fun late-night activities, such as basketball games in the park, movies with snacks, and just hanging out with their cousins. Now that we’re home again, we have just a couple of days to get back into a routine — and get back to a regular bedtime.

The first thing we need to do is re-establish just what time is “bedtime”, and then get back to our bedtime rituals. After the younger three get ready for bed, we usually read a couple of picture books together, and then head upstairs to listen to a radio theater drama on a CD or online. Then it’s lights out for Luke and Lillie, while Cassie does some silent reading. During this time, John is finishing up the day’s school assignments and reading on his own as well.

If you’re working on establishing (or like us, re-establishing) a bedtime routine for your children, here are some other things you might want to include:

• Warm bath or shower
• Reading aloud from a novel with all of your children
• Snuggle up with your child and talk about the day’s events
• Say bedtime prayers together
• Listen to soothing music
• Sing to your children
• Brush their hair for them
• Make up a story and tell it to your children
• Hug and kiss them

A smooth and consistent bedtime makes getting up in the morning that much easier — which will be the next thing we’re going to work on. We need to get back into the groove before co-op on Monday. At least, we need to be able to get up on time.

During the Easter holiday season, we took off some extra days for spring break and headed to Florida to visit with family. This week, my children have spent time with cousins ages 6 months to 26 years, and for the most part, they’ve had a lot of fun together. Interacting with so many people, though, means there will likely be some problems. Even within the immediate family, personalities are so different that they’re bound to clash sometime; multiply that number by four or five, and there will be more than a few arguments.  Small disputes and bickering are likely to occur, especially when so much time is spent together.

But if you have a large family, you know that’s actually one of the benefits of having so many relatives. Within the safety and comfort of the extended family, my children can learn to relate to all kinds of people, ones they get along with as well as ones that don’t share their same views. They learn how to be kind and include someone in a game even if they don’t want to, and they can come to adults they know well for help if difficult situations arise.

Interestingly, this time there was even peer pressure at work among the teenage/pre-teen cousins. When my daughter Cassie was looking for something to do, she asked her cousin if she had any ideas. “No,” the cousin replied. “I just do what the others want to do so they’ll include me.” Cassie , who at 11 years old falls in between the “older” and “younger” groups of cousins, was very surprised, but it was a good lesson. Even among family, someone can feel pressured to fit in.

So while this week has been a nice break, it’s been a time of learning as well. Time for my kids to relate to others  a little better, and a time for me to sharpen my parenting skills. And as the extended family continues to grow and change, I know we’ll grow and change as well.

Although it seems I’m always assessing how well our schooling is going, there are generally two times of the year when I make big changes. The first is in August, as I plan for the new school year, and the second comes at the end of December, before school starts again after the holidays. Now, for the new year, I have several homeschooling resolutions:

1. Focus more on school during school time: I tend to get easily distracted with “life” during the school hours, so naturally, my children become distracted as well. For me, this resolution means that I’ll be unplugging the phone and leaving the computer off until after lunch.

2. Include more of the fun stuff: Some days, it seems that it’s all we can do to get the academics covered well. But part of the joy of homeschooling is being able to explore, investigate, and create together. Whether it’s taking nature walks, working on projects, or trying out new recipes, I want enjoyable activities to be a regular part of our school days.

3. Get dad involved: My husband has a full-time job during the day and then works a few extra hours a couple of nights a week. It’s hard to imagine that he’d have time to help out with the schooling, but there are some easy (and relationship-building) things he can do with our children. He can snuggle up with them on the sofa and listening to them read, or he can choose a story to read to them. Or, he could call out a few of those math facts while they sip cocoa together. Either way, the children would enjoy spending that time with him.

4. Make the most of trips: Because we have a lot of extended family living within a day’s driving distance, we often travel to visit and spend time with them. This year, we’ll make the most of those trips by using each one as the focus of a unit study. Before we go, we’re going to research our destination, locate it on the map, and trace our travel route.

All in all, I think it’s going to be a good year. Are you making any changes in 2010?

This year, I was going to be ready for Christmas early. I had finished much of my shopping after Thanksgiving, and I was going to have all my Christmas cards addressed and ready to go by the first of December. And to add a special touch, I was going to make the cards or have the children help me make them. I planned on printing photos of the family to include in the cards as well.

But then, one day slipped by, then another, and another, until finally it was too late to send the cards — again. Too late for the cards to arrive in time for Christmas, too late to send a holiday greeting to friends and loved ones that we don’t see very often. Another year, and another missed opportunity.

But is it? I could set my cards aside, and plan on doing better next year. But then, would I let another year pass by before I sent them a note saying I’ve been thinking about them?

But Christmas isn’t a deadline — it’s a reminder. A reminder for people like me who, in the day-to-day busyness of life, too often forget what matters most. It’s a reminder to reach out those we care about and to care about those less fortunate than ourselves. It’s a reminder to do those things we should have been doing all year, but may have let slip by.

And most importantly, it’s a reminder of God’s most precious gift to us, His Son, Jesus. It’s a reminder that He sent Jesus to die and rise again so we might spend eternity with Him. It’s a reminder of His incredible love for mankind, a love He wants us to share with each other.

So the cards may not go out on time this year, but I’ll still send them out — and I’ll remember.

…Or perhaps this should be entitled, “Lessons from the Parade?”

This past weekend, we followed a family tradition we began five years ago: we entered the Christmas parade of a neighboring small town. For a small fee, we enter the “Non-Commercial Vehicle” category, decorate our old pick-up truck according the theme of the parade, and dress up appropriately. The children and I ride in the back and toss candy while my husband drives. At the end of the parade, plaques are awarded for first, second, and third place in each category. All in all, it’s a really fun time.

This year, though, the theme was a little harder to develop, so I waited… and waited…and waited for inspiration to hit, which it never really did. We worked hard on the decorations, though, and we thought we had a chance of placing. But the weather was damp, and the duck tape we were using to hold our decorations to the truck wasn’t sticking. We were still rushing around as the parade was about to begin, fixing this, taping that. During the parade, I even had to hop out of the truck and walk along beside it so I could pick up anything that fell off!

We made it past the judges in one piece, though, and they gave us a good score. We took first place in our category (yay!), and we were all surprised. But there were some good lessons learned:

1. Cuteness counts!  My youngest, Luke, was dressed as a chick in an egg, and Lillie, my nine-year old, dressed as a farm cat. I think that helped a lot!

2. Prepare ahead of time! I waited too long to get started on this project. While we finished our design in time, it was stressful trying to get it all done.

3. Enjoy the process!  While the kids enjoyed the parade, they also enjoyed working on it. They painted almost all the props, and Luke especially was proud of his work. To me, this was the best part of the parade this year.

So, are we going to be ready next year? I’ll answer with a “Yes!” — that is, if we’ve learned our lessons!

This year I thought we’d get an early start on school. It seems our year is often interrupted, so if we had an early start, we’d hopefully finish up in May.

Well, that’s what I thought. My plan was to begin on August 10 and jump right in with school five days a week. Too ambitious? Apparently so!

The first three days of that week, my husband was off, and he needed my oldest son’s help on a project. I worked that first day with the other three on their lessons, but then we decided to take the next two days off, since their brother had it off anyway. The end of the week was my birthday, and we’ve made it a general rule not to do school on birthdays. This does not include the birthdays of extended family, though, or we’d never get anything done. So, that left just one day, and, well, there didn’t really seem much point in that.

Next week, I told myself, we’ll get started, and it’ll be great!  However, John is part of a homeschool FCA club (Fellowship of Christian Athletes), and they had their last big outing of the summer scheduled for that next Monday. They went hiking, leaving in the morning and returning in the late afternoon. I could have worked with the girls and Luke on their lessons, but I decided to delay, just one more day, so we could all start at the same time.

We finally got started on Tuesday, and we had a really good day. Wednesday the children worked hard again. But Thursday we had the opportunity to visit with cousins we don’t often see – we took off and it was a good day, but we didn’t work on schoolwork, and we got home late. That made Friday less productive than it should have been.

So, although we had ten potentially good school days, only three could be counted. But I’m glad it happened at the beginning. We had started early, so no time was really lost. And I realize once again how easily distracted I can be, and how important it is for me to set a plan and stick with it. Perhaps next year, though, we’ll start in July.

During our visit with family this summer, we had a chance to hear one of my nephew’s music CDs. It came with a book entitled Philadelphia Chickens, written and illustrated by Sandra Boynton. The songs in it are so silly and so funny that when we found the book and CD at our library, we just had to check it out. As we were listening to the CD in the car, one of the songs really made an impression on me. The song was “Snuggle Puppy,” and the chorus goes like this: 

Ooo, Snuggle Puppy of mine!

Everything about you is especially fine.

I love what you are.

I love what you do.

Ooo, I love you.

These are sweet words for a children’s song, but they really made me think. My youngest child, Luke, is five years old, and he is extremely snuggly. It’s easy to fit his name into the song and sing it to him, hugging and squeezing him. Yet when I sing the lines “I love what you are, I love what you do,” my three older children come to mind. 

I wonder — do they really know that I love them just because of who they are? That I love the quirky ways they behave sometimes, the funny things they say, their uniqueness, their talents that are just their own? Or do they mostly hear me say what I hear myself say: “Don’t do that.” “Quit that.” “I don’t understand why you act that way.” “What’s the matter with you?”  

Well, to all four of my Snuggle Puppies, I do love what you are, and I do love what you do, and I plan to work harder at letting you know. We all need to hear words like that, and the song “Snuggle Puppy” is a good reminder for me. Now, about the song “Please Can I Keep It”….

My niece introduced us to a fun party game last week that’s works well if you have a group of people who want to play. It’s a combination of telephone – the game where you whisper something to someone, and then they whisper it to someone else, until it goes all the way down the line – and charades, where you act out a word or phrase.

We divided up into two teams, boys vs. girls, with about 5 or 6 people on a team. Team members line up one behind the other. The first team member is given the word or phrase to act out. The second team member watches the first, trying to guess what the word is. All other team members face away from the first person so they can’t see what’s going on.

When Player #2 thinks he knows what Player #1 is doing, he turns and taps Player #3 on the shoulder. Player #3 turns around, Player #1 sits down, and Player #2 begins to act it out for Player #3. When Player #3 thinks he knows the answer, he taps on the shoulder of Player #4. Player #4 turns around, Player #2 sits down, and Player #3 begins to act it out. The game continues down the line in this manner until the last player is tapped; he watches the previous player, then says out loud what he thinks the word is.

It was so much fun – and so funny!  We watched as the other team turned “plunging a toilet” into “riding a horse.” Our team turned “a melting snowman” into “building an igloo.” The best part is, all ages could play; we had “actors” from age five on up. And since we didn’t keep score, there was no pressure at all.

So if you’re looking for something to do at your next party – give telephone charades a try. My guess is you’ll be laughing long before anyone gets it right.

We’re still in central Florida, and the temperatures have been high!  Last week they were in the mid-90s, but with the humidity, the weatherman said it felt more like 105 degrees. I’d say he was right. 

But this past Saturday, there was a lot going on in the house, so we moved all the young cousins outdoors — yes, even in the afternoon!  The children played on a tire swing tied to a large shade tree in the yard, but the fun didn’t last long. It was just too hot. That is, until we brought out the hose. 

We started by connecting it to a wide, rotating sprinkler that sprayed water overhead. I had suspected my five-year-old would enjoy it, but I was surprised when my two-year-old nephew joined in. Perhaps it was because his cousins were laughing as they were splattered, but he smiled too, even as he was sprayed squarely in the face. 

After about thirty minutes, one of the children picked up a cup and started filling it with water from the sprinkler. I went in to get some more, and soon everyone was filling up their cups and dumping the water on each other. We then pulled out the little wading pool, and soon they were trying to fill it up with the water in their cups. We unhooked the sprinkler and used the water directly from the hose, making the chore go a little faster.

 About thirty more minutes had past when some of the older ones realized it was going to take a lot of cupfuls to get the job done. We then unhooked the sprinkler and put the hose directly in the pool. A little dishsoap, and the pool was soon full of bubbles. They put the bubbles on their heads, their faces, each other. They put bubbles in bowls and stirred them up. They threw bubbles all around the yard. 

Who knew they’d have so much fun? About three hours since we first brought them out, the children were ready for supper, which was served on card tables outside as well. Then they all resumed playing until it was time to get ready for bed. It was a  well-spent afternoon – few quarrels and a good time together. I’m going to give it a try at home too — right after I buy a new hose.