Tired of fighting the Battle of the Bored? Use these simple strategic maneuvers.

01/26/2016 Nichole 2 Comments

They’ve rebooted “The X-Files,” they’re remaking “Ghostbusters” and we’re back to wearing oversized flannel (well, I am anyway) because every old is new again. So it shouldn’t surprise me to hear my children echoing the phrase with which I tormented my mom lo those many years ago: “I’m booooooored.”

I try not to tell them that “only boring people get bored” and that “when I was a kid, I only had rocks and sticks to play with and I liked it,” which is what my mom told me, because (1) it hurt my feelings and (2) I had a lot more than rocks and sticks to play with. I had a sizable Barbie collection, among other things, but I still didn’t have nearly as many toys as my overly privileged children have. The sheer volume of their toy collections makes the “I’m bored” business especially irksome.

Even so, I sort of understand where they’re coming from. Play with the same toys day in and day out, and those toys can lose some of their luster. So rather than telling them to go play with a rock, I try to employ one of my two favorite ways of combating Toy Ennui: the Ol’ Switcharoo and the Change of Scenery.

The guards of Castle Sidewalk stand fast against the Giant Cat and A Foot incursion.

Changing a toy’s usual landscape is a great way to give it new life in your kids’ eyes. Our big snowstorm over the weekend made the Change of Scenery simple. Pete and Rockford gathered up a bunch of their Star Wars toys and took them outside for some instant Hoth backdrops. It’s nice when Mother Nature lends a hand on this front, but you don’t have to wait for her to step in. Poppy likes to take her Barbies out to the swing set for adventures, for example, and when it’s warm out Pete sets up a car wash for his Matchboxes and Hot Wheels with some soapy water and squirt guns. Any toy taken out of its usual context is automatically more interesting. Unleash some dinos in the driveway! Let Furby flounce in the flowerbed! Send the Slinky down the slide! The backyard, bathtub or basement could be your kids’ oyster.

The Ol’ Switcharoo requires some storage boxes, a bit of attention and a place to sock things away. If you notice that your kids aren’t playing with a particular toy very often, stash it away somewhere for awhile. When they get bored with what’s available, pull out the stored toys and put the “boring” toys on the sideline for awhile. Boom! Your kids have a whole newish grouping of toys to keep them entertained. I encourage the kids to keep their toys pretty well organized — action figures with action figures, doll clothes with doll clothes, etc. — so it’s easier to find the toys they seek. It also makes it easier to enact the Toy Rotation.

And when the Ol’ Switcharoo and the Change of Scenery fail to quell the boredom? I give them a rock and a stick and tell them to have at it.

Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post for Pley, which offers your family subscription access to a large selection of toys, including more than 400 LEGO sets and popular robotics toys. More toys are being launched in the next few months. Stay tuned to Pley for updates!

menu plan Monday

A menu plan for the Great Thaw

01/25/2016 Nichole 1 Comment

We ended up getting 11 inches of snow over the weekend. Our average annual snowfall is 13 inches, so that was a pretty impressive amount to fall on us all at one time. We had great fun sledding and flopping about in the snow all weekend, and Rockford and I spent some quality time shoveling our driveway and front walk yesterday. I kind of enjoy shoveling, but it takes a good long while when you’re sharing a shovel. Which brings me to this: There are a few supplies we need to gather before the next snowstorm hits.

Things We Need to Gather Before the Next Snowstorm
Another shovel. Our nephew gave Rockford a snow shovel a few years back for Christmas after we got snowed in and realized we didn’t even own a shovel. The house we were living in then was on a private road, and it was several days before we were able to get out. The road we live on now is a secondary priority on the city’s snowplow schedule, but we still have to clear our own path to get the car out of the driveway. A second shovel would cut our escape-from-the-driveway time in half.

A second sled. We had a second sled the last time we got enough snow for sledding. It was a baby sled, though, and Pete was pretty large for it even then. We sold it in our annual yard sale over the summer, and we are now a one-sled family. In the interest of full disclosure, I will tell you that I want a second sled primarily because I’m impatient. It takes the kids for.ev.er to trudge back up the hill after a run. Eventually it would be great to have four sleds, but we’ll take it slow. Unless I find some sleds on clearance.

Snow pants for Rockford and myself. The kids are well-equipped for the snow, but Rockford and I have been wearing jeans. Jeans aren’t great for making snow angels or for when you crash your sled and roll through the powder, even when you’re wearing two pair. Which I’ve been doing.

Snow boots for Rockford. I’ve been wearing rain boots with three pairs of socks, but I ordered some half-off clearance snow boots yesterday. They won’t be here in time to tromp around in this snow, but I’ll have them for next time. They didn’t have any in Rockford’s size, so I’m going to have to keep an eye out for a pair for him.

The weather forecast says it’ll be sunny with a high of 49 tomorrow, so the snow will probably be gone soon. Here’s what we’ll be having for dinner while it melts away.

Monday: Breakfast burritos: We’re using chorizo, scrambled eggs and cheddar this time.

Tuesday: Fish sticks & mac: Poppy doesn’t know this yet, but she’s making dinner on Tuesday.

Wednesday: Pizza: It’s Witty Kitty Book Club night. We’re supposed to meet at a pizza place, but I think I’m going to try to talk everyone into coming here and ordering pizza instead.

Thursday: Chicken tacos: I make chicken for tacos by cooking chicken breasts in the CrockPot with a jar of salsa, then shredding it in my stand mixer. Super simple.

Friday: Pizza: Again with the pizza? Yes, most likely. Maybe we’ll even be snow-less enough to get the grill out again.

Did you get to play in the snow this weekend?

More Monday Menus at OrgJunkie!

Homeschool

There’s no “snow day” in homeschooling

01/22/2016 Nichole 2 Comments

The non-homeschooled kids in our town had Monday of for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Tuesday was a teacher work day. They went to school on Wednesday, but they went back home by 10am because the side roads were icy. They went to school yesterday, and last night it snowed six inches so school’s canceled again today.

My homeschool kids, meanwhile, had school every day this week. This week was one of the few times they envied the public school kids’ schedules.

It wasn’t all protractors and sentence-diagramming this week, though. They finished school by 1pm every day this week and spent their afternoons as they wished, and they’ve already had a snowball fight and a mug of hot chocolate today.

US Geography

This week we studied Tennessee, and today we made Dollywood cinnamon bread. The recipe calls for an unbaked, frozen loaf of bread, and Rockford grabbed pre-baked mini-loaves when he braved the pre-snow-ravaged grocery store yesterday. The bread still came out delicious, though. We also read a biography of Davy Crockett over the course of the week, and we watched a short documentary called “For the Love of Music: The Story of Nashville.” I had hoped it would focus on Nashville’s history a bit more, but it wasn’t bad.

Language Arts

Reading

We finally finished “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” this week, and the kids started the movie almost as soon as I’d closed the book. They were not pleased with the differences between page and film. We started “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” yesterday, so we’ll be reading that for the foreseeable future.

Grammar

We’re reading and working through the exercises in “The Giggly Guide to Grammar” together. This week we talked about pronounces and action verbs.

Math

Poppy is doing a lot of work with fractions these days, and she’s also examining three-dimensional shapes. I wish the McRuffy manipulatives kit came with 3D models of the shapes, because I have a hard time visualizing all of the faces and edges. A hands-on model would be helpful. She’s doing pretty well with it, though.

UPDATE: I want to draw everyone’s attention to the brilliant comment my brilliant friend Rachel left.

It’s good to have smart friends.

END UPDATE

Pete has been doing division. He wasn’t having a problem with it until this week, when he got to dividing by 8. I think we need to do some work on his multiplication tables above 7.

Do your kids get days off for bad weather? What’s your favorite snow-day memory?

Wanna read more about homeschooling? Check out the Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers weekly linky thing!