I’ve signed up to participate in Ten on Tuesday, in which a bunch of us come up with our own answers to preselected topics. This week’s topic: Ten ways to entertain a child.
I managed to acquire grandkids without having kids myself and I have a serious background in aunting (is too a word) with various degrees of separation (first degree, great, great-great and really-great). Here’s the best list I could think up from our years with the nieces and nephews.
1.) Slumber parties. Get the nieces and nephews away from the parental units for a night. Make popcorn, play cards, watch a movie. Break out the sleeping bags. Serve silly face pancakes for breakfast.
2.) County fairs. Cotton candy, candied apples, pony rides, merry-go-rounds, visit the cow and chicken barns. Oh wait, that was MY childhood. Tunbridge Fair was a blast every year.
3.) Picnics, even if it’s just PB&J sandwiches and Kool-aid. The kids don’t care, it’s all about eating outdoors with the Aunts.
4.) Hot summer day + bathing suits + hose and sprinkler + popsicles = the best day ever.
5.) Get ice-cold watermelon out of the fridge, slice it up and sit on the bridge over the brook. Make a contest out of who can spit seeds the farthest (furthest?).
6.) Build a bonfire and have a cookout. After it’s dark, sit around the fire and tell family stories. If you’re lucky, the bonfire tradition will stick through the next generation. Right, Kim?
7.) Go berry picking, any kind but if the kids are young, blueberry and strawberry picking are the easiest to get at and there are no thorns.
8.) Go for a walk and make up stories about pituitaries living in the woods.
9.) Have them help you cook. Peeling carrots, husking corn, shelling peas are all easy for little kids. Making fudge or popcorn balls (see #1) is also great fun. When we were kids, Mom would make molasses taffy and we had to pull and stretch it until it was ready to eat. I remember making it more than I remember actually eating the taffy.
10.) Teach them a craft. Even if they don’t stick with it, they have a foundation to build on later. I don’t remember who taught me to knit but I learned the basics as a child.
So what’s your favorite way to entertain a child?
You know I never considered it entertaining. I always just thought we played together, often going up to our neighborhood park to just swing. Lucky you! No kids, but grandkids. You just moved the Aunting (it’s a verb, right?) to the grandchildren. Good for you!!!!!
I want you for an auntie!
no kidding, what a fabulous list, quite a bit of it is right out of my own childhood but alas, not with an auntie, with me dear old dad.
blackberries. ‘it’ll build character, keep picking’.
#8, lol, I snorted my tea.
aunting. yes, it IS a word.
Wonderful list!
Oh, this is so fun seeing the similarities and differences in the lists! I love your list!
Your growing up sounded like my growing up. The watermelon seeds, the brook……
Let me know when I can send the grandkids to you to do #1 through #10 and then I’ll do #11 (send the kids to Grandma D.
Right, Aunt Diane. There’s nothing like a bonfire and visitors to our house know that we ALWAYS have the fixins for smores. But please don’t bring up the pituitary monster. It still gives me goosebumps to think about it. That and you and Aunt Gail telling ghost stories about the “vindevaasher” (window washer) on our walk back from Butchies in the dark. I cross the street when I see a window washer.
{I wanted to leave this comment on the previous post, but too much time has passed and the comments are closed.)
Two little signs I saw in a friend’s garden: “Grow, dammit!” (your admonitions to your plants in the previous post are what reminded me) and “I don’t remember planting this”.