Tag Archives: summer

One-armed activities

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Well, I’ll say one thing for breaking your arm on a school field trip…it brings out the creative side of your mama. Coming up with things for a seven year old with a broken arm sounds easy enough, doesn’t it? I mean, just because you temporarily can’t bike, skateboard, climb, write, draw, sew, do origami or carpentry, I’m sure there are enough activities in the world to keep you busy for all of June.

So without further ado, here is a list of things that a seven year old child can do, even with a broken arm. Dominant side, naturally. Because when first graders do something, they do it all the way. As close to the end of school as they can manage.

Bean bag toss. Honey, I said toss. Toss means lightly. Gently. Toss, sweetie. Okay, moving on…
Marbles. So if you flick the marble at the other…um, flick. Like this. Not tossing. That was the last game, peanut. Honey, don’t throw the marbles. Okay, let’s try something else.
Puzzles. I know. I’m bored, too. Wanna try tossing the pieces into a bucket?
Board games. Now you’re talking. Let’s play all our games dozens of times. Yay! Okay. One day down…
Blanket fort for reading. Pretty dark in here, eh? Try reading with a flashlight. Oh, right. One hand. Next plan…
Word find and word jumbles. You’re right, honey. Butter does start with butt, and yes, you can circle both words.
Stomp rocket. That was fun. Now let’s go on the roof and get them. Oh, no; not you. You might break your arm.
Soccer. I know you didn’t mean to, but you still get a red card for concussing the defender with plaster.
Bug habitat. Sure, I’ll carry this terrarium around while you look for bugs. No, I’m not napping. I’m looking really closely at this ant hill.
Sidewalk chalk. Wow, your spelling is getting better from those word jumbles. That *is* exactly how you spell butt.
Dictate stories Wow. That was a lot of inventions the character put on his vehicle. Where did he get the volcanic dynamite laser protoplasm? Oh. Right. Of course he grows it himself.
Photography. Take all the photos you want and we’ll make a book from them. Sure, we can take the camera outside.
Hike.
Beach.
Zoo.
Aquarium.
Berry picking.
Berry eating.

Good luck with your summer plans. Ours just got a lot more outdoorsy.

The Bright Side

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You know the upside of having kids shift their internal clocks for summer, going from 7pm-6am mostly asleep to 9pm-5am barely asleep? Absolutely nothing. Sucks rotten eggs.

You know what’s funny about being in the car while one kid screams, “Stop looking out my window! Look out your own window!”* while the second kid just stares across the car at nothing through his brother’s window? Again, nothing. No benefit at all.

*technically, he shrieks, “Peanuh! No look me weendoh! Own weenndoh!”

Wanna hear the silver lining, for me, of children who eat their own weight in watermelon every day? Once you push aside the exorbitant cost of organic watermelon, the sticky pink drips everywhere, the moonscape yard in which every available square inch of planting space is waiting for watermelon seeds to grow, and the pain in the neck of washing and sharpening a huge knife twice daily, the good part is…I don’t know, something about lycopene and prostates. No silver lining for me.

Hey, have I mentioned the great part about having friends who happily let my kid play with their kid, the results of which are 1) happy kids, 2) happy friend who can basically ignore children playing well together and spend a couple of hours doing whatever they want to around the house, and 3) a blissful return to a time when my toddler naps and I have time to write? Well, I just enumerated them, so consider the great parts mentioned.

So the score, if you’re playing along with our Fantasy Humanity League, is Summer 225, Me Infinity. (It’s new math, so let me give you the formula: annoyances are one point per day and time alone in the middle of the day is infinity points.)

How’s your summer score looking? Not that you keep score, of course. But if you did.