We are having a very odd summer, and a hard time finding the right balance of vegging out versus mental stimulation versus exercise.
Last summer we had a week of VBS and then then four weeks of travel intermixed with four weeks of just hanging around the house. We hit the library and played with some friends but everyone seemed pretty happy with this combination.
This summer I didn’t book any camps or even VBS because we truly weren’t sure where we would be. We thought right after school got out we would either be traveling to Atlanta to visit with my family or moving immediately to New Jersey. We still haven’t sold the house here, and it wasn’t until last Thursday that we finally secured a rental house in New Jersey. We have a move date of July 2, and it doesn’t seem to make financial sense to drive across the country to then come back to move. So here we sit with very little to do other than swim (Let’s review it’s over 100 every day.) and get ready for the move.
Both of my big kids worked so hard at school this year that I thought they would enjoy really just hanging out and relaxing. But Walsh in particular seems like he needs much more mental stimulation. (I think he was really thinking at his school and I think he’s having a hard time without all that stimulation. Our neighbor said the same thing about her daughter who went to the same school.) I thought the kids would enjoy slow mornings and then going to the YMCA to work out and play and then coming home for lunch and then swimming later in the day. But even with the exercise they just seem out of whack. We’ve gone to the library, watched documentaries about World War II, and I keep offering to teach them HTML coding. I think I am going to subscribe to Lynda.com where they can learn computer software like Photoshop and Java Script from video instruction. They seemed better when friends came over to swim and when they went to a neighborhood pool that has slides and high dives.
I am seeing a lot of friends doing science camps, sleep away camps, sports camps. So I wondering how do you find the right balance between letting them rest and relax but still stimulated?
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