When Kids Get the Sillies during Learning Time: 4 Strategies

It doesn't matter if you are teaching a preschooler to read or a 3rd grader their math facts.  Kids get silly.  And as a parent, it's all too easy to get frustrated.   For myself, I've found it increasingly difficult to be patient with the silliness now that I have more children who need one- on- one teaching. Time and energy are precious.

But of course, frustration doesn't help.  Here are four approaches I've found that do help:
(It's so good to be writing these out.  I need the reminders!)

13 Ways to make a Motel Stay Part of the Vacation Fun

There's no reason to wait until one reaches one's final destination to start indulging in the adventurous vacationing spirit. Wouldn't it be better to try to enjoy it all from packing up the car to unpacking? Here are 13 ideas for adding a little extra fun to an in-transit motel stay:

1. If there is an exercise facility, come up with wacky contests for your children involving the equipment. For example, challenge them to see how long and how fast they can run backward on the treadmill. Or, see how many times they can recite the pledge of allegiance while their arms are fully extended on the weight machine. (Taking all appropriate safety precautions and making sure not to annoy real exercisers, of course)

2. Bring hot chocolate packets and marshmallows, and make hot chocolate with hot water from the in-room coffee makers. Make a tradition of sipping hot chocolate while you all watch the weather predictions for the next day on TV.

3. Go out into the parking lot and see how many different states are represented in the license plates. Take advantage of the opportunity to teach U.S. Geography this way. (e.g. "Wow! that guy's from Arkansas! He drove a long way to get here!" or "Which car is further from home- the one from Massachusetts or the one from Georgia?")

4. Surprise your kids by doing handstands in the pool with them.

5. Bring your atlas in from the car, and see if your kids can find your location on the map. Then see if they can find your destination and ask them to try to figure out the best route for getting there. Build anticipation for the next day by talking about the kinds of things you might see along the way and interesting tidbits about the cities that you will travel through.

6. Come up with silly contests using the ice from the ice machine. (Going to get the ice is part of the fun for kids) Here are a couple ideas: Who can hold an ice cube in their hand the longest without opening their hand at all? Who can make the ice cube disappear most quickly in their mouth (without chewing it)? Play "real freeze tag." Everyone who is not it, must balance an ice cube on top of their head while they run. If the ice cube falls off, that person is "frozen" and must be touched by a teammate before they can move again.

7. Start a collection of "freebies" from motels, and keep them in a special box. Kids will have fun running around the motel room looking for items to add to the stash.

8. Keep a family vacation journal, and brainstorm together in the motel room about what sorts of things should be included from that day's adventures. Designate a different person each night to be the scribe. During the brainstorming session, each child could also be drawing pictures from what they remember of the day.

9. Find the Gideon Bible that has been left in the room. Let each person find a verse that is special to them, bookmark the place and write a short note about the verse to be left in the Bible for the next motel guest to find and read.

10. Get on the internet as a family and find out something interesting about the town where you happen to be staying. Does it have any unique history or off-beat claims to fame?

11. Start a tradition of searching for the best burger (or hot dog or bowl of spaghetti or whatever!) that you can find as a family. In every town you pass through see if you can eat at someplace that serves that item. Each of you taste it, and give the item a rating 1-10. Have fun discussing your disagreements. Won't it be fun to say someday, "The best burger I ever had was in the little town of Almena, Kansas"?

12. Create a car cleaning ritual. As soon as you check into a hotel, your family knows that it's time to clean out the car. Make it fun by running a stopwatch. Tell them that for every minute under a half an hour it takes to get the whole car clean, they may stay up that many minutes past their bedtime. Hopefully, the incentive will not only make your kids work quickly to clean up, but it will motivate them to keep the car clean during the day!

13. Write a thank-you note for the cleaning staff who will tidy the room after you are gone. Let every family member sign the letter, and then before you leave in the morning, have the kids hide pieces of wrapped candy for the cleaning staff to find and keep as thank-you treats!

13 Ways to Complete Household Drudgery without Numbing Your Mind

A housewife can spend many hours a week in mundane drudgery. In many of those chores one's hands stay busy, but the mind is left to its own devices.

I have found that if I am not deliberate about what I do with my mind during those times, it's easy to get resentful or negative. And, when you think about it, that's really an awful waste. There are so many useful and pleasant things I could be doing with that "free time" for my mind.

Here are thirteen ideas for making housework more pleasant:

1. Listen to books on tape, the radio, or podcasts. My mom always had classic pieces of literature blasting through the house as she did the dishes. As kids, that meant we were introduced to lots of great works like Sherlock Holmes and Jane Eyre effortlessly.

2. Pray while you work. You could assign a different kind of prayer to each chore. For example, dusting might be the time you think about and pray for your church's missionaries.

3. Work on making internal to-do lists. This way you don't waste time in between tasks figuring out what you are going to do next. Keep a small notebook nearby to jot down the tasks if the list becomes long.

4. Race yourself. Be very clever about efficiency, and run a timer to keep track of your progress. See if you can improve your time each time you do the task. Read Cheaper by the Dozen for inspiration!

5. Quiz your children on their times tables, spelling, etc.

6. Plan your next blog entry.

7. Make fun lists. Think of Christmas present ideas for your friends and family. Come up with ideas for new holiday traditions in your household. Make lists of your favorite foods. Think about insightful ways you might answer the question "how are you?" the next time you are asked. Keep a notebook nearby to jot down things you don't want to lose.

8. Let your children quiz you on fun things. Collect books of trivia questions, riddles, etc. that they can use.

9. Memorize Scripture. Keep index cards with Bible verses you want to memorize taped around your kitchen to help you when you get stuck. Change the verses periodically.

10. Whistle while you work. Or hum, or sing, or sing along with music on a CD. Not only will it improve your mood, it lets the rest of your house feel your happiness as well.

11. Think about ways you might make the task an art instead of a chore. The classic example of this to me is my mom making pie crusts. She always makes them from scratch even though it takes a long time and she thinks that storebought taste almost as good. She does it because it is something she really studied how to do, and she takes a healthy kind of pride in doing it well. Many things can be made more pleasant through a little creativity and by adding extra touches that make the completion of the task something special.

12. Come up with fun bedtime stories you can tell your children that night.

13. Consider how you will teach your children to do the task you are doing. What kind of things do you take for granted that they would need to be told and shown?

13 Ways to Pass the Time while Waiting at a Restaurant

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Between getting a table, ordering, and the arrival of food, waiting can take up a large proportion of the time that your family is at a restaurant. If you can make that down time fun, it will go a long way toward making eating out a pleasant experience for the night. Here are some ideas to pass the time:

1. Ask for lemons with your water and let your kids make themselves lemonade using a couple packets of splenda on the table. They can experiment with different levels of sourness and sweetness. Ask them if they can figure out the part of their tongue that senses sourness.

2. Play hangman.

3. Have each person guess what letter your server’s name will start with. Each person could also guess a name to go with their letter. Wouldn’t it be fun if they were right some time?

4. Play “Squares.” Here are some good directions for the game. My mother used to play this with us all the time when we were little!

5. Get a copy of the game Password, and always keep a decoder and a few cards in your purse for times like these.

6. Play “If I were a _______ I’d order...” Have the kids discuss what they would order on the menu if they were a bear or a squirrel or a monster, etc.

7. Bring a deck of cards and play a card game. Rummy is particularly good for this situation because it requires very little table space; it is flexible as to number of players, and the rounds are short.

8. Have fun imagining with your children what it would be like if you were accidentally locked in the restaurant after it closed and had to spend the night there. Discuss what you would want to play with, where would be good hiding places for hide-and- go- seek and where you would like to sleep.

9. Keep a small book of trivia questions in your purse.

10. Pick out a book of short stories that your family will plan to read from aloud whenever you go to restaurants or have a long road trip.

11. Play Pictionary. Even if you don’t have any cards from the game with you, it is easy enough for one person to think of a word and whisper it to another person for him to draw while everyone else tries to guess. It’s harder to make it a fair competition that way, but it will still be fun!

12. Instruct your kids that they are to imagine themselves to be two inches tall with the powers to run, jump, and climb like video game characters. Tell them to watch themselves in their imagination exploring the restaurant in their tiny state. Whenever they get themselves into a predicament (fall into a bowl of soup, find themselves on a ledge they can’t get off of, etc. ) they are to tell the others who must then come up with a plan to rescue the tiny person in crisis. (This idea comes from my husband who admits that he sometimes still imagines himself tiny and watches himself run around the room when he is stuck in a boring situation! :-)

13. Have your kids draw imaginary hybrids of animals. For example, you could tell them to draw a mix between a leopard and a praying mantis. See what you get!

13 Ideas for Keeping Kids Occupied in the Check-Out Line

There are plenty of reasons to keep your kids busy while standing in line for the cashier. There's all that candy that's just "calling their name," the trashy magazines that you probably don't want little eyes perusing, and that propensity toward fighting tired, bored and hungry kids are famous for.

So here are some ideas:

1. The smiling game. Two people stare each other down and use all of their facial contortion comedy and creativity to make the other person smile first. (This game is usually easier to determine a winner than the staring game in which the first person to blink loses).

2. Use the time to practice times tables, spelling words, or bible verse memorization

3. Play "I spy" if you have younger kids or "20 questions" if your kids are older.

4. Come up with grocery awards with silly categories. For example if the category were "best hair" your kids might decide that a head of broccoli wins or a dust mop. Other categories might be "prettiest color," "best dressed" (for most attractive packaging), "best smile" (I can just picture a couple of kids getting a hilarious kick out of giving that award to the raw chicken drumsticks) "best at rolling down a hill," "loudest noise when you eat it." And of course, each child might want to have his own award "If I were a grocery, I would be..."

5. If your kids are older and you have a particularly long line, you might want to do a Yes/No Riddle.

6. Adults usually get tired of thumb wars really quickly, but if you made a policy that cashier lines are the only places where you will engage in them with your kids, they might learn to look forward to standing in line!

7. Before you get up close enough to see, let each person guess the first letter of cashier's name. The person whose letter is closest wins! You can let each player guess an actual name to go with their letter as well. Wouldn't they be excited if they actually guessed it on the nose one day!

8. Have a little bag of toys only for the grocery store. These can be little hand/eye coordination games like bearing ball mazes, catch the ice cream scoop on the cone, etc.

9. Do tongue twisters!

10. Play the quiet game. The person who can go longest without speaking is the winner. You would think that children would see through this one immediately as an adult ruse for peace, but its funny how many times kids will get excited about it!

11. Encourage your kids to make up a story using the objects in the grocery cart.

12. Have your kids play rocks, scissors, paper an absurdly large number of times (e.g. best out of 39) for some small prize (extra piece of gum, front seat on the way home, etc.)

13. See who can come up with the grossest sandwich idea using three different items in the cart.

What are your tricks for a stress-free grocery-line experience?