Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 12:00AM Vacation Bible Schools are a fun, educational, inexpensive, daily, safe, faith building experiences for your grand kids if they are staying for the week. These are not your parent's VBS’s. Some meet during the day, others in the evening.
Check out this one North Wake’s Runners Camp.
The Boomerang Express is another popular VBS in our area.
To find one in your area check local churches’ web sites.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009 at 12:00AM Inexpensive toys that don’t take up space such as washable markers or colored pencils, coloring books, drawing pads, Hot Wheels type cars, beads for stringing jewelry, puzzle books, bubbles, puzzles, a couple of decks of cards you don’t mind getting destroyed are very handy to have in the house. Dollar stores are a good source of craft materials and jigsaw puzzles.
Some kids like card games like Skippo and Uno or board games. If you can find the board games at a yard sale so much the better.
Kids ages 8+ like card games. Brush up on the rules to some before they arrive. My grandmother taught me to play ginrummy. If you have a crowd of kids murder is a popular card game. Major cool grandparent points for knowing how to play.
A few deck of cards for building cardhouses will keep kids TV free on a rainy or hot afternoon.
Kids also like dice games. Our local dollar store carries dice.
If you don’t have access to a pool, younger children enjoy kiddy pools and sprinklers.
Childproof your home if your grandkids are little and mobile. You might think that children should be taught not to touch things not belonging to them but do you really want them learning this life lesson around your Ming vase? Put away that which is precious and breakable even if the kids are older. Wrestling matches happen appropriate to the room or not.
If you are keeping your grandkids for a while consider asking for and getting a emergency consent form from their parents in case the grandkids need medical care. Make sure the form is notarized by a parent and get a copy (front and back) of the child’s insurance card.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009 at 12:00AM
I don’t have grandkids yet but I truly miss having small kid around once in a while so this is a series of suggestions on what to do when the grandkids come to visit over the summer months. You could easily entertain them by buying lots of toys and going to theme parks and other big buck options. I am planning to offer lower cost alternative that will not involve buying your kids a second car or renting a U-Haul to get the grand kids loot home. Teens can be tough to interact with so anyone with great ideas please comment and there will be linky love all around. Some little kids need time to warm up to strangers. If you don’t see your grandkids very often allow for some warm up time. One suggestion for helping your little visitors recognize you as grandma or grandpa is to video yourself reading them their favorite book. If you are a hip grandparent or have a resident or neighbor tech prince or princess, you could upload the video to YouTube and ask your child to play it so you can “read” the book together. This will help your grandchild recognize you. You can get a very easy to use camcorder called the Flip which downloads right to your computer for upload to YouTube for about $60.00.