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Dive into summer
Here we are at the Fourth of July, edging toward the mid-point of summer. For parents, the summer months can be a stressful series of hot days, centered around keeping the kids active, engaged and entertained while maintaining adult responsibilities and, ideally, sanity.And whether you see the season as half over or just begun is a matter of attitude. So, parents, how are you holding up?
As the novelty of being out of school wears off and children become more restless for adventure, we’ve enlisted help from Fauquier moms well versed in simple yet effective ways to keep everyone happy and keep the peace. Pick and choose the tips that work for you and, remember, they’re only young once. With that in mind, the glass is most definitely half full.
Get them involved
Explore the community to find events that help your kids become part of it.
If you live in Marshall, consider a trip to C.M. Crockett Park in Midland or Goldvein’s gold mining museum. Conversely, a trip from the southern end up to Warrenton’s Rady Park or the Afro-American Historical Museum in The Plains could be a blast.
Freelance writer and mother of two Jennifer Heyns has discovered the Fauquier Gators baseball team. With free admission to home games at Fauquier High School, you can’t beat the price, and these boys of summer surely appreciate the fan support.
Bluemont Concert Series offers Saturday evening shows throughout the summer. With a nominal fee, it's a wonderful chance to get out and meet your neighbors on a nice summer evening. Bring a picnic dinner, chairs and blankets and soak up some entertainment in Old Town Warrenton. Performers are highlighted weekly in the Fauquier Weekend calendar or visit www.bluemont.org for more information.
Sky Meadows State Park in Delaplane also offers myriad programs throughout the summer, ranging from Wednesday morning kids’ camps to nature walks, star gazing and musical performances. Check out the Weekend calendar or visit www.dcr.virginia.gov/state_parks/sky.shtml for information.
Volunteering is another avenue for kids to get connected to the community. Though some of these ships have sailed for the summer, keep in mind volunteer opportunities at the library, the hospital, and the SPCA for next year or even the upcoming school session.
For this summer, Warrenton mother of six Vineeta Ribeiro suggests contacting local nursing homes to arrange a visit with their residents. You might also consider looking even closer to home. Surprise a neighbor with cookies or an offer to walk their dog.
Put them to work
Washing the car, their bikes or the dog are great ways for kids to help out around the house and more importantly to let them cool off and have fun.
“Emptying and organizing kitchen drawers sounds mundane, but sometimes the kids find little treasures in there like confiscated toys from the past, and if you let them keep and divide the change that they find, it becomes a little math activity, too,” said Ribeiro.
A mom with a horse-loving daughter arranged for her to work in the stables of a nearby farm in exchange for riding lessons. “She learned how much work it was to have a horse,” said Sylvia McDevitt of her now-grown daughter’s experience.
The county’s plentiful orchards offer an opportunity to get out and pick fresh fruits and vegetables. To find local orchards, visit www.visitfauquier.com/agricultural_pickyourown.html. In Virginia, July brings apples, blackberries, green peppers, nectarines, peaches, sweet corn, tomatoes, and watermelon.
If gardening is your thing, Warrenton mom Jennifer Major suggests giving a patch of earth to each child. Though it may be a little late in the season to start some vegetables, there’s still time to put some plants in the ground. Most kids enjoy digging in the dirt, as well as having a little piece of property to call their own.
Ribeiro bravely suggests enlisting your children as exercise instructors. “They love to see you botch things up, and they’re pretty tenacious about making you do your routine,” Ribeiro said.
She also came up with this ingenious plan: Give your kids a night to prepare dinner for the whole family.
“Let them do the shopping, chopping, food prep, and cooking. Yes, this is extremely time consuming and labor intensive on the part of the parent, but in a few summers, you will be ready to retire your chef’s hat to your kids. Also, make them clean up as they go so they don’t leave you with a tornado to clean up after,” she said.
Or have them put on a fix-it hat and tackle a broken toy or appliance. “Even if you can’t repair it, work together with a screwdriver and open up the device,” suggests Ribeiro. “Use a book or the Web to learn about how it works or used to work.”
Keep learning
Fauquier County Public Libraries offer an impressive, bountiful array of summer activities for kids of all ages. The summer reading program has a generous lineup of opportunities for kids to participate in classes and workshops on a wide variety of topics.
With branches in Bealeton, Marshall and Warrenton, the library is also offering an outreach program on select days to residents of Remington and Vint Hill. Most programs are free, but some require registration. For a complete list, visit www.library.fauquiercounty.gov.
Ribeiro recommends books on tape and CD available from the library, as well as a DVD series of courses by The Teaching Company that cover a variety of subjects to help kids revisit or advance in math, science, literature, and history.
“We also like watching the library’s collection of movies of great classic literature,” said Ribeiro. “It’s certainly not the same as reading the book, but it does provide a good exposure to the kids. You can ask that they write a little response to what they watched, or have them cartoon a little based on the movie.
“There are videos on how to bird-watch, how to play any number of musical instruments, how to cartoon, paint, draw, exercise. Be sure to check both the kids’ area on the first level and the adult level.”
Games like number or letter bingo or letter hopscotch inject education without kids even noticing, Major points out.
If you have more than one child, encourage them to play school, with the older child helping the younger one with letters, numbers or whatever is age appropriate.
Major has some great ideas for helping kids learn to read. “Tack up signs with words on them all over the house and the younger ones have to find the specific word. You can make letters from raisins and toothpicks,” she said.
Get crafty
Sometimes, old-fashioned, low-tech ideas are the most fun for kids. Turn old socks into sock puppets, make paper dolls from old newspapers or paint old T-shirts with fabric paint. Other ideas include working on a photo album or painting a picture.
Use their interests as starting points for developing crafts. Heyns discovered a book on Indian crafts at the library and plans to tackle a few nature-based projects with the kids.
With no end to books featuring kid-friendly recipes, turn them loose in the kitchen. Major recommends alphabet sugar cookies or frozen chocolate bananas.
Some of their favorite recipes may be for non-edible creations like Playdough, silly putty or paper mache, she said, noting that her children enjoy making faux pizza dough by mixing flour and water.
“Sometimes we’ll put the flour on the counter and draw letters in it then add the water to make the dough. Then they can play restaurant or bakery,” she said. “I usually wrap up the dough and pop it in the refrigerator for a few days to reuse. You can create a menu and paper money. Set up a table for the restaurant, then hopefully you can get your own dinner going.”
Use your imagination
Find your child’s inner thespian. “Kids love to put on plays,” said Major, noting that story lines can be pulled from traditional stories like “Three Little Pigs,” or contemporary movies, or written by the kids themselves. “You can go as far as to make or create costumes,” she said.
Globe trotting takes on a whole new meaning with this idea from Ribeiro. “Find an ant. Set it loose on your globe and pretend to travel the world with it. Look up things about that country and do things related to it--dress that way, eat that way or speak a few words,” Ribeiro said. “The Web is a great resource here, too.”
Forts can be a source of nearly never-ending fun. Inside, build them from blankets, using chairs or other furniture to hold the “roof” in place. Outside, let kids use water guns to protect their territory and walkie talkies for full effect.
Major also suggests creating treasure hunts, using maps for kids to follow.
“You an also use riddles instead of an actual map or you could do secret messages. Use white crayons or a wax candle to write a message on a white piece of paper, then paint over it to find out the message,” Major said.
With these inspired ideas, perhaps a message like “summer rocks” would be appropriate. As Ribeiro notes, these warm days offer an ideal chance to reconnect with your kids.
“None of these ideas are that exciting in and of themselves. I think it’s the parental participation and bonding that occur in doing them together,” said Ribeiro. “When you look at it this way, there seems to be too little of summer, not too much.”
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