Faith in Parenting

I love snow days! It’s not quite 10:00 am yet, and we’ve already been outside, had hot chocolate, and worked on a craft project. What to do with the rest of the day…

Actually, I wrote about this yesterday in my monthly newsletter. Here are the tips I shared:

Play a Board Game - We’ve kind of developed a tradition of playing “Life” on snow days, which is perfect, since it’s a game that requires a little more time to set up and play from start-to-finish than the other games we’re drawn to on a typical day. How about you? What “full length” games can you dig out and play on the next snow day?

Build a Snowman - Okay. This idea seems, well, obvious. But I mention it because, frankly, it’s one of those things that we think we’ll get to, plan to get to, and well, often don’t-end-up-getting-to. Remember, you’re not just building a structure that will melt a few weeks from now; you’re building the connection with your kids! And that’s worth getting cold and wet for!

Bake - Again, this is one of those things that we’d like to do, but don’t often have time for. So while your kids are home for a few extra hours, spend 20 minutes whipping up some brownies or cookies together. It’s yet another simple, effective way to connect with your kids. (Whatever you decide to make will probably go well with the hot chocolate, too!)

Tackle a Group Project - You know that back room downstairs that needs to be cleaned out, or the closet in your foyer that has accumulated more papers, mittens, and miscellaneous items than you know what to do with? A snow day is the perfect time to tackle something like this together with your kids. Get them involved from start-to-finish so that they gain an understanding of what maintaining the thing you’re working on really means.

Read and Review - A snow day also gives you an opportunity to spend some extra time working with your kids on those times tables they’ve been struggling with, or read an extra book or two out loud. In fact, let them pick a theme and see how many related titles you can share together.

Rest- Finally, what I love best about snow days is the chance to rest. God gave us the seventh day of the week to rest and recuperate, but we don’t always use it as a true day of rest. So the next time your kids have a snow day, see if you can’t carve out a few minutes here and there to put your feet up and take a break. It may be the most important “thing” you accomplish all day!

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 7th, 2008 at 9:58 am and is filed under time management, parenting, children. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.