WFMW Summer Nanny Tested… Kid Approved!!

As my little baby girl is not yet here, I am drawing on my past experiences as a summer nanny to contribute to this weeks WFMW theme– “Mom I’m Bored!”

First off, I’d just like to say that if I EVER said that to my mom, I’d get a list of chores to do. She never let us say that. I think I respect her greatly for that now because I never had trouble entertaining myself or coming up with things to do. Anything was better than scrubbing than the toilet!

Here are some of my favs from says of summer sitting for kiddos…

1. Make a menu and play restaurant!

I handwrote menus using my “fancy” handwriting and listed the snacks we had in the cupboards. I included prices and also made checks for them to fill out to pay me with. If I had had one, I would have made a “specials” sign with a mini-chalkboard! But the little girls LOVED helping me set up the dining room all fancy like a fancy restaurant. Thinking back, it would have been fun to have them dress up fancy too, but we were usually too hot to add extra clothes!

2. Make bubble soap and find cool things to use to make giant or interestingly shaped bubbles!

I did this a couple times with older kids, and they still love doing it! We made soap with dish soap and water and just went through the kitchen and garage collecting stuff that had cool holes. Then we went outside and made giant bubbles! Bonus: If there is a dog that likes to chase bubbles and barks at them, this activity gets even better!

3. For the girlies– a make over day!

This is one of my favorites! I would bring my curling iron, hair clips, and even some make-up and nail polish and do up the girls with the fanciest of up dos! One family I worked for had two boys and one girl, the boys watched our fashion show once we were done!

4. This works great as a follow-up to #3… Photo shoot!!

Taking pictures of the glam girls with her adoring brothers around them is always fun! I have drapped a sheet on the wall for indoor photo shoots and gone “on location” at the park as well! One family I worked for loved to take pictures of their pets, so we did this a lot!

5. Nature walks!

I think these work better with little guys. I would have them collect intersting flowers, leaves, or whatnot and we’d bring them back to the house. The flowers and leaves we “pressed” in large books between two pieces of kleenex. Others we’d use to make our own bird nests with! (You’ll need a glue gun.) With my kindergartners, we did a “wonder walk” where we talked the whole time as we were walking about all the things we were wondering about. “Why does the moss grow on that part of the tree?” “Why are the leaves on that tree red, and the leaves on that tree green?” When we got back to the classroom, they wrote down or drew pictures of what we wondered about and put them inside our “wonder box.” (A shoe box I covered in paper and question marks!) This questioning is a fabulous skill to practice and translates across the curriculum! Every now and then, we’d pull out a wonder question and talk about it, look it up online, or do a project or experiment around the wonder question. So much fun for the little guys!

There are many more I could share! But I will stop here and have you go HERE to read all the other fabulous “Mom I’m Bored!” ideas!