Note to Readers: Raising tweens was best described by Julie Ross on The Oprah show as, “Tweens may look sweet and innocent, but raising them can be like hugging a porcupine!” To avoid the quills, tweens need time to rejuvenate, relax, and reconnect with themselves and their parents. They still want to “play” but feel the need to be “cool” and often resort to just sitting around texting or watching movies and complaining of boredom. Thanks to Tween Parent founders Judith and Suzanna for sharing these activities for tweens.
by Judith King-Murray
School will soon be out for summer! Picnics, baseball games, swimming…when school is out, the fun begins for our tweens! If summer camp isn’t in the mix
(or only part of the summer agenda), it might be helpful to identify some summer plans to offset the much-needed respite of unstructured time and the dreaded preteen boredom. Further complicating matters, starting at around 10 or 11, preteens crave freedom and begin to campaign for unsupervised time. So, when we combine the desire for unstructured time, unsupervised time and boredom-busting activities, we are launched into the juggling act we call summer!
If you’re a planner by nature, you may want to create a comprehensive calendar that plots all activities (including unstructured/free time). If not, you might just create a list of interesting activities and post it in a convenient location for reference. This could help prevent the anxiety that your preteen might have about being bored and stay ahead of the much-anticipated phrase, “There’s nothing to do!”
One more thing…allowing tweens to be a bit bored isn’t a bad thing. As we all know, life isn’t always fun and games!
50+ Activities for Inspiration:
- Create a summer scrapbook or album to document highlights
- Set up a lemonade stand (and sell hand-crafted items too)
- Identify toys and clothes that are no longer used and sell at a stand
- Rearrange/redecorate tweens’s room (identify a few new features)
- Set up an outdoor movie theatre for a night of viewing and treats
- Outfit your tween with rollerblades or rollerskates
- Go fishing in a nearby stream or lake
- Read the same book together and talk about it
- Throw a tea party or sports party (with no presents and no goody bags!)
- Organize a neighborhood treasure hunt
- Build a fort in your yard
- Volunteer for a good cause
- Organize a neighborhood dog wash or car wash
- Play night tag (with flashlights)
- Learn to jump rope and share jumping rhymes (perhaps double-dutch?)
- Play charades
- Create a summer-end talent show, with practices throughout the summer
- Organize a bike parade and include prizes for decoration style
- Host a game of Bingo
- Research star patterns and star gaze at night; look for shooting stars
- Camp out on your porch, deck or lawn
- Learn how to use a compass
- Keep a weather journal and talk about weather patterns
- Schedule family movie nights; look back in the archives for classics
- Sleepover at a relative’s house
- Plan amusement park trips
- Host a board game tournament
- Schedule a hike or picnic
- Have hopscotch supplies available for a quick game, whenever
- Plan community pool/picnic to meet up with other neighborhood friends
- Attend a local ballgame
- Make a tween-prepared family dinner
- Attend a fireworks display
- Create artwork (buy “canvases” and acrylic paints/brushes at a craft store)
- Find a pen pal online and begin an email correspondence
- Start a band
- Have a water balloon “fight” outside the house
- Visit a zoo
- Introduce your tween to a foreign language
- Recycle bottles and donate the money to a local charity
- Attend an outdoor concert
- Make a movie or create a play
- Go to a museum
- Research your family tree
- Fly a kite
- Build and bury a time capsule
- Volunteer at an animal shelter
- Organize a scavenger hunt
- Go swimming
- Sign up for a sewing lesson
- Visit a National Park
- Roast marshmallows (and add some chocolate and graham crackers!)
- Build an evening bonfire
- Create a garden area and grow vegetables
(c) TweenParent, LLC. All rights reserved.
Judith King-Murray is a co-founder of http://www.tweenparent.com/ a website for parents of middle school-aged kids, and the mother of a tween.
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