Over at Let Grow we’ve gathered a truly astounding list of 100+ websites, projects and programs where kids can learn cooking, crafting, science, building, budgeting — all the stuff I still need to learn! Most a free, some charge a subscription fee. It is a mind-boggling, super-helpful and easy-to-use list to find whatever your kids might want to start doing on their own this strange summer. Click here and you’ll be there!
Author: lskenazy
This great article by Hallie Cotnam at the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) notes that there is one group of people not on lockdown this summer: Kids. Once school is out: …there will be no summer school, no camp, no lessons and no team sports — there will be virtually no organized activity of any kind. While their parents toil away and family vacations remain in limbo, many kids will be gloriously, thrillingly free to do just about whatever they want. They’ll be playing like it’s 1975. Contrast that with pre-pandemic 2020, when kids had every second filled with some activity,…
Kids across America — even really young ones — are making masks. Lots of them, for themselves, their families and to give to others. When our Let Grow Challenge asked kids to send in stories and photos of themselves doing something new, we saw so many kind, competent kids stepping up. Give yourself an emotional boost and see for yourself, by clicking here.
Grow food, herbs, attract butterflies and hummingbirds — there are so many great things to do in a garden, and kids can take the lead! Click here for a short, sweet primer on how to start, plus helpful links. It’s all brought to us by Stacy Tornio, Let Grow’s content queen, who used to be editor of Birds & Blooms so she has at least three or four green thumbs.
Newsflash: You don’t have to entertain your kids. Just download the free June Calendar over at Let Grow (click here) and they’ll figure out something to do. It’s filled with creative ideas to get them going, like: *Build something you can use *Complete a YouTube tutorial *Create art outside In other words, it’s basic but also really helpful. And post photos of your kids doing stuff over at Let Grow’s Facebook page! Love to see what they get up to! Photo by bady qb on Unsplash
Let Grow’s Executive Director, Tracy Tomasso, is sick of all the mom-shaming when it comes to screen time. As if “screen time” is just one thing. As the mom of a 5-year-old who uses a screen to do everything from learn about reptiles to Zoom with friends (and, okay, mainline Paw Patrol), Tracy’s sick of the unthinking equation: Screen time = bad. “We wouldn’t think to demand our children spend less time reading, looking at photo albums, or finding out what frogs eat.” Yes, get off it some time. Of course! But the screen is a door, not a drain.…
Have a “Name That Food” taste-testing contest. Play balloon volleyball. Take over a chore of mom or dad’s. Make origami. Find these and 96 MORE IDEAS over at Let Grow by clicking here. Cut them out and put them all in a jar. Kids can pull one out when they say, “I’m bored!”
In a recent episode of Amy Poehler’s new animated series, “Duncanville” (Amy plays the mom AND the teen boy, Duncan), the parents discover a new way to raise their kids. Someone has been doing their homework! The shoe-tying seems to relate to a story I heard at a school now doing the Let Grow project (remember: Let Grow is the nonprofit that grew out of Free-Range Kids). After kids had been doing the project for a little while — the project being to go home and do something on your own without an adult — the principal told me that…
WOW WOW WOW. And, what the heck, WOW. The Let Grow Independence Challenge asked kids to send us stories, pictures and videos of the new things they are doing on their own. Click here for our incredibly heartening 2-minute video of the kids baking, biking, building — growing! And click here for the blog post featuring our winners, including a fantastic collage of kids bursting with pride — and, in some cases, pancake batter. Scroll to the bottom, roll your cursor over each kid and you can see what they wrote. Like, “Since my grandpa cannot go out and…
I’m putting this out there as if I personally have ever had the patience, creativity or gumption to make a stop-motion video myself. I haven’t. But this 6-year-old has and he makes it look not totally impossible. (The ending is the best.) Click here to go to Let Grow for clear instructions on how to start making stop-motion videos like Arias.