Getting Real With Veronica Ibarra

For some it has already happened, but I have until June 10 for school to let out. Just a few more weeks before my summer job begins, that of course being activities director for my seven year old who suffers from terminal boredom after only a minute of what I consider relaxing.

I am by no means the most together and with it mom, but I can make a good show of it with my ability to plan an activity one weekend a month. Usually, I simply go with the flow. My daughter, however, has become a discordant note in my typically relaxing approach to meandering through the weekends. The litany begins as soon as school lets out on Fridays with, “I’m bored. What are we going to do? Let’s do something.  I want to do something, Mommy.  What can we do?” It doesn’t stop until Monday morning, but even during the week I get peppered with questions about the upcoming weekend.

I can see what’s ahead of me now with the summer because what is summer break to a seven year old, but the longest weekend ever? Last summer we were able to put her in summer camp at the arts council. Unfortunately, that isn’t an option this summer. This summer I will be assuming the role of activities director. Now, I only have two kids to plan for with my seven year old and my soon to be three year old, but every mother of multiple children knows that one of our greatest challenges is keeping them simultaneously entertained for any length of time.

To try to get an idea for what my opinionated seven year old might like, and to get her involved in the process, I sat down with her to chat. I even told her it was a planning session with tea and cheese crackers to make it official. The fun of that lasted for about five minutes, the time it took her to finish the goodies, then she wanted to play a different game. With the success of my first and last planning session with her I set out to devise my own list of things to do.

Having been a teacher I tapped into some of my lesson planning skills and came up with some fun ideas for educational fun weeks.  Now, to be honest, I only have two so far: Vikings and Greeks. I’m going to plan a week of activities with each in mind, one for late June the other for mid July. I’ve also found various free activities, and as always I’ll leave plenty of room to improvise. This does have some amount of disaster written all over it, but I’m still learning how to manage my own kids. I’ll keep you all posted as to my plans and progress, success and failure. So get ready because it’s going to be a long summer.