Summer offers different opportunities for kids and families. Swimming at the pool, trips to the zoo, visits to local parks, day camps, festivals and fairs. It’s a great chance to make some wonderful family memories. But, it can also feel exhausting trying to be the cruise director of your summer “break.” Building in unstructured time and time to be bored into your summer plans is also important.
Having the unstructured time kids will usually find something interesting to do with it. Play is children’s work and they thrive with self-directed play.
They need time to:
- move their bodies, to jump, climb
- play out their emotions and experiences in creative ways
- decompress and reflect from a day full of activities
- tinker and discover new interests
- catch fireflies
- swing on swings and climb up the slide 😉
- build mud pies
- stare and wonder
- run barefoot in the grass
This time allows them to develop and enhance their imagination and to become more creative. When they have the chance to wonder what to do they may discover a new passion or master a task, gaining confidence in new and old skills.
So allow yourself to resign from pre-planning all the activities and let some of the summer just be. Memories will still be made and probably more messes. But nothing a garden hose can’t wash off.
It\’s hard to believe that a new year of SYC will upon us in about 6 more weeks. In this newsletter we have provided a listing of this year\’s classes and teachers. We haven’t yet staffed our Friday 2\’s class. We\’ll let you know as soon as we have those two positions filled.
Be sure to watch your e-mail for lots of information that will be arriving as we begin another year of playing.
Enjoy the rest of this HOT summer!
…Amy Rudawsky, Co-Director