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Health & Fitness

How to: Plan for the kids to play by themselves

A list of supplies that will help the kids play by themselves this summer.

Patch blogger Kimberley Hornsby . Kathleen Miller gave us the for families and a list of . Ruby Slipper Guide, ParentMap, and Seattle’s Child all have calendars with family and child friendly events.

But where’s the guide for the rest of us? Us moms who want to say to our kids, "Just play outside," or “go play with a friend,” in that exhausted whiney voice our kids use on us when they’re brutally bored after a day spent playing Halo or grinding Play-Doh into our carpets.

Sadly, even the lazy/exhausted mom must be prepared to send her kids off to fend for themselves. Consider this actual conversation I recently had with my own little darling:

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LD: Mama, can we have a lemonade stand so we can make some money?

MAMA: Um … I don’t have any lemonade.

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LD: So, can we have a lemonade stand?

MAMA: I don’t have any paper cups either…

LD [bouncing up and down, hanging on MAMA’s arm]: So? Can we?

MAMA [introspective]: Come to think of it, I don’t even have a pitcher I would let you boys take outside…

LD: Maaaamaaaaa! Can we have a lemonade stand, pleeeeeaaaaaaasssse? Please? Please-please-please?

MAMA [with an exasperated sigh]: No! You can’t have a lemonade stand. We don’t have any of the stuff for it. Now go play outside. Climb a tree or something. Go be boys. Outside.

Preparation is the key to fend-for-yourself parenting.

And, luckily, you can get everything you need for a summer of fun at one strip mall: the Sammamish Highlands on the north end of the plateau (corner of 228th Ave Northeast and Northeast 8th St).

First, head to Ace Hardware. Ace Hardware is a bizarre mix of cleaning supplies, toys, and individually sold nuts and bolts. For what we need for summer fun, you can stay in the front of the store, away from things like washers and lag bolts.

From Ace, consider getting these items:

  • A hose, hose reel, hose nozzle, sprinkler, bucket. Summer actually can get hot out here and your little darlings will want to play with water. Turn the sprinkler on the driest part of your lawn and let the LDs go at it. Give them the bucket and hose and nozzle and let them do a bike/toy wash. The hose reel is for you: a way to get that hose put away easily at the end of the day. And if you have real little ones, consider a baby/wading pool.
  • Long-handled forks, fire logs. If you have a fire-pit in your yard, what better way to spend an evening than making s’mores and hot dogs? If you don’t, well you can pick up one of those from Ace also.
  • Canning jars, tongs, stock pot. I wasn’t kidding about the eclectic mix of items at Ace. If you want to try your hand at making jam this summer, Ace has what you need. While the littlest kids probably shouldn’t use the stove, they can help pick the berries and mash them with a potato masher (pick up one of those from Ace, too). If you want to make jam without the stove, just wait till we get to the Safeway list. There, you can pick up supplies for freezer jam. When my LD was six, he made blackberry-lemon freezer jam from start to finish by himself.
  • Seeds, soil, pots, watering can. If you want to get all science-y this summer, pick up a few packets of seeds—the Ace folks can tell you the easiest to grow—and let your kids get dirty. Then send them to the hose to clean up. All summer you can tell them to go water the plants when they get bored.
  • Bird feeders, bird food. Again, all science-y and educational. Pick up a few bird books from the library and have the kids fill the feeders and watch to see what comes to visit. See if you get different birds using different food.
  • Storage bins. If your husband likes a clean garage, buy a few large plastic storage bins to store all the kid stuff.
  • Kites and other miscellaneous stuff. Ace keeps an odd collection of stuff in the front of the store, right by the registers. You can find lawn statues, holiday decorations in August, and seasonal items like kites. Get an easy single-line kite that you won’t mind being tied to the back of a bike and dragged along the street until the wind picks it up.

 

OK, now that we’ve dropped a bundle at Ace, it’s time to head down to Bartell’s. Bartell’s, like Ace, is a friendly small-town type store trying to provide a little bit of everything folks might need in addition to the main reason they came down in the first place: bug bite lotion. While at Bartell’s, consider picking up:

  • Bubble wands and bubble sauce. Or bubble solution or whatever you call that magical mix of water, soap, and glycerin. Even older kids still like bubbles, especially when they’re soooo bored.
  • Sidewalk chalk. Ubiquitous stuff useful for hopscotch, obstacle courses, tic-tac-toe, and just plain drawing pictures. Use your hose from Ace to clean off the drawings if the neighbors object.
  • Balls, Frisbees, and other flying things. Big bouncy balls for catch, dodge ball, kick ball, soccer. Little teeny balls for jacks. Other flying things include stomp rockets and boomerangs and those weird Frisbee-like things with the hole in the middle.
  • Play-Doh. You know, when your old Play-Doh is all dried out or ground into your carpet and it’s raining out and you just need the kids to do something.
  • Art supplies. Bartell’s has a good selection of construction paper, water color paper, and Crayola coloring supplies, for when it rains. Or, if we’ve had an unusually hot summer, the kids are too sunburned to go outside.
  • Water guns and water balloons. Bartell’s has these things. Sometimes in the kid/toy aisle and sometimes in the seasonal specials aisle.
  • Sunscreen and aloe and bug bite lotion. Enough said.
  • Kites and other miscellaneous stuff. If Ace let you down, check Bartell’s seasonal aisle for things like kites and pool noodles and water guns and plastic badminton games and golf clubs.

 

Whew. Got all that? Take a break at Starbucks with a cool refreshing Frappuccino. Say hi to the folks you know working behind the counter. Sit in one of the outside tables and relish that you are almost done and can soon tell the kids to leave you alone and go play with each other.

After that drink, head to your last stop: Safeway. At Safeway, you want to pick up the ingredients you need for special summer treats, including:

  • Large marshmallows for s’mores
  • Graham crackers (s’mores)
  • Chocolate bars (s’mores)
  • Lemonade mix (lemonade stand)
  • Paper cups (lemonade stand)
  • Plastic pitcher with easy-to-open/pour spout (lemonade stand)
  • Disposable table cloth (to cover the lemonade stand table)
  • Otter Pops or other popsicles. (I prefer otter pops because I can leave the excess in the garage and just freeze as I need them.)
  • Sugar (for jam)
  • Potato masher (for jam, if Ace let you down)

 

Safeway is also the place to pick up freezer jam plastic containers and pectin if you want to avoid turning the stove on this summer.

Now, you can head home, secure in the belief that you have enough supplies for the kids to fend for themselves in a variety of activities.

One last piece of summer advice: set a budget for the ice-cream-man and get that budget in singles. Leave the singles in a spot the kids can get to fast when they hear “Turkey in the Straw” coming down the street.

Once the kids are occupied, get some lemonade and relax on the back porch. Or tackle cleaning out the coat closet…

Val Serdy is a stay-at-home mom trying to run a new business this summer. Want to send your kids over to play with her LD? She'll send them outside to blow bubbles and look for frogs in the pond across the street.

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