Polls and Tips for Raising Kids

Special pencils, like mechanical pencils, push pencils, scented pencils, or those pencils that write in multi-color. (But I could mostly do without regular pencils - we have so many I don't think we'll ever get through using them all!)

I love giving out Crayola's Bold & Bright Construction Paper Crayons for Halloween classroom favors. I often see them at Dollar Tree, and they come in a black box to fit the "Halloween" theme. We use these crayons at home constantly to make homemade birthday cards for friends with our construction paper (regular crayons just don't show up well on darker construction paper)!

Mini animal or dinosaur figurines.

3D printed dragon eggs - the smaller ones are pretty reasonably priced when you buy them in bulk.

Puzzles are fun gifts for kids of all ages. From Rubix cubes (or specialty speed cubes for the more experienced cubers!) to jigsaw puzzles, they are fun gifts that are likely to get a lot of use over time, and which can be customized by age/difficulty level. We've liked Ravensburger puzzles for years, but have also recently discovered the fun puzzles from the Magic Puzzle Company, which are great for more experienced jigsaw puzzlers ready for lots of pieces!

Legos. I love that these work well for a wide range of ages and interests, from chunky Duplo bricks to intricate sets in a variety of pieces and difficulty levels. Plus, the many themed sets allows you to personalize for the birthday kids special interests. Minecraft legos, Star Wars legos, Harry Potter legos, Lego Friends...so many possibilities, you can really never go wrong!

Magnatiles. Kids can never have too many of these, and they are fun for such a wide range of ages they will almost certainly get used, whether the kid is 3 or 10 (or 44...)

A gift card to a local treat place: donut shop, ice cream, boba, etc.

What did the shark say when it ate the clown fish? Tastes funny.

Why does a duck have feathers? To cover his butt quack

What did the triangle say to the circle? You're pointless.

Why should you never give Elsa a balloon? Because she’ll Let it Go.

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. ~Maya Angelou

You've always had the power, my dear. You just had to learn it for yourself. ~Glinda the Good Witch, The Wizard of Oz

You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. ~Wayne Gretzky

Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible. ~ Dalai Lama

If there are six apples and you take away four, how many apples do you have? Four.

The more you take away from me, the bigger I get. What am I? A hole.

What starts with E, ends with E, and has only 1 letter in it? Envelope.

Michael’s father has three sons. Two are named Snap and Crackle. What’s the third son called? Michael

Air charades is popular with my kids, especially when they're playing with younger kids and everyone has a different swimming ability. It's a spin on traditional charades, with players acting out an animal, dance move, pose or other easy clue for other players to guess. The challenge? You have to act out your entire clue in the second or two you are in the air as you jump into the pool!

Marco Polo is always the first game I think of to play at the pool! Whoever is "it" closes their eyes and wanders around the pool trying to tag the other players. Anytime the person who is "it" says "Marco?" the other players have to respond "Polo!"

A ping pong ball hunt is a fun pool game for kids who like a little competition. Number as many ping pong balls as possible, starting with 1 and going up to as many as you have - 25 to 30 work well. Divide players into two teams, give each a container for collecting the balls, then toss the balls into the pool and have players collect as many of them as they can. Add up the numbers on the balls to see who wins! You can introduce a bunch of variations on this game for fun, like only allowing players to collect a single ball at a time, or assigning teams to collect only certain balls (like odds/evens).

Categories - pool style! - is a variation on pool tag, where the player who is "it" stands outside the pool, facing away from it, while all the other players remain inside the pool next to them. "It" chooses a category - colors, animals, states, Harry Potter characters, etc - and all the other players have to pick something from that category, without telling anyone what they pick. "It" starts to call out names/things related to the category, and if a player's selection gets called, they have to try and swim to the other end of the pool before "it" hears them and jumps in to tag them.

I bought my son a Nike backpack two years ago and it is still going strong. It has a front pocket which is great for little items and side pockets for a water bottle. He loves it!

Our Pottery Barn bags were great, and seem to be a popular choice at our elementary school. We never had a chance to wear them out, but they definitely were in good shape after 2-3 years (when grandma wanted to get new ones!). Fun designs and personalization available, too. I wouldn't recommend getting the smallest size (as we did in Kindergarten), as kids outgrow them quickly and they really will last a long time.

I bought my son a Land's End backpack (on clearance!) when he started first grade. This kid is not gentle with his things at all, but his Land End backpack made it through 8th grade before retiring. It was still in pretty great shape to tell you the truth, but we upgraded to a larger backpack for all his high school books.

Vera Bradley backpacks hold up very well. My middle schooler had hers for 3 years without it getting too beat up.

Annie! A classic for the whole family, always. Kids were 7 and 9 when we saw it, and we were coming out of an obsession with the movies, which made it extra fun!

I love the stage version of Beauty and the Beast! It's just similar enough to the familiar Disney movie for kids to understand everything, but just different enough to keep it fresh. The extra songs are some of my favorites.....and there's nothing like the magic of watching the beast turn into a prince right before your eyes!

Wicked

Aladdin! The whole family loved it, and it was a perfect first theatre experience for my kids at ages 6 and 8. They keep talking about what they want to see next. I think it helped that they knew the story and the music going into it. The genie, the dancing, the magic carpet - it was perfect!

Try to keep them outdoors as much possible. I try to take my kids to a local libray, outdoor park to play at. Also look up for any family friendly events that are free or vey low cost to keep them busy and less on screens!

We've tried setting hourly limits by day, which the kids can (generally) use whenever they want during the day. For example, 1 hour a day on Saturday and Sunday, and 3 hours a day on weekdays (when we are working). This can be hard to monitor, though, and we often find ourselves needing to make exceptions to the general rule. If your kids are old/responsible enough, there are timers you can give them to track their own hours (or just have them do it manually, or on their phone's timer function, if they have one).

For my teens in particular, I will sometimes have them leave their devices with me, and then come to me to request permission to use them for a particular purpose (to message friends, play a game, etc). Here, my goal is to help them be thoughtful about the time they spend on their phones, rather than to keep them from doing the things they enjoy on there. It is too easy to move mindlessly from one thing to another on our phones, so this helps them have a specific (and somewhat time-limited) purpose for being on their phone.

We've experimented with no screens for a set time (a week, a couple of weeks, a day), with the length of time determined by our goal. For example, when it seems like the kids are getting too dependent on their screens and it is becoming difficult for them to have healthy limits, we'll do two full weeks with no screens. The first several days are rough, but just before the 1 week mark, we see that they "re-learn" the ability to play on their own and otherwise entertain themselves without screens. It makes it really tempting to swear off screens altogether, but they are such useful and versatile tools I doubt we'll ever truly go there.

museum membership

Special behind-the-scene museum/zoo/aquarium adventures or animal encounters. (E.g., shark feeding, penguin painting, etc.)

AMC movie pass

Spa card. If at a kid friendly salon, younger recipients could get manicures with cute art designs, chocolate facials, temporary hair chalk, etc.

Peeling and placing stickers. Sticker books are great for this - we like the "paint by sticker" series, though it may be a little challenging for some little ones. My 4-year-old is awesome at it, but my 6-year-old (whose fine motor skills definitely need work) struggles a bit. I also really like the Phidal line of reusable sticker books - the quality is such that they truly are reusable!

Placing letters on a letter board. I discovered this one by accident, but I love how it keeps my 4-year-old sitting quietly for long stretches of time while he tries to get the plastic letters to stay in my felt letter board.

This probably depends on the kid, but when my kids were little I would give them a task/goal such as "we can go to the park as soon as your shoes are on and I finish one quick chore" and then walk away to do my own chore somewhere close by, like emptying the dishwasher. I found that they would figure out how to do things for themselves when I wasn't standing over them and tempted to help or looking at the clock. Be sure to do this a looong time before you have to be out the door.

Pick up things with kitchen tongs. Our kids have so much fun using tongs to pick up socks on the floor, toys, or anything else that needs tidying up!

Pass the Parcel! We'd never heard of this one until we saw the Bluey episode about Lucky's Dad's Rules (best. episode. ever.), and now my kids want to play it ALL the time. Similar to Hot Potato, kids pass around a wrapped gift while music is playing. When the music stops, whoever is holding the gift gets to unwrap it. According to the Bluey episode, the original way to play is to wrap a single gift in various layers of wrapping paper, so you go through several rounds before a child actually opens the gift, which they get to keep. Another version of the game includes small prizes within each layer of paper, and strategically stopping the music to make sure every child gets a prize.

Hot potato. We just had a birthday party for a five-year-old, and ended up playing hot potato along with pass the parcel. Though I’ve loved pass the parcel since we discovered it on Bluey, think the kids enjoyed hot potato even more, as they were able to toss the “potato” (we used a small plushy) to each other out of order, which made the game more active and the kids more engaged. When the music stopped, whoever was holding the plushy got out, and the last person in got the prize. This kept the kids from slow passing, too, since the goal was NOT to get caught with the plushy!

A Minute to Win It party was a huge hit with my son and his friends in elementary school. We just got the supplies for a handful of different Minute to Win It games, and the kids had a lot of silly fun with it. Inexpensive, too!

A treasure hunt was always my favorite birthday party game when I was a tween and started having at-home parties with a smaller number of friends. Write out a series of clues leading the group to seek out various locations in and around the house, and have a treasure prize (or party favors) to discover at the end. If you've got a bigger group, you can split the kids into teams with two different sets of clues and have them race to the treasure.

I put together little gifts (think Dollar bin) wrapped up in bags with a time on them. My kids look forward to these gifts and it helps to pass the time on long trips!

During a gas station break, we always let the kids pick out a special snack or two to enjoy in the car. They love getting the freedom to pick whatever they want.

Download an audiobook and/or pick a podcast that's appropriate for your kids' ages and would be interesting to the adults, too.

It's always a good idea to keep a spare "barf bag" or two in the car. Make sure you know where they are and can access them quickly. My kids don't get car sick, but we've had the occasional stomach bug pop up while on the road...and the end result is the same! I've seen blue bags specifically for this purpose on Amazon.

The Chinese soft-shelled turtle pees from its mouth.

The Queen has two birthdays.

The average sneeze can travel at a speed of up to 100 miles per hour.

The human eye is made up of about two million working parts.

First day of school photos on our front steps, and couple more in front of the school too.

My husband and I will usually take the day off work (when we can) so we can be there for drop off and pick up on the first day, which makes it feel extra special for all of us.

We have taken first day of school and last day of school pics on the front step with each kid holding their own sign. It's the same every year. My high schooler isn't too thrilled with the idea of doing it this year but will have to suffer through it. I plan to make them each a printed photo book of each year's pics when they graduate high school as a keepsake.

First day of school traditions in my house include a pancake breakfast and upbeat music. I usually include a special treat in their lunch boxes, too. When the kids return, a large after-school snack awaits them at the table to help unwind the exciting day.

I am a huge fan of martial arts. I love that they provide great physical exercise, but also promote and support important life skills like discipline, confidence, and respect for self and others.

My 6 year old loves his running program and I see a fair number of kids who don't love team sports there. They do individual activities, like quick sprints and longer jogs, and the coaches have them work together and build team spirit in other ways.

Ninja Warrior/ Boot Camp/ Kick Boxing/ Cardio Classes. Unique kids schedules are often found at specialized, local adult gyms now.

Yoga has been really fun for my kids. I feel that it's good for their physical and emotional health, and it's nice that they can do it together even though they're three years apart. It also doesn't require any commitment beyond the weekly class and can easily be worked into our schedule - no games, recitals, etc!

Take a tour of a local firehouse. Many offer free tours if you call ahead and ask.

Cook together! This is an activity my kids have loved at every age from toddler to tween, and the bonus is you end up with a yummy (usually!) meal or treat at the end of it.

Sit around backyard campire (firepit); toast up s'mores; catch and release lighting bugs; stargaze

Many pubic libraries either have play places or offer free activities for kids.

"The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem. Do you understand?" – Pirates of the Caribbean

"When one can see no future, all one can do is the next right thing." – Frozen 2

"Always let your conscience be your guide." – Pinocchio

"She warned him not to be deceived by appearances, for beauty is found within." - Beauty and the Beast