Entertaining Older Kids while you Work
Sparkplugging is starting a new tradition called ‘Spark an Idea Thursday’. Each week we’ll be sharing some great ideas for a topic of interest to our readers.� We invite you to grab our image and carry the tradition through to your own blog!� If you do, please link back to this post so we know where you were inspired!
This week�s Spark an Idea deals with Entertaining the Kids while you Work.
Today I wanted to touch on entertaining older kids.� You can find a plethora of ideas out there on how to work while having babies and toddlers in tow, yet we tend to think that once the kids are older and more self sufficient, they won�t need as much entertainment.
I disagree that they won�t need as much entertaining but rather they need a different type of entertaining.� At this age, idleness can sometimes lead to poor choices. One idea that works well during summer months when my preteen and teenager are home is bartering.
Barter time. You can set up a checkbook, spreadsheet or a whiteboard to keep track of time.� Example if you would like to have three (3) solid hours of uninterrupted work time during the day, you could either task your kiddos to do their own work (cleaning their room is always a biggie) or merely to entertain themselves with a book or playing outside for three hours.� Then you have three hours banked.
You gave me three hours to get done what I needed to and now we have three hours that we can do something together. If you are thinking that your teenager may not want to spend time with the old parents then perhaps the time earned could be spent running Mom�s Taxi. (I�ll drive you and your friend to a movie and then pick you up a few hours later).
This time barter idea of entertaining the kids while you work benefits us for so many reasons:
- It teaches the kids the value of time management
- It teaches the kids that while it may be summer vacation for them, work at home parents still need to work
- It teaches my children about a form of commerce � bartering
- It forces my girls to be creative � they are responsible to coming up with something productive to do while I am working
- It gives them freedom to choose our together activities, thus taking the onus off of me to entertain them.
Let’s keep the ideas going, I know for a fact that these cool bloggers can spark a few fresh ideas for us so I’m tagging them to invite them to jump in!