Posts from — September 2008

Saturday, September 28th is Family Health and Fitness Day! You can celebrate by getting your grandchildren together for some physical activities like riding bikes, hiking, jogging, or walking. Your community may have some special events planned. If it’s raining outside, you can stay inside and dance, jog in place or do jumping jacks. Your grandchildren will be able to come up with some creative activities.

This is a great internet site that grandparents can go to with their grandchildren to learn about “being green”. There’s fun games, short videos, free downloads and lots of activities to do as a family. Everything on the site teaches you how you can keep our planet green. The Greens

This is a great activity to do with your grandchildren. If you don’t have your own home garden, plan a trip with your grandchildren to a farm where you can pick fruit like strawberries, blueberries or peaches. Once your get home, try making juices, pies or jam. It’s an inexpensive activity and you have a product to share at the end of the day.  You can visit www.pickyourown.org for a list of local farms, directions for canning fruit and recipes.

Sorting activities are great to help children build math skills. As they create patterns, organize items in sets and examine similarities and differences in items, they build a foundation for a better understanding of math. This is a fun and inexpensive sorting activity for your grandchildren to do when they come to visit. It’s really great for all ages. Sometimes my adult children get involved. I put all kinds of interesting items in my jar. There are buttons, plastic money, beads, plastic animals, rocks, marbles, the list is endless! I dump the jar onto the table then the children begin organizing their favorite items. I like to talk to them about what they chose and why, what other items match what they already have. They usually come up with answers that I would have never had thought of. To keep things from falling on the floor, dump the items into a large box lid. You could use an egg carton for sorting the items.