An Auntie's Compendium of Delightful Activities for Children
You can start a summer camp now.
I first came to Substack by way of Anne Helen Petersen’s consistently excellent newsletter, Culture Study. I knew nothing about the Substack platform, but I got wind of AHP’s newsletter, started subscribing, and read it eagerly as soon as it hit my inbox for probably a full year before I branched out to even one other newsletter.
Culture Study has one of the best communities on the internet. Paid subscribers get access to absolutely epic weekly comment threads, including quarterly classifieds, monthly “what are you reading” threads, and much more. These threads regularly get hundreds or even thousands of comments, and I’ve almost never seen anyone “being butts,” as AHP puts it. Everyone is kind, wise, insightful, funny, curious, and helpful.
Okay, so there’s also this quarterly “Advice Time” comment thread, which is reliably a total delight. Commenters ask for advice on everything from kitchen remodels to how to find friends in a new city to selecting the right bra. At the most recent “Advice Time,” a lovely person named Coco asked the world’s best Auntie question, and then she got like a gazillion excellent responses, and I’m going to share 21 of my favorites with you today.
Coco’s question was:
I am going on a big, weeklong beach vacation with a tonnnnn of young kids (5 and younger). I do not have kids, but I have an overflowing amount of Fun Aunt energy. (This is not a brag, this is just the truth, like, I spent 45 min in a foam sword fight just yesterday.)
My mission for this beach trip is to 1) WIN OVER ALL THE CHILDREN 2) give the parents (ahem, moms) a break for like an hour a day.
And so! I am hoping to gather a list of fun activities that could essentially be like "afternoon summer camp session" each day. I'm thinking things like Simon says, maybe a silly costume contest, etc. and I need ideas!!! What do you have, team!?
Such a good question, right?? And Culture Study readers absolutely delivered. By the time I got to the thread around 10am, there were already at least a dozen amazing suggestions for fun activities to do with kids, and the list just keeps on growing. Here’s what I contributed:
Obstacle course! This requires no setup and it tires out the children, which is always a bonus. Plus, if you’re low mobility like me, you can just orchestrate things without actually having to run around, but it’s still totally interactive and fun.
You just think of places for the kids to run to and stuff for them to do. So, like, “OK everybody run to that tree and go around it three times and then hop up and down five times and then go touch the door and do a somersault and then come back.” It’s infinitely modifiable. You can also do variations for different age groups/mobility levels, or you can let the littlest ones start first. Works great at playgrounds because you have so many structures to work with.
Don’t make it a competition or a race, but you can definitely have kids race against their own best time. Children love to get a personal best on arbitrarily made up feats of derring-do.
In response to her query, our buddy Auntie Coco got tons of great suggestions, many of which I had never encountered before. Most require minimal supplies, or materials you may already have around the house. With this collection of activities, you could truly run a whole summer’s worth of camps. Or just pick one or two for your next afternoon hang with the kids in your life!
What follows are Culture Study readers’ suggestions in their own words, anonymized and lightly edited for length and clarity. Without further ado:
An Auntie’s Compendium of Delightful Activities for Children
Maker challenge. Save up a bunch of recyclables, cardboard, clean plastic, etc. Get some kid scissors (or don’t) and masking tape. Give the kids a loose prompt, e.g., build a spaceship, robot, car, house, or costume. Give them an hour time limit. When time is up, have them sit in a circle and take turns presenting their creations. Ask questions like “What’s your favorite part?” or “What would you have added if you had more time?”
Make chalk paint. Add a few drops of food coloring to equal parts corn starch and water, then go nuts on whatever paved surface you can find. The paint washes away with a hose or the next rain. We sometimes use painter’s tape on the driveway to mark off geometric shapes and then paid those so when you pull the tape up it looks like stained glass.
Tell stories. Have a few stories in your back pocket to tell with GREAT ENTHUSIASM any time the kids need to be corralled or wait for ten minutes (e.g, burgers are aaaaalmost ready). My top successes recently include a bunch of classic fairy tales from the book Womenfolk and Fairy Tales (mostly healthy and charming stories and it’s usually like $8 used): Kate Crackernuts, Clever Manka, The Woman Who Flummoxed the Fairies. I also made one up about Lapasta and her true love, Marinarius, finally reaching their dreams of becoming dinner. (Lisa’s note: countersign! If you want more tips on how to tell stories to kids, I wrote a post about it).
