“Invest” in Your Child’s Creative Summer Project
When one parent in our parent Facebook group Offspring foresaw summer, he decided his kids needed a purpose. Organizational principle. Project. So Isaac Elias and his partner set up a Google Docs presentation , made an appointment and announced to their kids: This summer they will be investing in their kids’ Lemonade Projects.
They call them Lemonade Projects because when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. And in case you haven’t noticed, there are quite a few lemons at the moment. In the presentation, they write to their children:
Your time and attention are so important and important!
You will have 72 days to apply to the things you care about (or spend just wallowing and arguing with potatoes).
(Or 864 waking hours )
At the end, we want you to look back and feel proud, happy, and satisfied with what you spent your time on!
They then commit to invest in kids’ creative summer projects – that is, after the ideas have been submitted and approved. They even provide a template for a kid’s presentation that includes a project description, estimated completion time, project milestones, and required materials or purchases.
There are a couple of caveats; they warn children in advance that they will ask for changes to proposals if they are dangerous, take up too much storage or work space, require too much parental supervision or assistance, or are likely to take more than two months.
And then he gives a few examples that are not meant to be accepted by children as their own, but to have their creative juices flowing with the flow. These include:
- Make glowing fairy wings
- Make a doll
- Write comics, magazines or graphic novels
- Garden planning and maintenance
- Learn a new recipe or cooking technique
- Learn a new culture or language
- Make a longboard
- Design the interior of your room
- Make a book-book
- Perfectly organize LEGO
- Shoot frame-by-frame animation
And the last piece of advice Elias gives to the Facebook group is to consider budgeting ahead of time, especially if finances are tight, so the kids know how simple or extravagant their projects can be.
Do your kids have any big summer projects planned? Share your creativity with us in the comments.