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[quote=Anonymous]I work in a school, so I am home with my kids during the summer. We keep our summers relatively unstructured and our schedule is pretty light. They each have a few summer activities, but generally we have tons of free time. I love this, and don't want to change it, but it gets harder to keep everyone active and happy as they get older. I have 3 kids and they are 9, 12, 14. they have good friends, but don't tend to hang out with their friends all that often, but I wish they would. My 9 y.o. is a boy and can keep himself entertained pretty well, so I'm mostly concerned about my two older girls!

So, I'm just wondering how other kids with lots of free time spend their summers. I know a lot of you have kids who attend lots of camps, clinics, have jobs, or are busy with sports. I'm just wondering about families like us who don't do a lot of those things. I love to take them to do stuff and I am happy that my girls still like to hang out with me and their siblings. But I simply can't keep them entertained all summer long anymore. It gets expensive!

Here's what makes it difficult:

We used to have pool passes and we would go swimming a lot. they would see friends there, so they were happy to do that a few times a week. Now they are bored with our local pool. Their peers no longer go either. So I stopped getting passes. One year, I tried getting pool passes in the neighboring town because there were multiple pools. That got boring as well since they didn't know anyone.

We don't live in a neighborhood where kids can just hop on their bikes and go for a bike ride or ride to a friends house. I grew up riding my bike all over town, so this makes me kind of sad.

I would love for my girls to spend more time outside when they are home, but I don't really know what I expect them to do. We have a big backyard with a deck, swing set and trampoline. That's about it. they like to jump on the trampoline, but you can only do that for so long. We live on a cul de sac and we don't have a front porch or shade trees where they could just sit and read or watch cars/people pass by. They are not into sports.

None of their friends are within walking distance so when they do get together, I think it just feels too formal or structured and they feel pressured to entertain/figure out what to do for a certain number of hours. When I was their age, my friends and I could just walk or ride bikes to each other's houses. It was usually spontaneous and we would just go home whenever we ran out of stuff to do. we didn't have the pressure of keeping each other entertained until someone's mom picked them up. We didn't usually schedule sleepovers. We would just ask our parents if we could whenever we were still having too much fun to let it end.

My kids are pretty introverted, so that makes a difference. Initiating any sort of social activity is not easy for them.

We have plenty of things we can do for outings and planned get-togethers with friends. But I can't afford to do that nearly every day! Plus I want more time to get away and do my own thing.  So, basically I'm looking for ideas for them to keep themselves happy and entertained without needing me. Anything I could do or get for our yard that they might like? We have a finished basement that I would like to make into more of a hangout, so looking for ideas for that too. We have an xbox, but i don't know of any games my girls would like.

Any suggestions?[/quote]

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