The Book of New Family Traditions (10 page)

Kids today have no idea how lucky they are to have such great online resources to help them study and do homework. But as we all know, not all web-based resources are reliable. Presumably, your kids’teachers are warning them about trusting Wikipedia and other sites as authoritative, but it’s also good to know about some study sites you can rely on.

One good resource is on the Microsoft website, the “Top 14 Websites for Students,” compiled by journalist and tech expert Marc Saltzman. Here you will find overall homework help sites he recommends like
RefDesk.com
and Fact Monster. But he also singles out specific sites for help in English, history, math, and science, such as
Shakespeare-Online.com
and Project Gutenberg. The latter is an archive of more than 36,000 free downloadable books, including most of the classic novels your kids will be assigned to read. Ulysses, anyone?

Find this master list at:
www.Microsoft.com/athome/students/studentsites.aspx
.

Playing Hooky

In general, I don’t advocate teaching kids to skip school. However, I know many families who allow it for one or two special days a year, and their kids haven’t turned into habitual truants.

A Day with Mom

Julie Stockler was allowed to play hooky one day a year when she was young and has passed that tradition on to her daughters. When she was young, she would use her day off to go shopping with her mother at a department store and eat lunch in the ladies’tearoom. Her girls prefer to go to the movies or skiing, but they also treasure the one-on-one time with her as much as the forbidden pleasure of skipping out on school.

Surprise Kidnap

One mother I know surprises her kids by “kidnapping” them from school one day a year. She pays attention to when tests and school field trips are scheduled and picks a day when they won’t miss much. The kids go off to school, their mother takes a shower and dresses, then shows up at school and surprises them. Once they get in the car, the lucky kid gets to decide how to spend the day.

Sty Day

A friend of mine used to skip work and take one mental health day a year with her daughter, when they would never get out of their pajamas. They watched television and ate junk food all day, never taking showers or washing the dishes. (This explains the name of their annual frolic, taken from the farm structure typically occupied by pigs.) No one would argue that this is educational, but it sure was a fun contrast to work and school, and it didn’t hurt the daughter, who later graduated from one of the country’s top law schools.

Museum Days

If you’ve ever been to a major museum like the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, which has one of the greatest dinosaur collections anywhere, you know how crowded it gets on weekends and school holidays. I started taking my son there when he was two years old, and it’s probably his happiest place on the planet. He’s learned so much and seen so many amazing exhibits, and I wanted to plant the idea early that this was a treat. Throughout grade school, I used to pick one day a year to pull him out of school so we could see the
T
.
rex
up close and eat dino-shaped chicken nuggets in the museum cafeteria. I always worked with his teachers to pick a day when he wouldn’t miss a test, major event, or field trip, and they were always cool with it. Starting with middle school, we stopped museum days, but he has such good memories of this annual tradition!

End of-School-Year Rituals

Teacker Tribute

To encourage gratitude and practice writing, have your children write and decorate thank-you notes to their teachers. Encourage them to list specific areas in which they learned a lot, or an area where the teacher provided crucial, extra assistance. They might also bring a small gift, such as flowers.

Kid’s Choice Dinner

Food isn’t the only thing kids choose when the Fitches of Columbus, Ohio, celebrate the last day of school. They not only pick the menu but also where and when to eat it. When Corey Fitch was nine, the year the ritual began, he decided he wanted to eat carryout Chinese food on the steps of his elementary school—at midnight. “We sat there eating noodles and talking about the past year,” says Sally Fitch. “It was wild and crazy, and he loved it.”

Ending the School Year with a Bang

No matter how well he did in school, there were always a few obligations and events during the year in grade school that really annoyed my son. Our ritual for the last day of school started out with buying ice cream cones and signing up for the library’s summer reading program. But when we got home, there would be three or four brightly colored helium-filled balloons on strings, which I had tied to a drawer handle in the kitchen. Max would take a black marker and write things on the balloons he was joyful to be done with, like having to learn colonial dance, then he would gleefully stab each balloon with a pin. Not particularly edifying, I admit, but extremely satisfying, and it produced a real sense of liberation, a great way to start the summer.

Library Payback

When Patrice Kyger’s kids graduate from elementary school, they are allowed to pick out a book and have her buy it for the school library, an act that makes them feel very grown-up.

Welcome Summer Party

Carolyn Hecht’s son, now grown, always celebrated the last day of school by hosting a huge watermelon fight in the backyard. “There were always seven or eight boys, and it was a big, messy fight that lasted all afternoon,” says Carolyn. There are other activities and foods for welcoming summer in the backyard: You can serve lemonade or ice cream cones, and if it’s sunny, start the summer off with a squirt gun and water-balloon battle.

Crystal Ball

When Sandy Graham’s daughter, Jaime, finished elementary school in Denver, local teacher Barb Herman had students in the class write a letter predicting their own future: Where will they go to college? What will their major be? Future profession? Will they marry? Have kids? She saves all the letters and mails them to the kids in the spring of their senior year in high school. She has to track down a few who left the local school district, but her track record is good. And kids love seeing what they predicted for themselves seven or eight years before. Sandy suggests that any parent could execute this ritual and present the predictions list to their kids when they graduate from high school. Perhaps you could build a whole evening around filling in the form, complete with candlelight, robes, and a crystal ball. And parents might talk about what they expected for themselves at that age—versus the reality that emerged.

End-of-School Awards Dinner

The Giehls of Colorado, who always have a fancy family dinner on the night before school begins, also have a feast on the day it ends, but with more fanfare.

The meal is served in the dining room, the food is festive, and the dessert is always spectacular. But the main ritual is the presentation of special posters Nancy has made for each child. The point is not to praise grades, but to applaud what each one learned and is still learning. After second grade, for example, Nancy described her daughter Julie on the poster as “reader, writer, pianist.” After the meal, each child is given a letter Nancy has written about the year’s highlights and the parents’ pride in his or her hard work. And they have their pictures taken next to their special posters.

Another highlight of the meal: a family survey about what special activities and trips they should plan for the summer, ranked by level of enthusiasm.

How to Make an End-of-Year Award Poster

Materials

Sturdy poster board from
office supply or crafts store

Markers

Ribbon

Scissors

Class photo of the child that
year or a photocopy of same

Pictures of your child at school
(if you have them)

Magazine photos

Instruction

Cut the school photo into a round or oval shape and glue it into the center of the poster. Color around the photograph, making an elaborate border. Write across the top in marker: Star Student (child’s name) and the year. In an oval pattern around the central photo, place photos either of your child engaged in different activities, such as sports or studying, or drawings of such, or magazine photos that suggest these things. Write underneath each image something your child did or learned. Glue one end of a piece of ribbon next to the central photo, and glue the other end near the image of an accomplishment. Repeat the process, attaching additional ribbons to the central photograph and the surrounding images, so the ribbons radiate out like spokes of a wheel.

Pet Rituals

I know a guy who sends postcards to his parrot when he goes on vacation (he mails them to the pet store where he boards the parrot), and a woman who sings a different lullaby for each of her two dogs at bedtime: She swears they recognize the tune. Many of the rituals we enact with our pets are more for ourselves, but routine comforts animals of all kinds. And rituals can help young kids relish the regular duties of pet ownership.

Walking tke Dog

Dogs demand ritual and respond to it as devotedly as children, and this is especially true with the all-important routine of daily walks. Dog owners tend to have pre-walk rituals that include verbal cues and flourishes, such as having the dog carry his leash to the door. Adding on silly songs or other fun antics makes this more enjoyable for kids, too. Whenever my son visits Auntie Na (a.k.a., my husband’s ex-wife, Anita), he loves to walk her dog, Luna, and when he was younger, they always got ready for walking her with a special song. (“Get the poop papers, Peggy, we’re going for a walk, these dogs will poop so much, the neighbors will all talk....”)

Mealtimes

Never tease a hungry dog about food, but many owners like to have their dog sit first and give him or her a pat on the head before placing the bowl on the floor. If your child wants to sing a special song or even say grace before the cat gets supper, why not? It will help a kid remember to feed his or her pet because the routine is spiced with fun.

Baths

For most dogs, a bath is not a treat. Try to make it fun by having the kids put on their bathing suits and climb right into the bathtub with the dog. Pretend that you’re preparing the dog for a big dog show, while drying and combing your pet, adding embellishments like ribbons and maybe taking silly photographs.