a peek inside the fishbowl

We went to the library yesterday and borrowed a stack of books. And then our youngest baked a cake:

It occurred to me that it might be fun to post a list of things that are fun to do with toddlers and kinder-aged kids over March Break. I think we often forget that kids of a certain age are easily amused, yet sometimes we find it hard to muster the energy to do something new. It doesn’t take much to keep them happy, does it? Things like:

• Going through the car wash.
• Baking cookies.
• Making play doh.
• Reading a new book together.
• Skyping with grandma and grandpa! (Maybe they can read a bedtime story together?)
• Bringing in a plastic tub full of snow from the outside and digging around in it with spoons.
• Taking a bath, fully dressed. (Our kids thought this was the most hilarious thing EVER.)
• Going to the pet store.
• “Camping” in the living room (a.k.a dragging out the sleeping bags, eating marshmallows, and telling stories)

…. are all fun things to do with wee ones. What would you add to the list?

We have a biiiig project going on this week and I think it’s kind of cool. More about that later. :)

I have a March Break philosophy, and it goes something like this: Every Day a Little Something. Not every day has to be a giant party or big excursion. Because that’s downright exhausting. I also have work to do, so I’m trying to keep our week reasonably balanced with fun stuff, chores, and responsibilities. :)

Yesterday was a pretty good start to our March Break and it might be hard to beat. I spent the morning working, and at 11:00 the youngest and I drove downtown. I had an appearance on CTV News at Noon (the segment was about things to do with kids over March Break), and afterwards we grabbed sushi at Lapointe’s. (Note to self: it was very good.)

After dinner, the four of us went back downtown to see Potted Potter. Have you heard of it? It’s an “unauthorized” parody of the Harry Potter series. Someone MAY have almost fallen out of her seat laughing. It was very fun.

I’m not sure what we’re going to be doing the rest of the week, but I poked around in my archives to find a few ideas we might revisit over March Break:

• I was thinking of bringing back the Harry Potter movie marathon, especially after seeing Potted Potter. This is something we did over Christmas holidays awhile back. We made butter beer too! You can kick this activity up a notch by designing your own movie tickets, inviting friends over, wearing pjs etc. It all depends on your energy level! :)
• Making s’mores on a stick.
• Or better yet, butter tart squares.
• Sending the kids on a photo hunt.
• Designing our own table cloth (hint: it’s made out of paper!)
• And maybe we’ll get dirty too.

It’s worth noting that as I’m typing this, someone is composing a song our new-to-us iPad and we’re heading out to the library after lunch. And let it be known there is also grocery shopping and laundry to do too. Gah.

What are you up to this March Break?

A few weeks ago we packed the kids up after dinner and made our way to Sky Zone, an indoor trampoline park here in Ottawa. I was researching a piece for Capital Parent Newspaper and figured I might as well bring the kids along. ;)

I will cut to the chase and summarize thusly: the girls had a great time, there was one skinned elbow but no other injuries, and they collapsed into bed that night and slept like the dead.

I was pleasantly surprised by the whole thing. Imagine a giant Costco size warehouse, with concrete floors and immensely tall ceilings. The building contains a few different trampolining areas.

(1) A wall-to-wall grid of small trampolines, divided by cushy borders.

(2) Smaller, enclosed areas for trampoline dodgeball – which looked quite fun. One game started while we were there and I was glad to see that it was supervised by staff and kids of all ages were encouraged to play together.

(3) A row of trampoline ramps underneath basketball hoops of varying heights. The trampo-basketball was very cool. Imagine being able to bounce and make a slam dunk!

(4) A separate area with smaller trampolines overlooking a huge pit of soft foam cubes. (You will never look at the Ikea ball room the same way ever again.) This area isn’t just for the little kids either. Kids of all ages were flipping in there! It was neat to watch. Edited to add: It’s worth noting that jumpers under age 6 are required to be supervised by an adult on the court. And there are special toddler hours too. Check the website for more info.

I should point out that we went after dinner, arriving sometime around 7:45. After having spoken to a few people about it since then, I believe this is the ideal time to go as a family. It wasn’t busy. The website mentions buying your admission ahead of time but we took our chances and just showed up. We bought each of the girls a 60-minute ticket. This was PLENTY of time for a first visit.

The Grid was awesome, and was where the girls spent most of their allocated hour. The girls ran, bounced, leapt… it basically gave them license to behave like wild circus children. The walls are trampolines too, and we witnessed some pretty awesome tricks by older kids. (Not by members of our own family.)

This is not an inexpensive night out, I do however believe it was money well spent. For a couple of extra bucks you need to buy special grippy socks for trampoliners. They are obviously reusable and can be brought back and worn on other occasions, so I didn’t mind shelling out the extra cash.

I will confess that I didn’t even step on a single bouncy surface in the whole place for fear of shaking up my bladder. I was happy to standby and watch the action unfold. And did it ever!

Have you been to SkyZone? What did you think?