Before and after school care activities/ curriculum???

[Mom of 3]

Next year I will have 4 before and after school children ages 5-8. I will also have them full time in the summer....What are some ideas, suggestions, curriculum, or schedules that I can use for this age group? I know they are easily bored so how can I keep a good balance of activities without having to continually entertain them? I do allow video games/ Computer and TV but only for very short periods of time. This is also because i don't refrain my children from these things and my parents know that....Help? and Thank you

[mom-in-alberta]

I am contemplating taking in just B/A kids. One of the things that I was reminded of was that these kids, during the school year, just sat in a desk for 6 or so hours. So on school days, I would say have scheduled activities or lessons a little fewer and far between and allow a little more "free" time. Or large motor activities, outside or what have you.
As for during the summer, I just googled "school aged kids activities" and found a bunch of great sites.
I find that kids that age seem to like "science" type stuff. And you can find tons of experiments using common household items. I suppose part of it will be determined by the group you have, too. Some of them are happy to do crafts all day long. Others get antsy a couple minutes in.
Good luck!!

[lilac]

I had this crowd last summer, we basically spent as much time outside as possible, park every morning... which was great b/c all their buddies were there from school. They LOVED sidewalk chalk, so we'd spend some time, usually the end of the day in the driveway doing chalk. We spent a lot of time in the backyard in the sandbox, with the sprinkler, we had a wading pool that they basically took buckets of water out of to throw at eachother. I had 1 child that napped so we had quiet time when I'd put a movie on for them. I did a few backyard science experiments, we had a theme day or two. One was pirates and it was fantastic! I bought some red satin sheets from a 2nd hand store for about 8 bucks, tore it all up and made sashes and bandanas, had the kids help me make eyepaches and dabloons and pouches to carry their dabloons in. They had so much fun they went to the park alld ressed up in their outfits! it was hilarious.

We didnt do crafts every day, we reserved them more for rainy days. But I did take advantage of doing messy crafts that I normally wouldnt do b/c we could do them outside.

When I had a small amout of kids or if my husband was around, we'd go to the beach and spend a good part of the day there... that was tons of fun... went fossil hunting, etc. We had a blast last summer!