Spring Break is around the corner!
While students of all ages everywhere are filled with delight as spring break edges closer, almost every parent feels the panic rise up when the daunting thought falls on them: “What am I supposed to do with my kids during spring break?” Well, we here at Marriage365 are all about creative connection and we know that there will be a whole lot of stress off you and your spouse’s shoulders once you have a plan in place. So we decided to help you out!
The key to our idea of “family spring break” is to make it meaningful. Even if you can’t spend all day, every day with your kids, if you challenge your family to do these five things every day of spring break, you’re sure to have tons of meaningful memories on the other side of it and you’ll walk away more connected as a family unit than ever. Let me break it down for you!
1. Connect Every Day
It’s common knowledge these days that technology easily distracts from organic connection, so we are here to challenge you to connect, even for just 3-5 minutes every single day with each member of your family. We recently came out with a book called 365 Connecting Questions for Families that will help you accomplish this. You can do this together over dinner, in the car, or separately as you have a spare minute with each child / your spouse. Just make sure you ask at least one connecting question every day to invest in your relationship with each family member.
2. Bless Someone Every Day
This doesn’t have to be huge or expensive or even complicated. You could have your kids spend time writing a note to each of the neighbors and deliver one each day, you could FaceTime a family member you haven’t talked to in awhile to make them smile, you could see a homeless individual and buy them a cheeseburger. You could even go door to door asking your neighbors if you could pull their weeds. Just make the goal to try and impact someone in some small way each day. Get creative and do it together!
3. Create Something Every Day
If you aren’t sure how to fill your time off together, challenge your family to create something new every day. This could go hand in hand with the point above and you could make a card or cookies for someone to bless them. You could also have a family challenge to pick a recipe out of a cookbook and create a new meal together every day. You could even put a bunch of random household items on your dining room table and see what you come up with together. Just create and have fun!
4. Read and Use a New Word Every Day
Like I mentioned before, technology easily distracts us these days. To stay sharp over spring break, read the entire family a new word and the definition over breakfast and challenge each other to all try to use the word in a sentence at least once that day. If you want to make it fun, you could even award points for each time the word is used correctly and see who gets the most points at the end of the day!
5. Donate Something Every Day
Take ten minutes before or after dinner and instruct everyone to go to their rooms or a common living area and find 3-5 things to donate to a local Goodwill or homeless shelter. You will need to locate a large box to designate as the “giveaway box” for everyone to put their items in, but the idea here is to add to the giveaway box every single day and see what you come up with to donate by the end of spring break! It is simple, takes 5-10 minutes and de-clutters your home in the process. Marie Kondo would be so proud!
Written by Anna Collins
Anna Collins lives in sunny Southern California with her husband and two children. She is passionate about her marriage, staying at home with her kids, writing, coffee, good conversation, and game night. Her life dream is to someday write a book and see it published.
