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November 20, 2023 2 min read
Keeping grade school kids occupied during school holidays when you are working from home is a challenge so many of us parents face today, juggling work in a society where we can't let our kids roam the streets like we did at that age.
Here at Rascal Mountain, we close our doors for a few weeks over the Summer and Winter school holidays to allow us to spend valuable quality time with our kids. However during the Spring and Autumn holidays we just operate on a reduced schedule, making urgent orders and keeping things just ticking over. This means a few hours every day when our 6 year old has to occupy himself (not a bad thing!). He's just come from 8 or 9 weeks of school days with constant occupation and a structured schedule. He's used to being in a class of 17 students with plenty to occupy them every minute of the school day. So naturally he is a little bit lost for the first few days and we are always looking for ideas to give him something fun to do and keep him from asking for screen-time.
This last holidays we had our best idea yet for holiday fun which doesn't cost the earth and quite literally occupied him for hours every day.
A sandpit!
Our 6 year old and Dad put this together from some old garden sleepers we had stashed behind the shed. Its just 4 sleepers bolted together, sitting right on top of the concrete pad outside our shed door. Right in Mum's line of sight while I'm working, close enough for him to feel secure, far enough away to not be underfoot while I'm soaping.
The sleepers cost nothing as were recycled from an old garden project, & the sand cost $40. The trip to get it from the landscape yard, with Dad and the old trailer on a Saturday morning was a fun project in itself.
Our little man has spent literally hours and hours playing by himself with this $40 toy. A wide brimmed hat and a box of old toy trucks and blocks are the only other equipment needed! He has made airports and diamond mines and space stations and 4wd tracks and rabbit holes. He even made volcanos complete with steaming lava (that did involve Mum bringing down a kettle of hot water to pour inside his carefully constructed mountain craters!).
He comes in from a morning in the sandpit calm and relaxed, with a big happy grin (and plenty of sand to dust off)!
When the novelty finally wears off and he doesn't want to play in it anymore, the sleepers can be unbolted and put back behind the shed, the sand can be swept over onto the grass and raked in to give a much -needed boost to our heavy black clay soil, (the grass will love it), & the trucks and blocks can have a rinse before going back in the toy box. No waste, no broken plastic going into landfill, just all those hours of fun and happiness!