Your guide to activities and fun things to do with your preschoolers, toddlers and kids in Washington, DC

Tuesday List: Ways to Enjoy Unscheduled Time

by Leticia

June 02, 2009

May was probably our busiest month of the year and with the end of school coming fast and furious, June is turning out to be about the same.  I know that Beth and I are constantly writing about the many wonderful activities and things to do in the DC Metro Area but today’s Tuesday List is all about taking a step back from the crazy scheduled lives that we lead by celebrating the idea of doing nothing and enjoying unscheduled time in your yard. 

After a hectic day either at school or on the weekend, there’s nothing that our two children like to do more than play outside.  Here are some of their favorite things to do that require little preparation and minimal stuff: 

• Play with the hose
• Make bracelets or crowns out of the weed flowers that grow in the grass
• Make chalk outlines of each other
• Dig in the dirt
• Lie in the grass and stare at the clouds
• Pick flowers
• Play hide and seek
• Collect rocks, pinecones, etc.
• Look for bugs
• Gathering sticks
• Climb trees

These things are proof that kids don't need a scheduled activity all the time.  They often find creative things to do in our yard with the things that are already there and these things are testament to the fact that it  really is ok to just be.

What are some of your kids’ favorite things to do during their downtime either inside or out?   Leave a comment and let us know!

Merrifield Garden Center

by Beth Hoffman

May 23, 2009

Ah, Spring, when a young suburbanite's fancy turns to thoughts of mulch.  Do you constantly smell like mulch these days, even three showers past your last stint in the garden, or is that just me?  Last weekend, to get a break from the weeding and the mulching, we went to the garden center to buy some new plants for all those bare spots that were formerly covered by weeds.  We had a two-year-old gift certificate to Merrifield Garden Center, so we decided to head over there and put it to use.  We went to the new place near Fair Oaks, not the original in Merrifield.  And wow, this place blows my regular nursery out of the water.

We had both kids with us, of course, and they had a blast.  The toddler was in the backpack, saying hello to all of our fellow patrions, and straining for handfuls of any plant I got him too close to.  The preschooler ran all over the place admiring the plants, debating the best azalea colors, helping me pick tomatoes based entirely on their pictures and/or funny names, and getting an impromptu education on the difference between annuals and perennials, evergreen and deciduous, indoor and outdoor plants, and why in the heck we needed all that mulch anyway. 

I never thought a trip to the nursery with the kids would be anything but a hassle, but it was actually a lot of fun to go through all the plants with the kids, and Merrifield was a great place to do it.  It's huge, well organized, well stocked, and has plenty of wagons to dump the kids in when they get tired of tearing up and down the rows of rhododendrons.  So brush up on your plant identification skills, or just keep a sharp eye out for the tags, and take the kids to the garden center for a free field trip and ecology or biology lesson.
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Meadowlark Botanical Gardens

by Beth Hoffman

October 23, 2008

Have a budding (har-har) botanist in your family? Now is the perfect time for a trip to Meadowlark Botanical Gardens in Vienna for a lesson in how the changing seasons affect the gardens. The 95-acre space boasts a nice visitor center, ornamental gardens, native plants and wildflowers, a wooded trail, a large lake, and lots of kid-focused displays and play  Read more...

Cultivating a Green Thumb

by Leticia

May 26, 2008

We're at the time in the year where the seasons are wavering between spring and summer. A series of rains have made the grass lush and green while the temperatures are warming and hinting that summer is on the way. I'm not a fan of the mosquitos and the Californian in me absolutely despises our humid summers so I'm trying to take advantage of being outside before summer truly arrives. We've been  Read more...

Cultivate Your Child's Green Thumb with a Planting Party

by Leticia

May 14, 2008

There came a point during winter when I was just ready for spring. I was tired of the barren landscape of my backyard, the extra time it took to dress my children for the great outdoors, and my winter wardrobe. I decided to turn my nose up at old man winter and jump start our spring with a planting party. My Type A obsessive compulsive self realized this meant my children would have  Read more...