Kids and summertime. School’s out. Schedules relax. I’m anticipating day trips with my friends and their kids or grandchildren. This quotation inspires me:
“We help each other grow in our families when we look beyond what we already know and imagine new possibilities in the future. This involves trying new things, going new places, and meeting people,” writes Kent Pekel in a Search Institute study. The study makes the following helpful possibilities to try.
Possibilitiies: Trying new things
Introduce children to a person, a family, or an organization coming from a culture different from yours. Visit community festivals, restaurants, and museums to expand a child’s perspective. Explain that meeting people who are different from us can make life more interesting and helps us get along better with others in our world. Discuss ways that this new culture is similar and ways that it is different from your own.
Possibilities: Going new places
Introduce children to new art, music or activities. Visit a museum or a similar organization without the children and find interesting things for them to see and do there. While you are there, plan a scavenger hunt that the children will lead on a later visit. Give children clues to find the things in the museum. Whatever they find, celebrate the hunt and ask the child what she or he thought about the “treasures” they found. Find a creative way to celebrate the child’s participation in the scavenger hunt and the results—whatever they might be.
I’m hoping to do this with a middle school student, her younger sister, and her grandmother. We’ll go to the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens. And maybe stop at the Gift Store for a prize of her choosing.
The existence of beauty in an art museum is a spiritual quality. Love manifesting itself as loveliness in a botanical garden is a spiritual quality. Life’s spiritual dimension is more prominent than most of us could ever imagine.
Tweetable: Two possibilities to expand a child’s horizon, involving new places, activities and people. Work even harder to help kids develop relationships away from the allure of their online presence. Click to Tweet