Ten on Tuesday

Ten Ways to Entertain a Child

It depends on the age of the child, of course. As babies my kids could ride in a stroller all day, especially Taz. These days I think Miss B would be best entertained by being set loose in Needless Markup with her own credit card and no parents in sight. She will have to settle for TJ Maxx preceded by a discussion of what she really needs. A teenager's lot is not a happy one. Nonetheless, off we go:

1. Visiting the library. Miss B loved books early, and she also loved Eyewitness educational videos. By age four she was fully checked out on where ladybugs come from.
   
2. Playing in the park. There's a nice one for little kids conveniently located behind the library.
   
3. Baking cookies. This always my fallback for a rainy-day play date that started to lose steam.
   
4. And when the sun came out, a good old-fashioned game of catch, be it frisbee, baseball, or beamo. Taz still enjoys a good game of keepaway-from-parent with a soft ball. (I fondly remember an impromptu baseball game when most of the neighborhood kids were five or six. Due to shortage of players, at one point Fluffy came in as a pinch runner. She did reasonably well if you overlooked her being unclear on the concept of staying in the base paths.)
   
5. Nature walk. We had to pick our spots and seasons when the kids were little, as they were both so tasty to mosquitos they'd come back from a woodland ramble looking as though they'd contracted some exotic skin disease.
   
6. Twenty questions. This is a good one for car trips, along with...
   
7. Alphabet game, and...
   
8. Singing along with the radio. Once in a while Miss B and I actually agree on a song and know the words.
   
9. Card games, board games, pencil-and-paper games. Miss B can now beat me at most of them most of the time.
   
10. Holiday decorating. This of course requires a holiday to decorate for — you'd look pretty silly putting up a Christmas tree in July — but painting eggs or stringing popcorn or cutting out lots of frilly hearts is a fine way to keep a kid occupied. Also certain adults who never quite finished growing up, not that I would know any of those.

How would you entertain a little kid? How about a big kid?