What can I do with my pre-teens this summer?

I'm busy trying to figure something out on my computer right now, honey. You can tell me when you get home, okay?

What is minicam?

I don't know what Minicam is. Won't let me click on it.

I'm going to stop you, start you, stop you. There's many cats.

Hello, it's, um, after 1 o'clock, so I think you should wake up, honey. Okay, um, I'm trying to do a live video on my computer, but we'll see how this goes.

All right, and Jasminda is done at the park with her friend, and Gavino's at school. And that's about it. Okay, love you, bye.

Okay, finished.

I hope I did check my glitch every day. I don't know. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Oh my goodness, there it is. Okay, so now How do I do this?

Oh, okay, there I am. Okay, sorry. Tami Grgas here. I want to, um, so I have two preteens in my house right now, and I want to be able to do fun things with them this summer, but I also want to be able to do educational things. Sorry, I'm parting my hair on the wrong side there. Okay, it's hard when you're looking at yourself in the camera and everything's backwards. Anyways, so I've come up with a list of things I should do. Sorry, it's my first time using this StreamYard thing, so I'm a little bit— my lighting is— I'm gonna close my drapes here that are in front of me. Kind of giving me a good, a good glare. Anyways, so I wanted to talk about some of the things we can do with our preteens. Spend time with them, get to know them. Don't just do things for them to have fun and you to sit and read a book, although I will do that sometimes. But they really, really need you to interact with them at this time in their lives. They really need conversation. They really need to feel like they have input into the family structure, if you will. So here are some of— I've got some outdoor activities, okay? So I live in Papillion, Nebraska. So here I've looked around at different places and one of them is— So outdoor activities you can do. Good thing about being outdoors is you get fresh air, the kids get to run around, they get to— I'm on a live video right now, honey, so just go in the family room, okay? It's one of my preteens. So doing hiking and nature walks is awesome. You can educate them, or they can educate you sometimes about what you see out in nature. In Nebraska, in, in Omaha area here, we have Fontenelle Forest. We have, uh, there's Walnut Creek right by us. There's a lot of different areas that you can go on walking trails and stuff. You can go biking, you could go fishing, you could go swimming. Um, we don't really have too many beaches here, but we do have some lakes and whatnot, um, that can be found. We are planning on going camping this summer, possibly to Okoboji in Iowa. Never been there before, heard it's great, so we're going to go camping there. Also playing sports or games in the park with your kids. And this is something that— so I have two preteens, one's 11, one's 12, a boy and a girl. And if they want to go kick around a soccer ball or play basketball at the park or something like that, then I'll probably take a book with me to read, or, you know, my phone, whatever. Um, but that's something that you can do with them.

The—

Always remember, when you're reading a book or looking at your phone when you're with your kids, you're being a fly on the wall. So you're listening in and figuring out what's going on with them. So always pay attention. That, that's one thing that I'm really good at multitasking with, is I can do something and just listen in. And if I hear something that needs my attention, I stop reading, but I keep looking down at my book to pretend I'm reading. And I take notes in my brain about, oh, they mentioned this, or they mentioned that, or, you know. Yeah. That kind of stuff. So there's indoor activities. So you can play board games or card games. Cooking or baking together is a great activity to do. And how you can actually teach them while you're doing that is you can do math. So we need half a cup of this, we need a quarter cup of this. How many quarter cups fit in half a cup? Like, discuss these things. Don't just make them do the activity discuss the reasons why, and do some math together. This is, this is part of my homeschooling brain that comes up with these things in everyday life, okay? You can do crafts or DIY projects. So we had a sale here called Reruns Are Fun. It's a lot of kid items and stuff like that. And I picked up quite a few crafts, craft kits to do this summer with the kids. Some are girly, some are more boyish. Like, there's one about gross science or something for my, for my son. Um, and there's— I think there's like a, there's like a jewelry rock one or something like that for my daughter. So those kind of things, put those in your back pocket. Those are great rainy day things to do with the kids if you're trapped at home with them. Um, then there's reading or starting a book club. So you can start reading together, like get a book, get one for each of you. I usually have my book on the Kindle because I like reading from my Kindle, but we can each read a chapter every day and then discuss it, or a chapter a week and then discuss it. So that's kind of a cool idea. I want to do that with the kids for sure. Watching movies or having a movie marathon. I love the thought of this. However, I like to make it into something you're learning. Everything is a learning experience. You just got to figure out what the lessons are sometimes. Occasionally there will be a movie out there that'll be like, I don't learn a dang thing from that. But just to be able to discuss things after the movie helps the kids to retain that information and helps you to retain it as well. Then there's the educational activities. I don't know if you can tell or not, but this is my favorite educational activities. It's so important to keep their brain active during the summer, and in my humble opinion, it's important to keep your brain active as you get older. So there is You can visit museums or science centers. There's the Children's Science Museum here in Omaha, which the kids are kind of getting to that age that I don't know if it's a good idea to go or not right now. They're, they're getting older. We might spend more time upstairs in the Children's Science Museum in Omaha, but there's other museums we can go to. Doing science experiments at home. So some of those things that I collected, this, the craft projects, are science experiments as well. And then you could learn a new language or a skill. So my daughter there, she is very good at sign language. So I think I'm going to ask her to help us learn more sign language. So have your kids help you to learn things, right, Jasminda? Yes. Yeah. Um, reading non-fiction books or articles, so learning about what's going on in the world and stuff like that is a good idea. What are you doing, sweetie?

Um, do you have any little backpacks?

I do, but let me finish this video and then I'll find one for you, okay?

Okay.

I'll call you when I'm, when I'm ready, okay? So I want you to understand that it's not just about keeping your kids active or engaged with the activities. It's about you being engaged with your children and learning from them and learning about them. Always, like, every day Well, no, I'd say every week I make sure to have a conversation with each of my kids, just a one-on-one conversation about what's going on, how life is going, that kind of stuff. Once a month, like before the new month starts— last Tuesday we went out for lunch together and we discussed our goals and what we'd like to do in the upcoming month of April. These are things that will keep your kids communicating with you, and the preteen years are so important because they're going into the teenage years. And I also have an 18-year-old son who I did this with, and— well, I also homeschooled him, and I'd like to homeschool these two, but I have to wait on the legalities of it. So through homeschooling, we spend a lot more time together. We do have a lot of conversations. And honestly, there have been issues, okay? But nothing like the teenage daughter I was. I was horrible to my parents, but that's because we didn't know how to communicate with each other. And that's not a good thing. So anyways, sorry, those are my tips for the summer. If you have any extra ones you want to add, please put them in the notifications. Please subscribe to my channel. I'm going to be giving tips and tricks about things I've learned in my life, so those include being a parent, being a foster parent, pre-teens, teenagers, being a Type 1 diabetic, um, just all these things that I've learned through my life. And I'd love to help you out if I can. So have a great day. Thank you for listening in, and I hope I did this correctly because this is my first time using this StreamYard thing and this mini cam thing, and—

Woo!

I'm glad I made it through the technological stuff. Have fantastic weekend, because it is Friday today, and I hope to see you again. Thanks, bye.

Bye.