>>What do your kids do when school isn’t in session, in the afternoon? And what do your youngest ones do? Especially curious, since I have a 3 year old and an 8 month old.<<

I’m assuming you’re asking what the kids do when not busy with academic work, right?  The truth is that this is the case most of the day, all year round, since academic work doesn’t take an especially long time!  (Except for the kids ages 10 and up – but they still all have the afternoon free.)  Because the kids have learned to entertain themselves, I don’t have to entertain them.  The two women at the camp where my dd12 was working last week told her her that Saturdays and Sundays were their worst days, because their kids were home and drove her crazy because they were so bored.  My dd told them, “It’s because they go to school that they’re bored – they’re used to being entertained all day.”  The mothers were both taken aback by her answer – “Really???” – they clearly had never thought about it.

It’s true, though – my kids aren’t unusually self sufficient.  Kids learn to entertain themselves by being given the free time to structure on their own.  When kids are in school all day, they learn to wait for the cues of the adult in charge to tell them what to do.  This is something that can take a while for kids to learn, but they can learn it from a very young age. 

Practically speaking, here’s what I notice them doing.  Those who are old enough read, play board games, play outside together (biking, playing ball, rollerblading), work on projects, and listen to audio books (this tends to be a winter activity), and go to the gym (swimming, game room, ball playing).  When dd14 goes to the pool, she often takes dd8 and ds3 – now that she’s at camp, they’re missing that!  They have independent projects that they take on – like ds10 with his cookie selling business, dd12 and dd14 are now planning a production as a community fundraiser, and ds16 (his birthday was yesterday :)) just got a job for Thursdays and Fridays.

The little ones hang around their older siblings and watch them and interact with them.  They have books read to them and games played with them.  The two littles (ds3 and ds22 months) play with each other a lot – they seem to make anything they do a game!  When the baby is old enough, he’ll join them and then they will be a threesome.  Though we have a huge amount of books and games, we don’t have a very large collection of toys – I haven’t found most of them worth the space they take up and have given a lot away.  Or if they get left out long enough or often enough, my decluttering gene goes into overdrive and they’re swept into the garbage.

When school friends or neighborhood kids are home, they play with them, but I limit that a lot since I don’t find so much peer to peer socialization positive in the younger years.  (I’m right now having an issue with my ds3 who wants to play with a 4 year old neighbor all the time – they would happily play together all day long, but I feel that peer play should be a side dish, not the main course.)

With the summer here I’m planning to do more outings and trips with the kids, but this past ‘school’ year I haven’t done that much.  Some years I do a lot more than others – it depends on the ages of the kids and where I’m at.  This year because I was pregnant and tired, I didn’t feel it was the best use of my limited energy to orchestrate family trips on a regular basis, and during the winter everyone seems to enjoy cozying up at home, anyway.  Then it was Purim, Pesach, the baby was born – and now it’s already the summer and time for outings!

Every day looks different, but here’s some of what they did today.  My ds7 discovered Monopoly a couple of weeks ago, and every day it seems like he’s getting someone to play with him.  After the morning with the dining room table covered with board games, they went out to play in the front yard.  Then the two littles took a nap while everyone else had a snack/lunch, and went back outside.  Dd8 and ds10 went bike riding together and picked wineberries growing wild (they learned last summer in their Junior Rangers program to identify them) and brought back a bunch.  Meanwhile ds16 played baseball with all the youngers – it’s so sweet to see him play with all of his siblings.  He’s teaching ds7 and ds3 to hit the ball.  After that ds16 played Monopoly in the back yard with ds7, while in the front yard ds10 played Candyland with ds3 and his four year old friend.  Dd8 was deeply engrossed with a book, while dd12 has been making plans on the phone all day, trying to figure out a way to get to upstate NY for camp visiting day to see dd14 this coming Sunday.  Then I took ds16, ds10, ds7, ds3, and dd12 with me to get some free gravel from someone who’s redoing their landscaping.  (I want to build a patio in the backyard with the kids to replace the platform deck we built when ds22 months was born, and am looking to do it on the cheap, like everything else! :))  They spent quite a while shovelling and hauling gravel to our van, and then they did the same thing in reverse when they unloaded it in our yard.  After that they had a late dinner in the back yard, and watched part of The Ten Commandments with dh. 

None of this is going to be of much help to you right now, though, since you’re at the stage of life where you do need to actively keep your kids occupied and supervised most of the day.  When your baby is a little older and the two of them can play with each other more, you’ll start to find things get easier.  When I was at the stage you were at, I read to them a lot, baked with them, had them help me with my chores like laundry, and daily walks to the playground or to a friend helped keep us all busy. 

Avivah