>>I’m trying to keep everyone happy and occupied during the summer break.  Do you have any good suggestions?  What are your kids doing to keep busy? <<

I believe the question is directed more towards younger children, so I’ll begin with that. Fortunately, my ten and five year old boys are close friends and so they always have someone to play with. A single child is more easily bored and generally looks for more outside assistance in structuring his time.

Having a pool makes a huge difference for our two younger boys. They are in and out of the pool all day. Though that results in towels and clothing dropped throughout the house during the day, it’s a worthwhile tradeoff. During the week before Tisha B’Av when they couldn’t use the pool, I opted to send them to camp. Swimming is great exercise, it keeps people cool and during the heat of the summer (and it’s very hot where I live) that means being less irritable. Swimming is the single biggest activity for them. My daughter who lives locally also comes to visit daily with her children, so they join our boys in the pool.

Otherwise, it’s the usual: including them in meal prep when I’m cooking or baking, reading together, occasionally I’ll play something with them but generally they play on their own. I encourage my kids to occupy themselves, as I think it’s very healthy. They find things to stay busy with around here.

The shade cloths above all the local parks have been removed due to older kids climbing on them and tearing them, so this summer I haven’t taken them out to parks since it’s too hot without the shade. That means that we’re home most of the time. My husband takes the younger boys to shul most evenings during vacation, and their older brothers have taken them an a couple of hikes, which has been really nice for them.

I don’t take them to the beach at the Kineret during vacation season, since it’s too crowded. I prefer to take them before and after the summer vacation, and am so grateful that I have that possibility.

As far as our teens: my sixteen year old is running the yeshivas bein hazmanim at shul for teen boys (until he got married, my 23 year old son did it), and all of our boys ages 13 – 20 spend several hours each morning learning in shul. (My sixteen year old also took on himself to raise all the funds for the program, which wasn’t easy for him but he did a great job and he ‘grew his muscles’, as I call it when they do things that are outside their comfort zone.)

We’re blessed to live where the older boys have a lot of opportunity for purposeful activity and outdoor fun. All the boys ages 13 and up have as much paid work as they want, and I’m wondering what the people they’re working for are going to do when they go back to yeshiva! They are all good workers and they spend a few hours working every other day or so. We don’t give our sons pocket money so this is a good opportunity for them to earn money for the coming academic term. They schedule their work in a way that they still have time for fun.

They do a lot of hiking/biking/camping. The friends they go with differ from time to time; for example, this week a friend from yeshiva of my twenty year old son is visiting, so our 13 year old took him on a morning hike to a spring. Then my older son got back from learning, and all three of them went on another hike.

Meanwhile that same day, ds16 took a group of younger boys on a hike.
He does this as a community service, since there are no local camps and he sees the boys appreciate the outings. Last week he took them on a bike trip, and this week is taking them all on a hike to a natural spring.

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This week in yeshivas bein hazmanim, they had a shiur given by a visiting rabbi about how to kosher meat. That was followed by a trip to a farm to see a chicken being butchered and then kashering the meat. The same rabbi gave another shiur about Sukkos and the mitzva of lulav, and then they went out to harvest palm fronds. Hands on learning!

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A couple of days ago I took ds16 and ds13 driving in the dirt roads among the agricultural fields. (Meaning, I let them drive for the first time.) That was such a nice thing to do with them; we all enjoyed it so much! I’ve never done that before, but would love to do it again before their summer vacation ends in a week. In Israel we don’t have the possibility of getting a learner’s permit and then driving with an adult; all driving happens only with paid instructors until a person gets a license. Driving isn’t a very hard thing to do, and practice is what makes a person good at it. But there’s nowhere to do that with a minor here; hence my realization that I could do this in the back roads meant a new opportunity.

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It’s really nice to see how constructively busy and happy they all are. A vacation is an opportunity to recharge and connect with your family and friends, and I love that they’re doing that. Life is made for happiness and meaning, but too often the day to day grind that has become the norm.

Someone staying in my vacation apartment commented that living here, I probably never need to go away on vacation. She’s right. I live in a place and in a way that is relaxing and renewing for me, and I have no desire to ‘get away’ at all. My vacation time is special to me because I have all my boys at home, and I cherish that.

Eleven years ago today, our family left the US to make aliyah. It’s a very wonderful thing to be where we all are after all these years!

Avivah