{ Dickson Days }

We had our first annual "Dickson Days" July 13-17th and it was fantastic. Each day had a different theme and we did activities, ate food and learned things about the theme. This is a tradition I want to do with my kids every summer.. a chance to unplug, get closer, learn and have fun with each other. We had a blast!

Day 1 was "Art Day": We talked about artists and creativity and what art is. We paintes canvases to put in their rooms, made posters, and did shaving cream marbling. We had a painters palette rainbow lunch, played with play dough, made melted crayon art, helped make a puppet theater and puppets then put on a show and had pencil shaped popsicles for dessert! I wasn't sure how many of the projects we would get through but the kids' excitement coupled with pretty short attention spans let us get a lot done! Everything turned out great and was fun to do! I love seeing their creative little minds working.

Day 2 was "Money Day": Tiny silver dollar pancakes for breakfast, learned about different types of money: what we use it for and why we need it. We visited Dad at work and he told us about how my makes money for our family, we got free lunch from chik-fil-a then we had a lemonade stand and for dessert we got to buy snow cones with our earnings! My kids have a super limited concept of money. They literally thought that Paul "makes" money at work... chisels and shapes and pounds out little coins. Caitlin was excited to have a lemonade stand not to make money but to just have everyone come by. She asked me beforehand to text all the mommies and invite people to come to her lemonade stand. We put out everything and when we were waiting for people to come she said, "Well where is everyone? Why aren't they here?" As if she was expecting everyone to come all at once for a party!

Day 3 was "Nature Day": We hiked with friends: caught bugs, collected leaves and ticks and rocks, and played in the waterfall. then we had a picnic lunch at the park, made nectar for the hummingbirds, and caterpillar snacks for us, then had a campfire dinner of hot dogs and s'mores. The hike we did was to Battleground Falls and it was about a mile there and a mile back. The kids were such troopers and there was no complaining. The hike even had a few steep climbs and they did so great! The waterfall at the end was really fun too. We had 5 moms, 13 kids (3 of them being babies carried in backpacks) and 1 dog in our hiking group. I let Maverick get down and play by the rocks at the base of the waterfall and he had no fear. He was rock climbing and getting around amidst the steep slopes and rocks and water!  

 

Day 4 was "Service Day": Taught the kids that "Service is when you do something nice for someone else". We talked about being Christlike, serving others, diversity, and being happy. We talked about ways that people serve us and how we can serve them. We brought donuts to our local fire station to thank them for keeping us safe and we got an awesome tour! We talked about how good we feel when we are kind and started a "warm fuzzies" jar. We made cookies and gave them out to neighbors. We also made hearts and "heart attacked" a few doors. The kids loved being sneaky and imagining how happy they would be when they opened their doors! I taught them diversity by cracking a brown egg and a white egg into a bowl to show we are all the same on the inside. My favorite part of the day was watching the kids be so quiet as they taped hearts to people's doors and ran away giggling.

Day 5 was "Sports + Science Day": When I told the kids what day it was they said "What's science?" We kept it simple with some fun experiments. We played arcade games and then had a Playground Olympics including: 40 m dash, farthest putt, longest bar hang, trampoline tricks and a slam dunk contest. Volcano cups and hot pots, the "naked egg" experiment, and home made lava lamps. We ended it with a RZR ride and some exploring, dinner and a yummy volcano dessert! We had to be a little flexible today as we had some other things going on, and a few things come up but it ended up still being a fun day. For sports I found that Caitlin was a lot more competitive and focused than Nolan. But if given a challenge Nolan will do it and he does have skill.

I felt like I had all these perfect little activities pinned in my Pinterest boards and saw other moms doing cute things with their kids and part of me felt like I would push it off until my kids were older, but then i thought "Why would i wait to create memories and traditions with my kids?" So I did the pinterest projects and I put aside some of my other mom duties for the week and spent time having fun with my kids and I'm so glad I did. I'm excited to see how this tradition grows and changes over the years to fit our growing family. We love being Dicksons!