Yes, I know it’s Monday, but on the real Saturday, I was hosting a birthday party for a six-year-old (my son), and that’s actually how I got the idea for this week’s Saturday Fun Day activity.
One of the few things to do in our small town, especially for birthday parties, is to swim at our local Super 8 motel. Because the Super 8 makes their pool available for rental, there are a lot of birthday parties that take place there, so my January baby got to swim for his winter birthday.
So, swimming is a great, and potentially inexpensive way to spend a Saturday afteroon with kids. Remember, though, that on Saturday Fun Days, you have to get in the pool with them, play Marco Polo, show them your underwater somersault, and rescue them when they wander into water over their heads. On the other six days, you can bring a book or chat with the other pool parents, but not on Saturday Fun Day.
Here are some ways you can enjoy swimming with your kids year round.
In the summer, you have a couple of choices. You can take your kids to the municipal pool, or you can mooch swim time off a friend with a pool.
- Swimming at the municipal pool. This is a great choice because there are other kids there for your kids to play with, and other parents to talk to. Kids love to see their friends in the summer, so if they prefer to play with their peers, you can safely return to your book for awhile. Also, there are lifeguards on duty, and an extra set of eyes for safety never hurt anyone.
- Swimming at a friend’s pool. We have dear family friends with a pool, but until very recently, I thought that using that pool was bugging our friends and taking advantage of them. It’s actually the opposite; they got the pool because their kids are grown and they like to have kids around, and they were a little bit hurt that we didn’t use the pool more. So, lesson to me, people get pools in order to share them. Other advantages of private pools include a smaller audience for you in your bathing suit and expanded pool hours; it’s much easier to find a convenient time to go, since they don’t have to close down half the day for swim lessons.
Swimming in the winter is a little trickiet, but can be done.
- Motel Pools. Some hotels and motels have public swimming hours where people who aren’t guests can come and swim for free or cheap. If not, consider renting out that pool for an afternoon of swimming. It may seem expensive at first–our son’s birthday party was $75 to have the pool for 4 hours–but you can easily solve that problem by hooking up with other parents. If you rent the pool for 3 hours and invite two other families to pitch in, that’s $25 per family, which is still not a bad deal for 3 hours of entertainment for an entire family. A movie would cost more and not last as long.
- Water parks. More and more communities have indoor water parks. Many of these are small or have reduced rates in the winter, so it’s worth checking into to see what your local park offers. Keep in mind that while the admission rates might not seem cheap, you are paying for hours and hours of fun for your kids. It could well even out.
Finally, the cheapest suggestion of all, so cheap you don’t have to leave your own yard (though you can only do it in the summer, really), is playing in the hose. Kids can squirt each other with that thing for house on end…imagine how much fun they’ll have squirting you!
The most important thing, of course, is that you get in there, get wet, and make Saturday Fun day a good time for your kids.
