For Parents: TRAVEL GEAR/Staycations
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TRAVEL GEAR: The BackPax Parents’ Survival Guide to 5 Essential Pieces and 50 Fun Staycations for Adventurous Young Minds Janus Adams (author)
Formats: eBook (searchable with live links)
Publisher: BackPax (June 21, 2010) Language: English Trim: 5.25 x 8 inches Pages: 96 pages ISBN: 978-0-930399-40-5 (eBook) 978-0-930399-41-2 (paper)
When Janus Adams’ 5-point “Summer Travel Gear” commentary aired on NPR, she was overwhelmed with listener requests for “the book.” There was no book then; there is now with this handy guide. Whether vacationing or staycationing, Travel Gear is the perfect packable guidebook. “Even backyard adventures can yield a world of fun,” writes Adams. ”Staycationing isn’t mind-numbing hours of TV and video games. Staycationing can take you as far as your imagination will go.” Based on the innovative thinking behind BackPax’ award-winning books, games, and on-location audios, here is a practical, informative, fun guide to the art and craft of home-based getaways perfect for any time of year.
Introduction Part I: The Parent’s Anything-But-Bored Survival Kit: 5 Travel Gear Essentials 1. The Question Mark. 2. The Wild Idea Multi-Directional Compass 3. Food For Thought 4. The Legacy Ticket 5. The Do-It-Yourself Souvenir Part II: The Parent’s Anything-But-Bored Survival Guide 50 Fun Staycations Index by type of Staycation
Survival Kit How could anyone ever be bored—especially when there are so many places to go, if only by armchair, magic carpet, or silvery daydream? At home and in the car, there are BackPax getaways—real “head trips”—audiojourneys for adventurous young minds. Home for a rainy day? What better joy ride than a book? There are the National Geographic Channel and Animal Planet on cable, and “Nature” on PBS Stir crazy? Have to get out for the day? There’s the museum and the library. But, let’s face it: not every child will jump for joy when parents bugle, “Let’s go to the library!” Boring. Yuk. “There’s a great exhibit at the museum.” Whine. Sulk. Andy was a hard-to-please child. Andy also didn’t read. Everyone said so. His teachers downgraded him for it. His parents, frustrated, punished him for it. His sister teased him about it. Andy even admitted it. So, what to do when my favorite thank-you gift has long been a well-selected book? In Andy’s case, I decided to make an exception because I reeeally wanted my eleven-year-old friend to know how much I appreciated his helping me with the lawn and babysitting the cats; all the while refusing payment. Andy was a great kid. Wading through the cavernous aisles of Toys‘R’Us, I settled on buying him a game; one with plenty of “action.” For “action,” read war, violence, pirates, and all manner of mayhem—just the kind of thing I’d hate and an eleven-year-old boy would love.
The game I chose was a monster of a thing with twenty-nine million pieces—warring parties, galleon, mini-warriors in full-dress medieval regalia, cannon, fodder, all awaiting assembly and positioning on the high concept high seas of the gameboard. His eyes widening as he unwrapped the package, Andy looked at me like I’d awarded him a trophy.
The next morning I got a call from his mother. Guess what? Determined to set up his game, Andy had stayed up all night and, in flashlight under the blankets mode, read the entire 64-page, sparsely-diagrammed, single-spaced manual; Huh? Beaming, Andy had come down to breakfast and challenged his dad to man his battle-station after school that day. And he wasn’t even yawning! Lesson #1: Motivation is everything. Andy read just fine. He just didn’t want to read stuff others thought “good for him” and he thought boring. Lesson #2: A spoonful of sugar really does make the medicine go down. For Andy, the “medicine” was reading the manual to get to the “sugar”―the game. For me, the “medicine” was buying an action/adventure game to get to the “sugar” of pleasing Andy. Lesson #3: The things we take for granted often prove the greatest adventures for our children―especially some of the things we do for a living. Andy hadn’t verbalized it before then, but in his gravitating so strongly to the game, he was actually emulating his dad. His father was a general contractor. But, general contracting was a job he did away from home, not something he did with Andy. From Andy’s enthusiasm with the game, his parents found that they could stimulate his reading habits by focusing on his interests, not just his assignments. In my family, a lesson on Emily Dickinson for school became a weekend visit with old friends in Amherst, Massachusetts and a day-trip to Emily Dickinson’s house on Main Street. From her bedroom window, the poet would lower a basket of gingerbread down to the neighborhood children. With the basket and rope now perched on windowsill, the house seemed magical. It’s garden path just “wide enough for two lovers,” as she had written, conjured lovely, romantic, poetic images perfect for two young girls poised at the gateway to young womanhood. They soon loved reading Emily. Children have just as much right as adults to be eclectic and inconsistent in their tastes; just as much right to veg-out on occasion, too. Like adults, they don’t always want to be programmed to do “what’s best” for them. They don’t always want to be “edu-cated.” They don’t always want to be entertained either. Some-times they want to just be. And, sometimes they need the induce-ment of a 29-million piece war game to rev their engines up to read an aesthetically unattractive and otherwise boring book! From his response to the game, it was clear that a child like Andy would be excited about visiting not just a museum, but a maritime museum: Mystic Seaport, New York’s South Street seaport, or the Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum. If a trip couldn’t be arranged, Andy would have been just as happy to visit a construction site or, even better, given his age, a demo-lition site. Lesson #4: The most valuable piece of Travel Gear there is, is you! Like the ray of light that was Andy’s Dad in his son’s eyes, value yourself and your life experience. We have all been trained to celebrate success in business, politics, entertainment, and sports. But success is achieved at every level in every field. We marvel at our cities, prizing the architect and the industrialist. But it is the stone mason and the carpenter who realize the dream. It is the watchman and the main-tenance worker who protect the promise. It is the mother and father who encourage us all. Andy had a mother who loved to write and a father who loved to build things. In creating BackPax, I benefited from my mother’s experience as a teacher, my father’s in business, and my grandfather’s in retailing.
When it comes to nurturing the child who’s going places, as parents, we all have gifts to share. We all have skills we can use to encourage a natural love of inquiry and adventure. It’s not where you’re going; it’s what you’re going for. It’s not about packing your bags; it’s about whether you’ve packed the right gear—fun, practical ideas and creative how-tos. These five essen-tial pieces are packed into this book: 1. The Question Mark 2. The Wild Idea Multi-Directional Compass 3. Food For Thought 4. The Legacy Ticket 5. The Do-It-Yourself Souvenir Just the way we set aside time to shop for back-to-school supplies with great anticipation, plan a fun afternoon to shop for back-to-summer “Anything-But-Bored Survival Kit” supplies. Make sure your camera is in working order. Get a small digital tape recorder. If you have a smartphone, you may already be set for digital audio and video recording. Make sure you have the right cables for downloads to your computer. Check the print cartridges on your computer. Stock up on the right batter-ies for each device. Organize your craft supplies and fill in the gaps. If you don’t own a computer, make a visit to the library to check their computer-use policy, or identify your nearest internet café. And always keep a ready supply of healthy snacks – dried fruit and trail mix – for quick getaways.
Watch Lightning Bugs Spark and Flare
When I was a child, parents would poke holes in the lid of a mayonnaise jar and send my friends and me off to catch lightning bugs, watch them spark and flare, then set them free. These days we’ve come to appreciate nature’s creatures on their own terms. But you can still plan a nighttime adventure with a little natural wonder. Instead of catching fireflies in a jar, you can catch a wonderful exhibit about these amazing little insects online at the Boston Museum of Science’s Firefly Watch: www.mos.org/fireflywatch. With these creatures disappearing from our landscape, you can register your budding young entomologist on the website and set him or her to the task of helping scientists discover what’s happening to the lightning bug. If there are lightning bugs to be found in your area, your child can set up a study site, provide the museum with a description, log notes on an observation sheet and share Firefly Watch data on the website. For this “Citizen Science Project,” the Museum of Science has teamed with researchers from Tufts University and Fitchburg State College. If you’re in the Boston area, you can visit the museum and meet the team. If you’re not, a trip to your local natural history museum is a perfect day’s outing If your child has information to share, you can call ahead to speak with someone in the Education Department who may be able to provide feedback on his or her findings. |
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TRAVEL GEAR:
The BackPax Parents’ Survival Guide to
5 Essential Pieces and 50 Fun Staycations for Adventurous Young Minds
Janus Adams (author)
Formats: eBook (searchable with live links)
Trade Paper
Publisher: BackPax (June 21, 2010)
Language: English
Trim: 5.25 x 8 inches
Pages: 96 pages
eBook: $9.95
Trade Paper: $9.95
ISBN: 978-0-930399-40-5 (eBook)
978-0-930399-41-2 (paper)
PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
When Janus Adams’ 5-point “Summer Travel Gear” commentary aired on NPR, she was overwhelmed with listener requests for “the book.” There was no book then; there is now with this handy guide. Whether vacationing or staycationing, Travel Gear is the perfect packable guidebook. “Even backyard adventures can yield a world of fun,” writes Adams. ”Staycationing isn’t mind-numbing hours of TV and video games. Staycationing can take you as far as your imagination will go.” Based on the innovative thinking behind BackPax’ award-winning books, games, and on-location audios, here is a practical, informative, fun guide to the art and craft of home-based getaways perfect for any time of year.
Introduction
Part I: The Parent’s Anything-But-Bored Survival Kit:
5 Travel Gear Essentials
1. The Question Mark.
2. The Wild Idea Multi-directional Compass
3. Food For Thought
4. The Legacy Ticket
5. The Do-It-Yourself Souvenir
Part II: The Parent’s Anything-But-Bored Survival Guide
50 Fun Staycations
Index by type of Staycation
Survival Kit
How could anyone ever be bored—especially when there are so many places to go, if only by armchair, magic carpet, or silvery daydream?
At home and in the car, there are BackPax getaways—real “head trips”—audiojourneys for adventurous young minds. Home for a rainy day? What better joy ride than a book? There are the National Geographic Channel and Animal Planet on cable, and “Nature” on PBS Stir crazy? Have to get out for the day? There’s the museum and the library.
But, let’s face it: not every child will jump for joy when parents bugle, “Let’s go to the library!” Boring. Yuk. “There’s a great exhibit at the museum.” Whine. Sulk.
Andy was a hard-to-please child. Andy also didn’t read. Everyone said so. His teachers downgraded him for it. His parents, frustrated, punished him for it. His sister teased him about it. Andy even admitted it.
So, what to do when my favorite thank-you gift has long been a well-selected book?
In Andy’s case, I decided to make an exception because I reeeally wanted my eleven-year-old friend to know how much I appreciated his helping me with the lawn and babysitting the cats; all the while refusing payment. Andy was a great kid.
Wading through the cavernous aisles of Toys‘R’Us, I settled on buying him a game; one with plenty of “action.” For “action,” read war, violence, pirates, and all manner of mayhem—just the kind of thing I’d hate and an eleven-year-old boy would love. The game I chose was a monster of a thing with twenty-nine million pieces—warring parties, galleon, mini-warriors in full-dress medieval regalia, cannon, fodder, all awaiting assembly and positioning on the high concept high seas of the gameboard. His eyes widening as he unwrapped the package, Andy looked at me like I’d awarded him a trophy.
The next morning I got a call from his mother. Guess what? Determined to set up his game, Andy had stayed up all night and, in flashlight under the blankets mode, read the entire 64-page, sparsely-diagrammed, single-spaced manual; Huh? Beaming, Andy had come down to breakfast and challenged his dad to man his battle-station after school that day. And he wasn’t even yawning!
Lesson #1: Motivation is everything. Andy read just fine. He just didn’t want to read stuff others thought “good for him” and he thought boring.
Lesson #2: A spoonful of sugar really does make the medicine go down. For Andy, the “medicine” was reading the manual to get to the “sugar”―the game. For me, the “medicine” was buying an action/adventure game to get to the “sugar” of pleasing Andy.
Lesson #3: The things we take for granted often prove the greatest adventures for our children―especially some of the things we do for a living. Andy hadn’t verbalized it before then, but in his gravitating so strongly to the game, he was actually emulating his dad. His father was a general contractor. But, general contracting was a job he did away from home, not something he did with Andy.
From Andy’s enthusiasm with the game, his parents found that they could stimulate his reading habits by focusing on his interests, not just his assignments. In my family, a lesson on Emily Dickinson for school became a weekend visit with old friends in Amherst, Massachusetts and a day-trip to Emily Dickinson’s house on Main Street. From her bedroom window, the poet would lower a basket of gingerbread down to the neighborhood children. With the basket and rope now perched on windowsill, the house seemed magical. It’s garden path just “wide enough for two lovers,” as she had written, conjured lovely, romantic, poetic images perfect for two young girls poised at the gateway to young womanhood. They soon loved reading Emily.
Children have just as much right as adults to be eclectic and inconsistent in their tastes; just as much right to veg-out on occasion, too. Like adults, they don’t always want to be programmed to do “what’s best” for them. They don’t always want to be “edu-cated.” They don’t always want to be entertained either. Some-times they want to just be. And, sometimes they need the induce-ment of a 29-million piece war game to rev their engines up to read an aesthetically unattractive and otherwise boring book!
From his response to the game, it was clear that a child like Andy would be excited about visiting not just a museum, but a maritime museum: Mystic Seaport, New York’s South Street seaport, or the Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum. If a trip couldn’t be arranged, Andy would have been just as happy to visit a construction site or, even better, given his age, a demo-lition site.
Lesson #4: The most valuable piece of Travel Gear there is, is you! Like the ray of light that was Andy’s Dad in his son’s eyes, value yourself and your life experience.
We have all been trained to celebrate success in business, politics, entertainment, and sports. But success is achieved at every level in every field. We marvel at our cities, prizing the architect and the industrialist. But it is the stone mason and the carpenter who realize the dream. It is the watchman and the main-tenance worker who protect the promise. It is the mother and father who encourage us all. Andy had a mother who loved to write and a father who loved to build things. In creating BackPax, I benefited from my mother’s experience as a teacher, my father’s in business, and my grandfather’s in retailing.
When it comes to nurturing the child who’s going places, as parents, we all have gifts to share. We all have skills we can use to encourage a natural love of inquiry and adventure. It’s not where you’re going; it’s what you’re going for. It’s not about packing your bags; it’s about whether you’ve packed the right gear—fun, practical ideas and creative how-tos. These five essen-tial pieces are packed into this book:
1. The Question Mark
2. The Wild Idea Multi-Directional Compass
3. Food For Thought
4. The Legacy Ticket
5. The Do-It-Yourself Souvenir
Just the way we set aside time to shop for back-to-school supplies with great anticipation, plan a fun afternoon to shop for back-to-summer “Anything-But-Bored Survival Kit” supplies. Make sure your camera is in working order. Get a small digital tape recorder. If you have a smartphone, you may already be set for digital audio and video recording. Make sure you have the right cables for downloads to your computer. Check the print cartridges on your computer. Stock up on the right batter-ies for each device. Organize your craft supplies and fill in the gaps. If you don’t own a computer, make a visit to the library to check their computer-use policy, or identify your nearest internet café. And always keep a ready supply of healthy snacks – dried fruit and trail mix – for quick getaways.
Watch Lightning Bugs Spark and Flare
When I was a child, parents would poke holes in the lid of a mayonnaise jar and send my friends and me off to catch lightning bugs, watch them spark and flare, then set them free.
These days we’ve come to appreciate nature’s creatures on their own terms. But you can still plan a nighttime adventure with a little natural wonder. Instead of catching fireflies in a jar, you can catch a wonderful exhibit about these amazing little insects online at the Boston Museum of Science’s Firefly Watch: www.mos.org/fireflywatch.
With these creatures disappearing from our landscape, you can register your budding young entomologist on the website and set him or her to the task of helping scientists discover what’s happening to the lightning bug. If there are lightning bugs to be found in your area, your child can set up a study site, provide the museum with a description, log notes on an observation sheet and share Firefly Watch data on the website.
For this “Citizen Science Project,” the Museum of Science has teamed with researchers from Tufts University and Fitchburg State College. If you’re in the Boston area, you can visit the museum and meet the team. If you’re not, a trip to your local natural history museum is a perfect day’s outing If your child has information to share, you can call ahead to speak with someone in the Education Department who may be able to provide feedback on his or her findings.