It’s been hot outside — or so I’ve been told. (I have icebergs floating in my veins from the deliciously body-numbing air conditioning at work. This morning I turned on my space heater so I could thaw. How pathetic.)

If the heat is heatin’ up and you want to have some cool-down fun with your grandchildren, grab some squirt guns and some sidewalk chalk.  Fill your squirt guns and head out to your driveway or sidewalk.

With the chalk, draw a bull’s eye on your sidewalk.  Give each ring in the bull’s eye a point value.  Have your grandchild stand five steps away from it and see if she can squirt the center of the bull’s eye.  Give her five chances to hit it and add up her points according to the ring in the bull’s eye that she hit.

Have her take three more steps away from the bull’s eye.  Give her five chances to hit the bull’s eye.  Add up her points.  Have one or two ‘prizes’ for her to choose from according to the points that she got. (The larger the prize the more points she needs to have made.)

You could do a couple of variations to this activity.  With the chalk, write the numbers from one through ten.  Give your grandchild simple addition or subtraction problems.  After she figured out the answer in her head, she is to squirt the ‘answer’ number with her squirt gun.

Write out the alphabet.  Give her words to spell.  She spells them by squirting the letters on the sidewalk.

Have her draw a simple picture (like the outline of a flower).  Time her to see how long it takes to wash the picture off the sidewalk by squirting it.  Have her do this two or three times to see if she can beat her time.

Grandma needs to have a squirt gun for this next activity.  Set two containers (plastic bowl or cup) a few feet away from you.  See which of you can fill your container with water by squirting the water from your squirt gun into it.

End your activity with a good old fashioned squirt gun water fight.  Then, sit on your porch and eat a popsicle.

What activities have you done with your grandchild to cool off during the hot summer heat?

Excuses, excuses, excuses.  That’s all I’ve got.  Excuses as to why I haven’t posted anything for a whole week.

Excuse #1:  I had an activity every single night last week.  (And I work during the day.)  So when is a granny supposed to post something to her blog, I ask you?  As you can see, it didn’t happen.

Excuse #2:  Not only do I work full-time during the day, I do freelance writing in my spare time.  (Spare time = 2:00 a.m.)  I have a writing deadline coming up so I am furiously pecking away at the keyboard.

Excuse #3: Well . . . uh . . . mmmmmm . . . I think I have run out of excuses. . . .

Because I’m squinched for time, I am re-posting something that I wrote last summer.

Bike-oree

You’ve probably heard about Boy Scout Jamborees or Boy Scout Camp-orees. This is a Bike-oree that grandma puts on for her grandchildren.

First, give your grandchildren crepe paper strips to weave between their bike spokes. Then, cut strips that are one inch wide and eight inches long. Wrap tape around the strips at one end making a pom-pom and tape a pom-pom to the end of each handlebar.

For this activity, you’ll need some chalk and your driveway. (If you live near a school or a church you could possibly use their parking.)

Draw a path on your driveway. Have your grandchildren see if they can ride their bike (trike, hot wheels, even roller blades) while staying within the lines. When they are fairly successful, time them. Have a little competition to see which grandchild can do it the fastest. When that ‘path’ has been conquered, wash it off and draw a more difficult one.

To add more of a challenge, get items to place along the path to turn it into an obstacle course. Things like boxes or buckets or grandma’s terra cotta flowerpots (especially if they are looking as dead as mine are at the moment). You could even tape balloons to your driveway on your obstacle course. You could have the grandchildren ride between the balloons — or ride over them and pop them.

Next, give them a balloon and a broom and have them sweep that balloon from one end of the driveway to the other — while riding their bike. You might need to have a grundle of balloons on hand in case they accidentally get popped. Again, you can time your grandchildren to see who can do it the fastest. Or divide them into teams and see which team can get the most points by sweeping balloons across the ‘point line’ in 3 minutes. (You could substitute a light-weight plastic ball for the balloons.)

Drag those boxes back out (the ones that you used for the obstacle course). Give each child a small basketball, nerf ball, or plastic ball that came with your fat bat. Have them do ‘drive-by’ baskets where they try to get the ball inside the box. (Of course you will put the box 3-4 feet away from where your grandchildren will be riding. Of course.)

Play ‘bike limbo’ where grandma and grandpa hold a broom and the grandchildren see if they can ride their bike under the broom. The grandparents will lower the broom a little bit each time making it a wee bit more challenging for the grandkids.

Give your grandchildren a ping pong ball. Set out a wide-mouth bottle, shortening can, or empty oatmeal box. See if you grandchildren can drop the ping pong ball into the container as they ride past the bottle/can/box.

Get out your old embroidery hoop or cut rings out of cardboard or see if you can find some plastic rings at your local dollar store. Put out a 2-liter pop bottle. Have your grandchildren drop the ring over the bottle as they ride their bike past the bottle. See who can put the most rings over the bottle in one minute.

Here’s something that you can try if you’ve got a little bit older grandchildren. (Older than what? you ask. I dunno. Just older . . .) Have two grandchildren ride toward each other. As they pass, see if they can give the other person a ‘high five.’

Drag those boxes out for yet another activity. And the broom. Gotta have the broom for this activity. Find something that you can put on top of the box — another box, an empty 3 liter pop bottle, that type of thing. Something that could be ‘swept’ off the box — not too easily but not too hard either. Then, have your grandchildren ‘joust’ by riding past the box trying to knock that item off the box.

Does grandpa have any wood on hand? Say a piece of plywood and a short piece of a two-by-four? Put the piece of plywood over the two-by-four. This will be a ‘jump.’ Have your grandchildren ride over the jump.

Well, this ought to keep them (and you) busy for a little while. Do you have any ideas that could be added to this bike-oree? If so, I’d love to hear about them!

I’ve got an attitude.  Yesiree, Bob.  (Only one? my husband retorts. )

It’s an I-can-do-it attitude.  It probably started around the terrible twos, that age when kids want to do things for themselves.  That can-do attitude stuck to me through the years like a cocklebur clings to a sock.

That’s probably why I enjoyed The Summer of Hammers and Angels by Shannon Wiersbitzky.

Delia, the main character, has that can-do attitude.  She has spunk.  She has initiative.  She has drive.  What a delightful character.

Delia lives with her mother in a ramshackle home.  An inspector visits their home and threatens to condemn it unless repairs are made — and there’s a long list of them.  Before they could do anything, a bolt of lightening strikes the home injuring Delia’s mother who is rushed to the hospital in a coma.  As Delia’s mother lays in the hospital, Delia feels time ticking by.  They have only 19 days before the inspector returns.  Delia’s can-do attitude kicks in and she tackles the repairs with the help of her best friend, Mae — and with Tommy’s help, someone who Delia considers scum between her toes.

This book is for middle readers.  If you have grandchildren in this age bracket, I recommend this as a good summer read for them — the characters are beliveable and the what-is-she-going-to-do-now plot sucks readers in.  You keep reading because you want to know how in the world Delia is going to make all of those repairs — especially fixing the blackened hole in the roof left by the lightening.

The author sprinkels expressive phrases throughout the book.  Novel and fresh phrases that enchanted my reading.  Phrases like ‘hot and humid enough to make a toothpick wilt’ and ‘honeysuckle smells warm, like fresh buttered buiscuts’ and sunflowers that ‘started scarlet in the center and then faded to butter.’  (I wish my writing was like hers and not the drab oatmeal brown crud that plops out of my fingers onto the page.)

So, grab your middle-grade grandchildren.  Snuggle together on your comfy couch and read the book outloud to them.  This memory-making activity would last a long time for your grandchildren.

Two thumbs up on this book, Shannon!  Can’t wait to read your next one!

(I went to a conference in Philadelphia the end of June.  A few days before the conference, my husband and I visited several places in Pennsylvania — Gettysburg, Valley Forge, Hershey, Lancaster.  Come to find out, Shannon lives in that area.  Had I known that, I would have dropped by to say hello.  It’s always fun to meet authors in person. Maybe next time . . .)

Four years ago, Jill gave birth to her first son on December 26.  What a belated Christmas present!

Since then, she has been working on ways to celebrate a December birthday for him. (Her second son is only 8 months old.)

She has written a book for her December-born son but we all know how difficult it is to get a book published these days, don’t we?

Since she is a graduate in graphic design, she developed a line of designs called Maydreams Design — a design for each month of the year.  (I’ve posted the one for my birthday.  That pumpkin is way cute!  However, methinks that for adults like me, it should be a witch . . . )  She puts her boys to bed and then works on her designs.  She must be one tough cookie to have enough energy to keep up with two children all day long and then still have energy at the end of the day to create her designs.  I certainly couldn’t do that.

You seem like a nice person, she wrote me.

Ha! I responded. Why, I swig cherry-flavored Kool-Aid with wild abandon.  I ignore the regiments of dust bunnies that are preparing for battle under my bed.  (I’m a pacifist when it comes to dust bunnies.)  And worst of all, I’ve been known to brag about the intelligence and dashingly good looks of my grandchildren to the random man on the street.  Gasp!

Knowing the truth about me didn’t deter her.  (She’s amazing like that, you know!)

She is having a give-away contest where she will give away one item in her store to someone randomly picked from the people who likes “Maydreams Design” on Facebook.  The contest ends August 31, 2011.

So, dear readers, here’s your chance to win a cute birthday present (or Christmas present if you are one of those super organized grandmothers — that I envy so much) to give to a grandchild. Hurry over to Facebook.   Log in.  (You DO have a FB account, don’t you??) Search for Maydreams Designs and ‘like’ her.  Then, you will be on her list and will have a sporting good chance of winning!

Don’t forget.  Do it now.  Enter her give away.  Don’t wait for August 31st to come along.  If you’re like me, you would totally space it out.  And that wouldn’t be cool.  Not at all.

That’s Maydreams Design.  See her darling creations here.

P.S. If any of you know any publishers of children’s books, please send them Jill’s way.