Big, Minimally Populated Buildings

On rainy Sundays, the big buildings at a nearby college are usually open with very few people in them. My kids love wandering the hallways in these life-size mazes. Even though classrooms, labs, offices and the like are locked, buildings like the library can be particularly fun to get lost in. Maybe it's because the kids make clear I'm not there for trouble, but campus security officers have never hassled us. There are also plenty of displays, decorations and passageways in these buildings for the kids to inquire about as we wander.

The Museum Scavenger Hunt

A friend of mine shares a great idea about how to engage younger kids at a museum that is not necessarily designed for them:

Before we left, I decided to put together a scavenger-hunt-type sheet of pictures pulled from the museum's website. This turned out to be one of those 10-minute tasks that accidentally creates a great idea (if I do say so myself). I've tried keeping 4-6 year olds focused on archaeology before. It tended to last about 40 seconds per concept. In this case, we had a great time moving from one image to the next. Before we knew it, we had been through two hours of museum time. I'm definitely doing that again!

The Psychology of Satisfying Experiences

I recently had the misfortune of attending a professional convention in a city that is wildly popular with some tourists but deeply unpopular to me. This is a city where some people live in denial of their desert environs (by conspicuously wasting water), where so many fine things are faked, and where homeless people slump in the shadows of opulent casinos.

Fortunately, the convention was excellent and I took with me a book that brought me much joy after hours. Anyone with an interest in quality-of-life issues is missing out mightily if they skip Sonja Lyubomirsky's The How of Happiness: A Scientific Appraoch to Getting the Life You Want. This is no ordinary self-help book--Lyubomirsky is a psychology professor (at UC-Riverside) who has done high-quality, peer-reviewed research on happiness for almost two decades.

What might Lyubomirsky and her like-minded colleagues recommend to someone planning a staycation? Here are just a few suggestions I have adapted from her book:

1. Use your staycation to nurture relationships with the people most important to you. Few things predict happiness better than high-quality relationships.

2. Pursue variety. Why isn't your fourth hike in a nearby nature preserve quite as enjoyable as the first time you made that same hike? Our bodies have evolved with a tendency toward hedonic adaptation--we get used to stuff (good or bad) so that the emotional impact of the same thing experienced the same way lessens the more it is experienced.

3. Make your staycation your own. If others are pressuring you into doing a particular activity or doing the activity according to their schedule, the activity won't be as fun. This suggestion has the potential to conflict with suggestion #1, but one way around this is to openly discuss your plans and preferences with the other people involved in your staycation (to reduce the chances that anyone is feeling pressured out of their own preferences).

4. Slow down, savor and focus on the pleasurable experiences you're pursuing. Let the pleasures of your day sink in and consume greater chunks of your time rather than "snacking" on pleasurable experiences by rushing around from one interesting thing to another. Spend less time driving, for example, and more time admiring a particular architectural marvel.

Silly Ideas Parents Get

Parents get a lot of silly ideas about what will make their kids most happy on the next vacation. We have many people to thank for these silly ideas: marketers, opinionated friends, magazine writers and so on.

But if you spontaneously ask a child what would be really fun to do the next time your family has time to get away, how likely is it your kid is going to mention the same things you've heard about in advertising? In some cases, maybe your kids have beat you to the advertising and already know that life is meaningless without regular trips to Orlando. But if you challenge your kid to generate ideas of his or her own ("Don't just tell me what the TV said we should do next break, tell me what you think we should do") it can really open your ideas to what they most value.

Some time ago we weighed options for a three-day weekend. A strong contender was a three-day, two-night trip to a small city about 80 miles away. (A loose definition of staycation might include trips of this distance and we thought we might spice it up and reduce our carbon footprint by taking Amtrak.) But the winning option was a well-planned series of local activities: a children's class (on wildlife) at a local college ($3 per child), bowling ($15 for the whole family), a visit to a farmer's market (free, unless you count the produce we needed to buy anyway), a visit to a local recreation center/indoor water park (with a coupon, $17 for the family) and a trip to a butterfly house (normally $20 for the family, but we have a membership) and a free playground located next to it. After all this fun, the kids were so tired in the evenings they went to bed early.

What would the trip out of town have cost us? Probably $300-$400. What did the local activities cost us? About $100. Considering all variables, whether staying in town was the eco-friendlier option is hard to say (had we gone out of town by train, for example, we would have walked much of the weekend). But there's no question that staying local saved us a lot of money. It also helped us appreciate the wonderful area in which we live.

But in order to stay local, did we sacrifice some additional measure of happiness we could have earned by leaving town? Of course not. What a silly idea.

Worthy Amusement at a Mall?

It is remarkable to me how much fun my kids can have with relatively simple activities. I am occasionally tempted to explore a trip to an amusement park out-of-state to show my kids the ultimate good time, but then I remember how many times they have been thrilled with something far simpler and cheaper.

I witnessed that recently with a trip to a mall that's about an hour from my home. That's right, a mall. I typically visit these bastions of mindless consumption annually or less often, but I've noticed some positive developments at some of the fanciest of them. At the mall we visited, my kids played at a free indoor playground, jumped on a trampoline/bungee-chord/harness arrangement thingy (see the picture of someone else's kid above--does anyone know what these things are called?), observed pets in a pet store, played with sample toys at the front of a toy store and rode a carousel. Cost of the jumping activity: $7 each. Cost of the carousel: $2 each. Because we bought nothing else while we where there, this was a fairly inexpensive trip.

I hear your concern. I too have many reservations about exposing my kids to too much mall culture. But your kids can't really learn anti-mall values like frugality, authenticity and self-discipline if your family doesn't practice walking into these palaces of bling, talking honestly about what is really going on around you and walking out without spending a dollar more than was planned.

Sightseeing on the Water

Do you live near a large river, lake or ocean? Check for sightseeing tours, or even multi-day cruises.

Nearby Indoor Water Parks

There are plenty of great outdoor waterparks available in the summer time, but the thrill is sometimes greater when you can visit a waterpark in the middle of winter:

http://www.indoorwaterparks.net/

Some community recreation complexes/pools are now building waterparks only a little simpler (but certainly cheaper) than what you might find in a hotel waterpark.

Pasta Necklaces and Similar Crafts

My kids love crafts of all kinds. A relatively complex craft can entertain them for up to two hours. When a staycation day starts to get a little dull and they start begging for time on the computer, it would be a good idea to have a great craft project or recipe ready and waiting to intrigue them.

A Very Useful and Established Staycation Blog

According to the author, "this blog is all about the 'staycation,' the (admittedly kind of annoying) buzzword for a vacation in your hometown. Staycation ideas, strategies and experiences, led by the author of The Great American Staycation."

http://staycationblog.blogspot.com/

Indoor Playgrounds

My kids are more excited about Jump Zone and similar indoor playgrounds filled with inflatables than any other activities we suggest. I suspect they would be more excited about a one-day trip to such a place (followed by a visit to a pizza restaurant) than a weekend at Disneyland.

Exploring Iceland (At Home)

1. Get a travel video about Iceland.
2. Build a snow-capped mountain with old boxes (for interior), large brown paper (for lower exterior/rocks), scratch white paper (for upper exterior/snow).
3. Toy trucks might be able to explore mountain.
4. Drink iced drinks while discussing online pictures of Iceland.
5. Simulate geothermal steam bath/jacuzzi in bath tub. (Can cover faucet with towel and tupperware arrangement for safety.)
6. During lunch/snacks, observe map, discuss Iceland and, if possible, eat Icelandic food (search recipes online).

African Safari Simulation

Elements:

1. Check out African wildlife video from library.
2. Have kids build a safari jeep in living room.
3. After starting safari, have kids use binoculars and digital camera while video is playing. Probably best to keep the sound off on the video so kids are not constrained by narrator.
4. Have African-themed snacks available during safari.
5. Make lion/wildlife masks (look online for guidance).
6. Look up African recipes online for meals.
7. Study maps of Africa during meals.

Another Blog for Staycation Ideas?

That's right. Some of the others out there disappointed me, and I need an easy place to record my ideas about how to enjoy time with the kids without spending a fortune or greatly enlarging my footprint.