Fill Vacation Week With Exciting Activities

The gifts are opened, the guests are gone, the schedule is clear. “What to do now?” ask the kids. With a week of vacation ahead, here are 30 activities to ring in the New Year:

1. Get started on thank-you notes for all those great gifts.

2. Use the fronts of Christmas cards to make holiday greetings for next year.

3. Donate a jar of peanut butter or a box of macaroni and cheese to the Spokane Food Bank (534-6678).

4. Build an indoor fort.

5. Make brownies for your New Year’s Day celebration.

6. Read a new book. Visit the library.

7. Do odd jobs around the house to earn spending money.

8. Take a bubble bath - or let your mom take a bubble bath.

9. Organize your room.

10. Give your gently used toys and outgrown clothes to a favorite charity (See No. 9).

11. Visit an elderly friend and share a smile or a story.

12. Go ice-skating at Riverfront Park (625-6624).

13. Play broomball with friends.

14. Resist the urge to watch television.

15. Play with interactive exhibits at the Children’s Museum of Spokane (624-0435).

16. String a necklace from old buttons.

17. Visit the Treasures of Antiquities exhibit at Cheney Cowles Museum before it completes its run on Tuesday (456-3931).

18. Learn a new card game.

19. Put on some music and tumble, dance or run an obstacle course.

20. Create a work of art by hand-decorating a piece of pottery at the Art By Yourself ceramics studio (838-8993).

21. Host a tea party, or a popcorn party.

22. Experiment with snow: what happens when you pour hot water on snow? What happens when you pour cold water on it?

23. Take a piece of black paper and a magnifying glass outside when it is snowing. Catch snowflakes and examine their shapes and sizes.

24. Fill a spray bottle with water and add food coloring. Go outside and make spray pictures in the snow. (Ideas No. 22-24 are excerpts from the book “Puddle Jumpers” by Jennifer Storey Gillis (Storey Publishing.)

25. Read the newspaper and write a letter to the editor in response to a news story.

26. Go sledding at Mount Spokane’s resort, formerly Kirk’s Lodge (238-9114).

27. Look up a favorite subject in the encyclopedia, read about it, then share your discoveries.

28. Serve your parents breakfast in bed.

29. Sign up for a class or workshop at the Spokane Art School (328-0900).

30. Make a time capsule of 1996 memories. Don’t forget to include favorite pictures, school work and personal mementoes. Organize them into a box or album, seal it shut, then hide it for the future.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Drawing

MEMO: The Family Track offers notes and information for families. Write to Lynn Gibson, Features Department, P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210-1615, or fax (509) 459-5098.