Estes Park, Colorado Offers Great Learning Opportunities (for Me and My Kids)
by Dr. Minette Riordan
his summer I am putting into practice the lifestyle that I want to create for my family and my business. It is June 21 and I am working from Estes Park, Colorado. The kids and I spent two fun days driving here from Plano, Texas and listening to Angie Sage’s Septimus Heap books on audio. My goal is to create a flexible lifestyle and a virtual business that I can run from anywhere. This will be the first time I have ever created an issue of North Texas Kids magazine without physically being in North Texas. I have a great team there managing the office and the phones and all that good stuff. Thanks to cell phones, wireless internet and my wonderful MacBook Pro, I am good to go! If you have followed me the last few years, you know I am not a big fan of sticking my
T
CONNER, GRANDMA, MAGGIE & MADISON BESIDE SPRAGUE LAKE IN
ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK A ROBIN’S EGG FOUND ON THE TRAIL.
kids in educational programs all summer long or doing workbooks to maintain math skills. I am fortunate that my kids are bright and don’t struggle in school. If they did, I might think differently.
Or if my kids were like me, we would do lots of workbook-type activities. As a child, I loved that type of activity book with math problems, handwriting practice and dot-to-dot puzzles. My kids don’t. Now don’t get me wrong, I am passionate about education and about literacy for all children. I am a total over-achiever myself. I have to moderate my need to push my kids to do more, study more and work harder in school because I also want them to have a life, to play outside and to relax. This is my long-winded explanation for why we take the summers off from academic pursuits.
My kids participate in fun camps like art and Lego Battlebots or comedy improv, classes we don’t have time for during the academic year. Conner is learning to play the electric bass and Maggie can’t get enough craft time! But mostly, summers are about having fun, relaxing and traveling. Last year my children spent two weeks at Camp North Texas Kids • July 2011 •
www.NorthTexasKids.com
8
Grandma-Madison without me. This year, I was determined to get back to Colorado. I love Estes Park. My family started spending summers here in 1977 and I have only missed a few years of visiting. This is a great place to come for a family vacation. There is so much to see, to do, and to learn! It was summers in Colorado that taught me to appreciate nature, to learn to love hiking, to respect the weather and to pay attention to tiny wildflowers, animals large and small and the majestic peace of the mountains. I want my kids to have that experience. So here we are! What am I learning? I am learning that it is okay to work a few hours in the morning and the evening and take the rest of the day off to play with kids and parents. Why don’t I do more of that at home? Maybe it’s all the meetings, interruptions and craziness of everyday life. Maybe it’s because I am a workaholic and I like being busy. Between my schedule and the kids’ schedules, homework, dinner, laundry, etc. there is not a lot of flex- time.
Being here is a great reminder of two things: one, I
am in charge of my schedule and two, learning happens everywhere. So while we are not formally engaging in academic pursuits this summer, we are reading lots of
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