Spring Break: It's Not Too Late!

Spring break. Do we have a plan? No. And will we regret it? Yes.

But depending where you live, it may not be too late. Order a Mail Order Mystery now and send us an email asking us to ship it all in one box and we’ll send it out this Thursday.

Each mystery has six installments you can dole out over spring break at whatever pace you choose. There are ciphers to solve, clues to ponder, magazines to read, activities to complete and wondrous stories to send kids off on all kinds of imaginary and learning adventures. For nine days your kids will be the central characters in fantastic worlds of medieval knights and noble missions, pirate booty and double-crossers, the challenges of spy school or the twists and turns of detective work.  

Consider this: There are 24 hours in a day. If you subtract 10 or so hours for sleeping at night (if you are lucky) you get the number of hours kids are awake and need to be fed, hustled and cajoled into beds, baths, out the door for various activities and otherwise occupied. That’s 14 hours a day. Spring break is 9 days long. Without school and regularly scheduled activities that’s...hang on, where’s that calculator….a total of 126 hours.

One hundred and twenty six hours. Of course, you will not be required to entertain them for all of those hours. They will spend at least 26 of those hours bickering with each other or with you. If you stick to the recommended limits of two hours per day of screen time you can subtract another 18 hours, and another 18 hours for screen begging. They have to eat three times a day, maybe twice once in awhile if you let them make microwave popcorn for lunch. You may also be able to get them to play outside for an hour a day.

That still leaves 20 unoccupied hours and, let’s face it, most of us would rather replace those 26 hours of bickering with something less infuriating.