Care and Feeding | Slate's parenting show

Summer Break Skills (and Chills)

Mar 3, 2025

Join the hosts as they dive into essential summer break skills kids can learn, from shoe-tying to cooking. They share fun ideas for keeping learning engaging, like earning merit badges. Discover humorous anecdotes about family chaos and the challenges of juggling social obligations. The conversation also touches on gentle parenting and the importance of community connection. It's a cheerful mix of practical advice and relatable parenting moments that will make you laugh and think!

39:32

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Episode notes

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

Teaching children essential life skills like cooking and shoe-tying during summer fosters self-sufficiency and lightens parents' responsibilities.

Balancing structured activities with spontaneous fun allows children to enjoy summer while still engaging in meaningful skill-building experiences.

Deep dives

Life Skills for Summer Learning

The discussion centers around important life skills that children can work on over the summer, such as shoe tying, cooking, and riding a bike. Parents emphasize the significance of using the summer months to teach practical skills that children often don’t have time to learn during the school year. For instance, teaching kids how to cook a full meal or manage household chores can help them become more self-sufficient. This not only lightens the parents' load but also empowers kids to take on responsibilities in a fun and engaging way.

Intro

2min

Navigating Summer Break Skills

8min

Creative Summer Fun for Kids

9min

Shoe Mix-ups and Family Time

13min

Embracing Gentle Parenting and Community Engagement

3min

On this episode: Lucy, Zak and Elizabeth think about summer break. There’s a budding conversation in the Slate Parenting Facebook group about the life skills we should have kids work on over the summer – think shoe-tying, kitchen stuff, and riding a bike. We’ll share some of the Facebook Group’s ideas, and some stuff we’re going to work on.

We’ll also check in and share what’s on our minds this week. Then, if you’re hanging out for the Slate Plus Playground, we're talking about gentle parenting… and more specifically, the movement to ditch it.

If you’re not part of the Slate Plus community, we hope you’ll consider joining! Keep reading to learn how.

Lucy’s check-in: thoroughly “in it.”

Elizabeth’s check-in: the great shoe caper.

Zak’s check-in: don’t go to every birthday party.

Join us on Facebook and email us at careandfeedingpod@slate.com to ask us new questions, tell us what you thought of today’s show, and give us ideas about what we should talk about in future episodes. You can also call our phone line: (646) 357-9318.

If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get to hang out with us on the Plus Playground every week for a whole additional grab-bag of content — and you’ll get an ad-free experience across the network. And you’ll also be supporting the work we do here on Care and Feeding. Sign up now at slate.com/careplus – or try it out on Apple Podcasts.

Podcast produced by Maura Currie.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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