A Spring Break Bucket List
As I write, the temperature gauge reads 14 degrees, and the KMOX station tells me it feels like one below outside. “Spring Ahead” for Daylight Savings Time is in 5 days. I can feel people’s waning patience, their annoyance that winter keeps hanging on.
Spring. Heh.
Yet, for many of us, Spring Break is just around the corner. It’s hard to contemplate sunshine and warmer days when we are still bundling up in winter coats and using the stair railings to mind the ice. Just this morning, our two boys marveled at the small prison of icicles that connected one stair to another on our back deck.
But still, one can always dream. There WILL be warmer days ahead.
A few years ago, the principal at my children’s school included a Spring Break bucket list on the front page of the weekly school newsletter, courtesy of notimeforflashcards.com. I have modified the original list slightly, and added a few activities from my family’s bucket list. What I love: these ideas are simple, and most of them can happen anywhere.
Spring Break Bucket List
+go for a hike – In St. Louis, where we live, Castlewood State Park boasts some of the most fantastic trails and views you could ask for in the metro area. And that’s a bonus: You don’t have to leave the metro to experience this amazing slice of nature.
+read a book about bugs – Check out The Icky Bug Alphabet Book and the Icky Bug Counting Book by Jerry Pallotta.
+visit a local museum – in St. Louis, where we live, the Science Museum, History Museum and Art Museum are free. The World Chess Hall of Fame is worth the money, if your family likes chess. The Museum of Westward Expansion on the St. Louis Arch grounds is newly renovated. The Museum of Transportation is always a favorite – our boys beat us to it, visiting on class field trips well before my husband or I set foot there.
+ride your bike – The Route 66 State Park has wide, paved trails perfect for training wheels and young learners.
+plant seeds – Did you know the city of St. Louis provides free annual flower seedlings for planting on public property? The city also provides hand tools (brooms, rakes, shovels), trash bags and recycling carts to residents who take on the Brightside St. Louis challenge to clean up and beautify city neighborhoods. Learn more at BrightsideSTL.org.
+go for ice cream – St. Louis certainly boasts its favorite stops for ice cream, but a newer little shop you may not have heard of is Sweet Ems in Dogtown. Owners and sisters Erika Darrough and Megan Cobb rotate ice cream flavors regularly, with 10 flavors offered at any given time. Sweet Ems will celebrate its one-year anniversary in April. Read the feature in Feast Magazine here.
+write a story – When I was 10, my high school cousin made me a writing binder. He knew I loved to write stories, and he did, too. His creation was simple: a white three-ring binder filled with loose leaf paper. He sketched a quick cover on an 8.5”x11” piece of paper and stuck it in the plastic sleeve on the front of the binder. In big block letters, it read, “KATIE’S STORIES.” I filled that binder with stories that tumbled from my imagination. Today, I could tell you exactly where that binder is and what’s in it. You can nurture the writer, artist or creative thinker in your family the same way.
+visit an independent bookstore – Check out Bookhouse in Maplewood, The Novel Neighbor in Webster Groves, or Left Bank Books in the Central West End.
As you plan for Spring Break, which of these activities have
you done? What do you remember doing as a child? Which of these would be on
your bucket list? Your child’s bucket list? What is not listed here that is on
your bucket list, or that you would recommend every family experience at least
once?
As we wait for sunshine to pour forth and rid the sidewalks and back steps of all things ice, I am sitting at my desk cozied up in a blanket, dreaming. These dreams are not complex or enormous. They are simple: sweet moments with my kiddos in their week off of school. Spring Break is just around the corner. How will you spend it?
