Observations of holidays like Father’s Day run the gamut from pancakes instead of cold cereal for breakfast to shiny new tablets wrapped in red ribbons. At least I’ve been led to believe this by all the Father’s Day advertising I’ve seen in recent weeks.
My house leans somewhere in the middle, I think. Like a card and a shirt.
We try to focus on doing something together. On Mother’s Day I made us rent pedal boats on a nearby lake, except they were out of pedal boats so we got canoes, and they were too hard to paddle and I got frustrated, nearly to the point of tears, and had to yell to my husband that I was DONE, but that’s not a story for this post.
Today I want to share a few ideas for material items you can wrap for Father’s Day that will lead to fun, dad-centric adventures for your little family.
1- For dads with babies, a simple foldable changing pad kit that liberates him from having to carry something floral called Petunia Picklebutt, but arms him with the essentials to take baby out into the world. No instructions required.
2- For (gadget-geeky) dads with toddlers, a wearable GoPro video camera can be strapped to anything. Try attaching it to a wobbling walker’s chest, to capture a child’s eye view of what the world looks like. This can make for interesting viewing later. (This splurge is really a family gift – shhh! – and can be used to capture underwater activity and other sports you grow into later.)
3- For dads with preschoolers, an outdoor toy like a velcro catch-and-toss game invites an outing to the park or just time spent in the backyard working on motor skills.
4- For dads with big kids, we love this book, Dad’s Book of Awesome Science Experiments by Mike Adamick, which encourages dad and his kid(s) to act as lab partners in hands-on activities. My husband and daughter have been enjoying the challenges.
What are your Father’s Day plans?
I am blogging on behalf of Walmart.com where you can purchase all of the gifts shown above, though the gift ideas are mine, not Walmart’s. As the Walmart folks say, “Shop online and save money to live better at http://www.walmart.com.”
