In this episode Andy and Joel tell all about their favorite things to do with their kids based on the kids ages. They break it down by birth to kindergarten, 1-5 grade, 6-8th grade, 9-12th grade.

On this episode, we discuss our favorite things to do with our kids based on their ages.

You're listening to the Dudes and Dads podcast, a show dedicated to helping men be better dudes and dads by building community through meaningful conversation and storytelling.

And now, here are your hosts, Joel DeMotti and Andy Lehman.

Andy and I are in, I feel like our intro just growled at me.

I'm all over the place tonight.

I actually did this.

Wow.

All right, so I'm back.

Okay.

Well, hey, everybody.

Welcome to the dudes and dads podcast.

It's me, Joel, across the table from my intrepid cohost and dangerously handsome beard aficionado.

Andrew Lemon.

Hi, Andy.

Howdy, Joel.

It's another great time to be together.

It's a great time to be alive. It's a great time to be alive. The the feel

where we are in this midwestern part of the United States

The feel of fall is in the air. It is true. I mean it's starting to get crisp in the morning

Have you had a fire recently?

No, I've not had a fire recently. We got to fix that. I know it's fire weather

It is fire weather fire and pumpkin spice. No, not really. I don't I don't do the pumpkin spice thing

It's not for me.

It isn't for you?

That indicates to me that you did try it at one point.

Yeah, I mean, it's okay, but I would rather,

if I'm gonna do something spicy like that,

I guess I'd rather go for a chai tea than pumpkin spice.

Well, okay, we've lost all of our listeners.

So for the two of you that remain here.

Listen, that's it.

(laughing)

No, the chai tea, I will say this.

I was super suspicious of it for quite some time,

started dabbling in it.

Just dabbled in it.

I will say, I will say,

Well, because I still remain, I'm just pretty much straightforward coffee, you know, well,

yeah, me too.

But speaking of which, I did just pick up a new coffee travel mug that I'm very excited

about.

Oh, made by me made by Stan.

It's a stand.

Oh, so you're on the Stanley cake.

You know, that's one of those things like I'm coming to be now Jean and then whatever,

whatever.

Now you're not now you're to Stanley and it's popular.

You're super popular.

I just like to stay in the no.

The reason being, there's a few weird things.

Number one, because we do Aeropress,

we've talked about Aeropress on here,

the Aeropress fits right on,

like it goes, I can just like hold it right on top

and do it right directly into there, it's a good size.

It also, I had some problems with the travel coffee mugs

not fitting my car mug.

- Oh yeah, I completely understand that.

- And I just like, this is not acceptable.

So I had to find the right size.

And it is, it's spill proof, which that was the other problem.

I had another coffee mug that was a travel one,

but if it tipped it all or anything,

the seal was not, was not substantial.

- Ah, gotcha.

So then you ended up having it.

- Yeah, I just spilled around whatever.

So this is the Stanley, it's, I will say,

it's nice to look at.

It's got a nice, it's got that nice-

- It's beautiful if you would say.

- Well, it's black, it's got the black,

go like powder coat finish to it.

- Oh, sure, yeah.

- It's very sleek, very nice.

- But this is not the show about powder coating.

- That's true, it's not the show about powder coating.

Can I get off?

It was the pumpkin spice.

Anyway, yes, the feeling of fall is in the air

and there's, and it does make me think

about the various activities that you start doing

in the fall, but then we got talking, we're like,

Hey, we had a great recommendation by one of our favorite listeners, Mr. Jonathan Ortsler.

Is that who sent this?

That's who sent this one in.

That's correct, yes.

Jonathan, great idea.

He said, "Hey, could there be a discussion about great things to do with your kids based

on their age?"

And I said to myself, "Self?

That's a great idea."

Self?

That's a great idea.

That's why we love to get the recommendations from other people.

So yeah, we're going to have, that's going to be our conversation today, Andy.

But before we do that, we like to think our sponsors

and it just so happens that our sponsor this evening

is none other than podcast answers.

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the podcast answer show is absolutely for you.

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- No, I haven't. - It's really good, I love it.

Podcast answers is a weekly podcast going over the topics of podcasting.

If you need more than just listening to a podcast to get the help you need,

Mr. Andy Layman is here to help out. Uh, and he's embarrassingly,

he's embarrassed and easy to find. So we'll make sure that you get a hold of him.

But, uh, Andy, you do this show. I have, uh, I've watched it. I've,

I've, I've learned a few things along the way. I'll just,

I'll just say, cause as we were all very clear, as I say it all the time,

I have no idea what's going on in the show.

I don't even know right now how it's possible

that I'm even able to hear myself.

And yet, I can.

And it's magic and it's Andy Lehman.

And it's all the great content

that you get to encounter on podcast answers.

So check it out, reach out to Andy.

He's happy to get you up and going.

People make a few assumptions about podcasting.

They think, uh, you just show up and, uh, talk into a microphone.

And while that is technically true, there's a lot more that goes on, uh, behind the scenes.

There's a lot of technical know-how.

Uh, there's some audiological know-how and there is some, uh, some personality

know-how too, which, uh, again, I've struck it out all three of those things, but

podcast answers, check it out.

Uh, so Andy, um, we have, we've been having this show kind of in the, in the

the Hapa as they say.

Yeah, it's been on our list for a while.

It was a while ago that Jonathan suggested this,

but he did suggest that we do this.

And so we are gonna be doing this,

we're doing this show right now.

And we've broken it, we've broken this down into

age groups.

And so we've broken it down into grade one through five,

grade six through eight, and then grade nine through 12

are the three things that we've...

Yes.

We've broken it up.

Well, actually, no, sorry, four.

I can't count apparently.

You did preschool grade one through five grades six through eight and then nine

through 12, nine through 12.

So the high school years, uh, Andy, I want to say, uh, that your first idea with

the preschool age, uh, borderline genius, right.

I had not even thought of this yet.

So, so this is what I'll go ahead and start.

So when my kids were young, we were living fairly close to a lows.

You were.

That's right.

And so it was one of those things where we were just like, okay, what do I do?

What do I do?

Um, let's go look at tools and my boys at the time, that's all we had at the time.

And they're like, they love going to the tool store and just looking at tools.

And it's great because I don't have to spend any money.

Exactly.

Right.

And I can walk around for a couple, you know, an hour at least and we're just

looking at different things.

It's kind of like a tool museum.

Really?

Really?

It kind of is.

Cause everything's like out there on display and the kids as they're young.

And I would say, you know, it probably goes, and this is,

so this is one thing you can start off with when they're,

when they're little is just talking to them about the tools,

but I would say talk, talk with them about the tools,

talk with them about the tools.

But like even now, like Josiah, for instance, who's 12,

there's on the regular hill, you know,

when we're the hardware store or whatever,

he'll ask me kind of like some of the more obscure tools and things.

He'll ask me like what they do.

Of course, I gotta be on my toes because usually I know what the things do,

but every once in a while there's like the weird one.

That's what like the quick Google is for.

You're like, uh, what does this tool do?

And it's great when they have the QR codes up there that you can just like scan.

Great.

Cause then you can, you can find all about the tool.

Yeah.

And yeah, not, I have to actually know the tool.

I'm trying to think, Andy, if there would be, um, like a similar experience you could

have, like, and I, I get it.

like, yes, the hardware store.

And, and I'm thinking of even, um, like, there's of course lows,

but you know what I love is the small town, old school hardware stores.

Yeah, those are good.

We have, we have a few of those in our area that it's, um, gosh, we would,

we would say, uh, it's more than just a hardware store.

It's kind of a whole experience.

Yeah, it is.

There's like, there's toys, there's like home goods,

there's all this different kind of stuff.

And you can just walk around for quite some time

and get a little lost.

- Right, and it's good 'cause it's a little bit

of everything for everybody.

- Yeah, and so, but to your point,

you can kill some time if you need to.

You can get the kids out of the house.

Maybe that's the thing.

If you've got young ones,

I know you had this experience, I had this experience.

where it's like, I need at least take one or two of them

and give someone else a break.

- Usually it's the wife.

- Usually it's the wife.

- Yeah, no, no, that's what, I mean, for me,

that's what we did.

We just kind of walked around for a while

and again, it got us out of the house,

got us something new to do and just,

they could touch the tools and it was great.

What about you for like birth to preschool?

What was your favorite thing to do with your kids?

- Yes, the young thing with the kids.

Now, here's what I will say.

Initially, we were really fortunate

when we lived in South Bend.

We lived right across from the zoo.

- Oh yeah.

You could hear the animals from your house.

- We could hear the animals.

They've recently, I think they've recently updated,

I was gonna say updated the animals.

I think I got younger animals.

We lived across from the lion.

We found out we lived across from the lion exhibit

and the lions that lived there were getting older.

And so their roar, their roar wasn't quite as majestic

as it may have been in years past.

It sounded more like, how would I say this?

Like-- - Like a dying dog?

- Kind of like a, like if you imagine a lion

kind of yawning and dying at the same time.

- Oh.

- Like that was an interesting sound.

I won't try to replicate it here.

- Please, thank you.

- It was something.

But we would do the zoo.

But here's the thing.

We would go to the zoo or we would see an animal and then we would like, there were

times where the kids would be like, would want to know more about them or you can do

like YouTube videos of the animals and see them like in the wild.

Like, you know, because like for instance at the zoo we were at, they have this whole

exhibit of prairie dogs and you can actually like get relatively close to them because

they're, but they have this whole mound that you can like, like, I guess stand around kind

of and you can see, you know, see all of them, like stick their heads, whatever, but it

doesn't, it's hard for you to get the vision of like what it's like out in the wild. So

to go, you can like see those and then go and then we do, you know, do a YouTube video

and that kind of thing. That was, that's sometimes interesting. Um, that was, and that

We did that. That was a big thing when they were little.

The other thing I would say is, did a lot of... We actually went on walks.

Yeah.

I think you guys did that. Got on a walk?

Yeah, we did that a lot because I got energy out and we would always, especially on that

young age. I mean, I like that still now, but on those younger ages, I liked it because

You could kind of go and make it an adventure.

You could, if there was something to play on or around like a, you know,

a fire hydrant or something like that, you could always go and you could always

find something to do and something to, to be able to entertain you while you were

walking.

So yeah.

Yeah.

And the neighborhood that we were in, so when we live in, and this is again,

when we were younger, we lived in South Bend, Indiana.

And there's a section that was actually the kind of the next block over from us,

known as East Jefferson. And it's some of the most historic, like historic old homes.

Oh, sure. Yeah.

Like a high concentration of them. And so I think as the kids got just a little bit,

like a little bit older where they were walking with us, you know, we would,

we would kind of like point out the different things about the houses and like what made them

different and you know things that were interesting and you know because they were the houses were

much larger than the one that we were when we were living at. But you know I think the interesting

thing there was is to help them become like more aware of the world around them. Oh yeah.

And to like kind of because you don't really if you think about it from the perspective of a kid

like their world can actually be quite small right like what they're exposed they have their

daily routines and things like that and what they're exposed to and what they see.

And even though like years and years later, if I bet you if I asked Josiah right now,

like, "Hey, do you remember we used to go on those walks on East Jefferson and look at all the

houses?" He might have like some maybe fleeting memory of that. But it sets kind of a,

kind of sets an importance like that we do things like that as a family.

Oh, sure.

And that it doesn't always have to be,

I think that we can feel this, like, I don't know,

probably feel this pressure that everything

that we do with our kids has to be some,

like major epic event, but I think simple things like that

that require you to kind of, yeah,

taking your surroundings slow down a little bit.

You're just at walking, you know, your walking pace.

Those are really, really good things.

And even better, like when we go walking,

the best thing we can do is that we just leave the phones.

- Sure, well, I mean, when they're that young,

they're not gonna have a phone, but now,

and that's a good time to not only leave your phone home,

but it allows you to also have

that good one-on-one conversation.

'Cause they're guards down.

I mean, it's a little bit weird when you're like,

just when you're just around the house and like,

hey, like how was your day?

But like it's not, not weird, but I mean, if you're, I want to say that not, not trapped,

but that sounds weird.

But I mean, like if you're in the car going somewhere, you can, as a dad, bring up those

conversations and they can't run anywhere.

And same thing when you're on a walk, like you can bring up those conversations and you

can have some of those, even tough conversations because you're not necessarily in the house,

but you're out and.

A setting change is really, really important.

Yeah.

something, and I'm sure a neuroscientist could tell me all about it, but like when you're,

the nature of conversation interaction when you're moving versus, versus sitting, like you said,

or like, you know, the, the, the change in, the change in atmosphere and the change in what you're

doing, I probably do a lot better. I've, I've found this for myself and this is true for your

kids. Like you do better thinking and better expressing when you're like, when you're moot,

when you're moving. Oh yeah. For sure. So yeah, so take the walks, take the tours of,

I mean, depending on, and maybe that's even in the slightly older age, like walking through places

where you normally would just drive by or would not be surrounded by. Yeah. And that was kind of

of a thing that we would do, yeah, on a semi regular basis, I think.

So moving on to grades one through five, and I know that that's a huge, like there's a

big age range there, and I purposely kind of broke it down there, but so it's going

to be a little bit hard to say favorite things. And for us, like, I'm evenly split boy girl,

you are heavily on the boy versus girl, you have a girl, but you're not evenly split. So

Some of these things may be more geared towards men or boys, whereas some things that I say

may be both.

But for me, I would say I've got kids who are like to do legowy things and drawing and

creating art.

And so even now, and I've done that with, and so this isn't, for me, doesn't even really

apply necessarily just for grade one through five.

And sometimes that's because I have kids that span almost all of these, these, I do have

kids that span all of these age groups.

Well, not birth to preschool, but the other ones, like all of my kids fit in there somewhere.

And so sometimes I find myself doing these things with multiple groups.

Yeah.

But, but like creating for me, creating like art and drawing are kind of fun because you

can just go and you can do that a couple of different ways for us.

We've done it where we just take a coloring book and color.

And I like doing that because it's fun, even though I'm an adult, like it's kind of fun

to get other crayons in color.

The coloring stuff, and how that you've said that, I'm like, why not?

That would probably help me out a lot.

Just calm down a little bit.

Well, and I mean, I think that not only that, but we've also done it where we will start

a drawing and we'll have a timer going.

And then at the end of the timer, you pass the drawing to the other person and then start

another timer and they complete your drawing.

And it's kind of fun, especially if you have two or three people playing that, because

that allows you to get some kind of a real cool creativity in there.

That's a great idea.

That's a great idea.

That's something that I think that's probably one of those things that no matter, like you

said, no matter the age, there's kind of, you can kind of cross over the age boundaries

there.

My other, so you, okay, so I have a question because this is always the debate we have of

what you do with all the art.

So a lot of times we throw it away.

Oh, geez.

No, I mean, like sometimes we'll leave it up.

But it was interesting.

So the other day, and again, this is the reason I say that it kind of spans the grays is I

started doing, I don't remember if it was just with, I think it was me and Hattie.

And we had an index card and I just started doodling all over and like making like interesting

line art.

And the next thing I know Eli was like, oh, that's really cool.

And he started doing the same thing and doing it with us.

We kept those around for a few days and then I got rid of mine.

And yeah, that's especially on those game type things where you're drawing like that

because then it don't feel so bad because it's not just a real handy or regular.

You're doing the art for the sake of the game.

Right. Not necessarily for having an art because then you're like,

if it's them just creating art, then you like kind of feel bad because you're

getting rid of their art.

But if you're doing it as a game, then it's kind of like, well, the game's over.

Let's throw it away. Yeah, I'd like to know that's an interesting thing.

I've seen and I've thought about doing it.

The there are some pretty inexpensive like art display options for.

I don't know if you've seen them where their frames kind of that

like if your kids are writing on like a regular piece of paper,

you can put their artwork in the in the frame, but the frame just like folds down

and it like you can stack multiple. Oh, OK.

So you keep it all, but you don't, it's all like, it's all kind of in there and one sort

of thing.

And I've thought like, especially for Molly, who I think really enjoys exactly kind of

talking about like, Hey, this, here's this drawing.

It's like, that's really cool.

And I'd like to put that up somewhere.

Our refrigerator is only so large.

Um, right.

You can try to find this.

Well, and then the other thing we did is, is like Lego creations and that's fun because

it gets kind of that same art type.

It helps the brain move around and helps the brain formulate things.

And so, you know, even if it's not just doing like the set art where you're,

the set Lego sets where you're putting them together, but like coming up with

something creative and, and again, that's one of those things where you don't

necessarily feel bad wrecking it at the end of the night.

Cause you say, Hey, we've, we've got to put this away and you do it.

Do you guys have the, the bin of Legos?

Yeah.

We have like the, the giant bin, but then especially with Eli, so Eli still

does a lot of Legos and he's now into the ones where he likes to get the sets and do

them and leave them up.

Yeah.

Instead of just playing with them.

And so he's got several on his desk that he has created and set up and he wants to keep

them there.

They're more of art projects for him now as opposed to just creating Legos.

Yeah.

And I would say we've probably crossed into that some too.

There has been some debate in my household about who owns what set and where they should

So I've got a, like this year I'm like, okay, if we get any Lego sets as gifts, I'm, I'm

going to write their, I'm going to have to like write their names on the outside of the

boxes and because it's like this whole thing.

But yeah, very much so.

Just I's got a bunch of various like automobiles, like with the techniques stuff, like he's,

he's got set up and I know that I feel like I'm running out of, I got to keep putting

like more shelves up in their rooms to display.

But yeah, Legos are fantastic.

Oh, we still have the one of the bins that we have of just like the loose Legos

dates back all the way to my brother and I. Oh, wow.

And we've we've we've kept that through through multiple moves and all that,

which I'm sure, you know, I'm sure there's somebody out there that.

Well, like the thing is with Legos now is that you can

And what is it?

There's different like Lego services where you can like tell people like the Legos that

you have and I think that they can show you kit like what you can build with them.

All that kind of stuff.

So super, super interesting.

Super cool.

What about for you for the fifth, first, fifth grade?

Yeah.

What's your, what's your go to activity?

Go to activity with them.

I would say let's try to think about this.

Like this is the age where they all started playing,

at least they're playing at least doing a lot of sports stuff,

more sports sort of related things.

And that tends to be the things that I'm doing with them.

It's interesting, 'cause like as you ask,

it's like outside of that, it's like,

what other activities do we do?

And I would say it's probably an area

that we probably need to work,

we actually need to work at.

And 'cause I think a lot of it is kind of like athletics

or like Molly had her,

she did her like her dance stuff or like gymnastics.

I'm probably not very good at gymnastics.

Molly's actually here in the studio right now.

Have I ever done gymnastics with you?

No?

I think it could be kind of scary

if you were to see me do gymnastics.

- You wearing like a tutu would be,

a ballerina tutu would be bad.

- That's overly graphic.

So yeah, I'm trying to think of,

trying to think of other activities that we have done.

The kids do like, we've done like movie nights,

like that's something that we've done.

I think in general you can find,

right now it seems like we can find movies

that they all still enjoy watching together for the most part.

I think that can be kind of the challenge of like,

you know, what kind of all holds their,

you know, holds their interest or whatever, but yeah.

There's, we do the, we'll do the movie nights.

We, I don't know if there's anything else.

Sometimes, we're probably not even saying this,

that we should look into it.

During the fall in particular, I have memories of doing this when I was younger.

I'd like to do it with them.

Do fall canoeing, like fall canoeing trips.

When the leaves start to change along the river, it's lovely.

That's Molly coughing in the background.

But yeah, I think, I think a lot of like outdoor stuff, things like that.

And that's, that's good.

Yeah.

And that, so that's for me still to even that age, age range, especially like

how he will ask me to play with her a lot outside.

And so going outside and playing is fun.

And then I guess moving on to grades six through eight, for me, I remember a lot of

playing football, especially with the boys, not just the boys though, we would,

Yeah. We didn't do so much this year and I kind of missed it.

I want to actually do it again, but we still, there's still time, right?

I mean, it's football season, but grades six or eight.

I remember, you know, specifically just playing, you know, pick up games

or keep away or whatever in the yard.

And my boys like to do, maybe you guys do it where they do.

What do they call it? Jackpot? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

We're like, though, I promise my arm is not that good anymore.

I don't know that it ever was, but yeah, that's the, well, you know,

it when they are able to throw the ball, like, like throw it better, like

right. Better than you. Yeah. Totally. You guys like that too.

But yeah. So for me, that's six through eight is a lot, was a lot of that playing,

um, playing ball in the yard, playing soccer, playing whatever we had,

just kind of on a fall night where we're after dinner, going out and playing

outside in the yard. Um, uh, yeah, that, for me, that, that's what I would say

for those age ranges.

Yeah. And, you know, more and more and more so, it feels like,

you know, I think part of it is finding the, um,

it's like kind of fighting for the space and the time to do, like to do those,

those sort of things. I know, you know,

this always brings up for me as I've been thinking about this and sitting here.

It's like there's, um,

there's always this, like once I get home, there's many times it's like, gosh,

there's like any number of things to do, right?

You know, while we're trying to do this,

and then when you're asking,

but when you are asking the question,

and when you're thinking about like,

okay, what are the specific things that we can't,

that we can do?

Yeah, there's just a level of intentionality, I guess,

with thinking about that and figuring out,

you know, figuring out those activities.

The, I would say, yeah, Matthew, so Matthew's now 10,

And then Aaron is going to be here 14 and just a couple of months.

Um, the, uh, getting outside and throwing the ball around is good.

Um, kicking the, kicking the ball.

They, our kids like to, um, they've actually invented, and I'm not even sure I fully,

they've tried to explain the rules to me.

They've invented a couple of games that they play in our back, our backyard.

But say it's like kickball, but it's like they have like different rules for it.

Interesting.

Yeah.

And so I think, you know, at that age, the, the idea of like inventing,

like inventing games or invent, like having, I like it when,

when they'll invent or come up with a game or something that they're doing,

that they have to, like they have to like bring me into and explain to me and like

help me, help me.

It helps their creativity to come out and when they're creating something like that.

Yeah. Better than there's, yeah, just better than a lot of other,

a lot of other options I'd say when they're, yeah, like you said.

Yeah.

Yep.

And play.

Oh, that's right.

We got a tree and we did get a trampoline this past.

I personally stay away from the trampoline.

You might break yourself.

I could.

I could.

I feel like I could, I could damage something, but it's, it's fun to, it's fun to watch

them do some things, play their, play trampoline games.

So, so grades nine through 12.

Oh boy.

But you're, you're not there yet.

Are you?

No.

Next year.

We can't speak to this yet.

But for me, this one was kind of tough.

In my notes, I kind of left it blank

'cause I didn't really know,

trying to think what my favorite thing to do now is,

I like to go, I like to go like downtown,

not Milersburg 'cause that's pretty tiny,

but like Goshen would be a pretty close town to us.

And I like to go downtown and walk with them,

go in and out of some of the different stores

and just discover some of the things,

just looking around kind of so,

Essentially, what we were doing with the tools, where we were just looking and discovering

things, but doing that again now, where we're finding things like going into different antique

shops or bookstores or things like that, where we're not necessarily going to buy any of

the product, but we're able to walk and make memories and do that, where we're hanging

out like that and discovering things, maybe going to get a pretzel at JoJo's, whatever,

But we're just kind of hanging out like that.

That's one of my favorite things to do now with my kids of all ages, but especially the

older ones.

You know, something that we forget about.

And I, when you mentioned this, so a lot of towns will have some form of a local museum,

like a local museum, sort of like historical, interesting historical thing.

And I feel like those are kind of like underutilized.

Usually they're very inexpensive to go to if they have a cost at all.

Or even local art installations, local museum sort of thing.

We have a few of those and a few different of our surrounding communities here.

And stuff that you pass by all the time, you don't think about it.

And it's like, I think there would be, there's real interest.

We had, who was it?

It was Josiah, was that at the garage coffee shop,

located in beautiful Walkerisa, Indiana.

That's the garage coffee shop.

Our friends over there, they've got some photos up.

They're old photos of the old town.

- Oh, sure.

- Of the, 'cause the reason it's called

the garage coffee shop is it was,

it was built in the early 1900s,

it was an automotive garage.

And they have old black and white photos

of the building and things like that.

And I like immediately Josiah like gravitated toward like seeing that and figuring out, you

know, like, oh, how was, you know, like, oh, there are buildings that were, that were here

that are no longer here.

And now this, this is stuff like that.

And I think, I think just a sense of helping kids appreciate history and understand that

again, like there are local towns and things like that.

I have a history to them doing that sort of stuff.

I know like we here in Goshen we have first Fridays and those are great opportunities.

Oh yeah, that's been a, that's a good one.

We've not been to those in a while, but those are nice

because you, because you can hang out and hang out

with friends and things like that.

And they do the, the gosh, is it,

I'm gonna forget which month it is, the fire and ice.

I think it's in January.

Maybe it's in January.

They do all the ice, the ice sculptures.

Yeah.

That's a winner winner.

That's a good, that's a good time.

Oh yes.

Yes.

Go to festivals, that's a good time.

Yes. The maple syrup festival.

Mm-hmm.

- Yes, that's in Walker, Russo.

- Oh, that's the other thing.

Oh, the one thing we do, speaking of which,

might just help me remember.

So different communities have this

when people start making maple syrup.

They have different, like you can go to,

oh, what is it?

Like a Bendix Woods out towards South Bend.

- Oh, sure.

- But different festivals around

the maple syrup making process,

That's super fun.

Everybody's like, that sounds a little nerdy.

It is a little nerdy, but it's super cool to see how they, how they do it.

Usually involves Andy, uh, some, uh, some, a couple of very old gentlemen, um, you

know, in a, in an old shack somewhere, uh, explain, explain to young kids who aren't

sure if they really understand what's going on, how the, how the whole process is

done, but we've done that every, we've done that several times a year, uh, several

times over the few, over the years.

Yeah. So I would say, I think, yeah, a lot of mine in across the, across the ages, a

lot of it has to do with, um, I think things that kind of cause us to slow down a little

bit.

Yes.

Uh, they are on the technology side less technology.

Yeah.

They're not, not nearly as, um, dependent upon technology.

And they're more, yeah, like walking pace sort of things.

They are more like tactile and things like that, which I think is probably, yeah, I mean,

that's helpful at multiple levels to do.

And so even now I'm thinking, you know, as we're having these discussions at the age

range and what we can do, I would say that I probably, like I personally, and I can thank

Jonathan for this one gave this recommendation, probably think more intentionally about those

kinds of activities and meeting, you know, kind of meeting my kids were, you know, where

they are at the same time trying to introduce, yeah, introduce some new and creative, creative

things that they can do.

And you know, if, if you've got younger kids, man, it's super great if you can kind of start

that start that off and kind of begin those traditions and it kind of is a normal as a

normal.

Yeah, that's kind of the fun thing too is if you start creating traditions and things

like that, then you can do them throughout the years, no matter how old your kids are,

as they get older, they're still fun for them to do because they look, they can look back

on those memories.

Yeah.

Like I could probably still go look at tools now with my kids.

Yeah, probably.

And they would like it because they're older now and they have more of an interest in that

for themselves, but that also is that nostalgic memories that they have of us doing it when

they were little.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, there's, and I think we just, as sometimes as parents, we kind of, it's easy

to discount the impact of those memories.

And sometimes kids don't always know how to like express what that means to them at the

time, but you know, a few years later, when they get a little older and start kind of

reflecting on those things.

I know I was that way with my parents.

Like they would do things with us all the time.

We had a, what was it?

We had a like a nature, like a nature preserve,

not too far from our house.

Like this, it was this nature.

Anyway, this nature thing.

And I just remember like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

And now it's like those are like-

- Those are some good memories.

- They're good memories.

They're fun memories.

So it all depends on your perspective.

But yeah, it's, we would just encourage each of you

to kind of think about,

And I'm going to, I'm going to try to do better on that on my end.

Um, we would just encourage each of you to think about kind of where your kids

are, um, and what are some interesting age based, uh, activities that you could do.

Uh, and it's all the better.

I mean, if you can find the things and we would love some recommendations too,

like things that are, especially that are cost effective, that's always,

that's always great feedback at dudes and dads podcast.com.

So great.

Yeah.

It would be a great place for that.

Jonathan, we want to thank you for putting this in because this is a great episode,

a great time for us to think about the things that we like to do with our kids

based on their ages. And so we thank you for putting it in. Yeah.

Well guys, as always, you can head over to dudes and dads podcast.com for all

the past episodes, show notes, all the goodies, all of that fun stuff,

all the fun stuff. Check it out over there. That's a good time.

Duzan has podcast at gmail.com for all of your great show ideas.

I yeah ideas remarks, remarks and harsh criticisms.

We'll take it all in stride.

You can also leave us a voicemail, right, Andy? Yeah, but I don't have that number.

That's right, because it's broken. My buttons are broken right now.

They're broken, but hey guys, broken buttons, broken buttons.

We appreciate all of you joining us. Thanks for coming and hanging out.

And until next time, I wish you grace and peace.

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