What will your 9-10 year old be doing this weekend?

[parrotonmyshoulder]

Mine is stuck in a bit of a rut really. Older sister sleeps in later now, has homework, will do some baking, reading and writing.
DH is working. I need to do weekend chores (both work full time - 50 hours+).
We’ll probably go out altogether tomorrow - beach or picnic.

I find DS really tricky at the weekends as he struggles to know what to ‘do’ unless we’re going out. So there is a lot of ‘what are we going to do?’,’When are we…?’. I know the common response is ‘children need to be bored’ but what if they always are? It’s not like I’ve spent the last 10 years entertaining him.

I think he needs a lot more adult time than he gets. We play games together most evenings and at least once at the weekend. Or we’ll watch something together.

We can’t do weekend clubs or activities as doing that previously nearly destroyed us all. There needs to be down time and fewer plans at the weekends.

Anyway, back to the point. What are other 9-10 year olds getting up to today?

Normally we would have gone for either a bike ride or a swim or both. DC1 has a broken leg so we stayed home. DC10 does loads of extras during the week (1.5-2hrs a night) so is happy to do not a lot at the weekend.
Today was music practice, finally tidied room after weeks of nagging (and only because I said if anyone called for her I'd tell them she could go out after her room was tidy) 2 hours gaming, Lego with DC1 and about 3.5 hours playing out with the much younger neighbours DC, film before bed.
I imagine tomorrow will be similar.

DD (9) had a ballet class this morning, then after lunch she pottered, watched some TV and did some crafts before coming with me for a quick trip to Sainsbury’s.

Chicken with noodles and green beans and peppers for dinner which is her favourite; then we had some strawberries and strawberry mochi while watching ET (the first time she’s seen it - we’re doing a run of watching classic films on a Saturday).

Tomorrow we’ll probably go out for a walk and then a pub lunch with her dad for Father’s Day. It’s quite a quiet weekend really. Next week after ballet class I’ve got tickets to a children’s play at the local library on Sat afternoon; and she wants to go swimming on the Sunday. But she does do a lot of school and sports/activities clubs during the week so we quite often have downtime and pottering at the weekend; sorting laundry/doing bits of crafts/tidying up and relaxing and so on.

DS10 has 4 weeknights with martial arts classes so we don't mind giving him less active weekends - he usually has one 'pyjama' day and one day where we might walk the dog, meet friends, go to the park, bake, do a bike ride or go shopping. We play boardgames, read, do padwork practice for tae kwon do, or he watches TV or YouTube, or plays on the PC or Xbox.

I have two soon to be 10 year olds. One play in a orchestra and on Saturdays spends two hours doing orchestra practice at her music academy. They other hangs out with me, we go for coffee and cake or shopping. In the afternoon they either go for a bike ride or dh will take them to the park for an hour or so. The evenings are usually a movie night. On Sunday they chill out at home in the morning, may go on another bike ride or play in the park. At 6pm they both go swimming training.

Ordinarily they (7 and 9) will have either a match or training and swimming lessons. That's interspersed with a good amount of youtube watching and some video games. They will get time out to play with friends, read (9yo), do arts/crafts (7yo). We might go for a walk or visit grandparents.

This weekend they are in county finals for athletics so have spent 6 hours at that today and have to go back tomorrow.

This weekend my DS (9) spent Saturday morning making a card for DH for tomorrow, helped me do a bit of gardening and then after lunch he went to his friends house for the afternoon and a sleepover. Today we will have a quiet day, play board games and maybe go for a walk. I’m sure he will go on his Xbox at some point too.

He usually has a football match every Saturday morning, and during football season he will go and watch live matches with my DH on a Saturday afternoon.

When it’s not football season we do things like cinema, go out for lunch or ice cream, mini golf, seaside if the weather is ok.

Sunday is usually our quiet day and we will spend the morning tidying up and getting ready for the week, homework, making sure PE kits are packed etc.

He does also spend time playing Xbox online with his friends as none of them live within walking distance of us for him to be able to play out with which is a shame.

We also get ‘stuck’ for things to do, I find that 9-10 is an awkward age where they’re too old for some stuff, and the things that are likely to keep them well entertained end up costing a fair whack once it’s all added up - so I’ll be watching this thread for ideas!