It’s the most magical time of year. No doubt you’ve spent the last several months preparing for your Labor Day celebrations. If you’ve still got a few holes in your festivities, you might want to try fitting in one of these super-fun Labor-Day-Themed activities on Monday. From my family to yours, enjoy!
1. Clean Something – Nothing puts the “Labor” in Labor Day like some good old-fashioned elbow grease. Make sure the workers get breaks at regular intervals and that the labor is fairly divided.
2. Fly a Flag – RE: Patriotism
3. Watch Newsies – I find there’s no better way to introduce children to the Labor Movement than watching a movie starring Batman dressed as a musical newspaper boy. The boy wants more papes! GIVE HIM MORE PAPES!
4. Protest Something – You don’t even have to all protest the same thing. Choose coordinating poster boards, sharpie out all your feels, and congregate on a street corner somewhere. You like adding cherries on top of things? Teach them an epic call-and-response chant. WHAT DO WE WANT? MORE REALISTIC LIGHTSABERS! WHEN DO WE WANT THEM? YEAH!
5. Create Your Own Labor Union Seal – Let the creativity flow as your children join their brothers and sisters and work together to create a symbol of their solidarity and ambition.
6. Hold a Charter-Writing Contest – Every Labor Union needs a manifesto. Hold a contest to see who can write the best Labor Union charter. We usually cap ours at about 30,000 words just because it takes so long to review all the material and we need to choose a winner and pay him or her. Our parent/child agreement requires that all compensation is delivered within 24 hours of work completion. For younger kids, have them make a list of Rights and Duties as we did this year with young Wanda.
7. Build a Human Pyramid – Make a physical manifestation of the workplace dynamic in your home. Our youngest child’s privileged status is represented here by her placement on the backs of the common people. No, she doesn’t have to clean toilets. But she wears her one-percentishness with such grace.
8. Crack open a Drink – When the work is done, sit back, pass around the soda, and think about how your combined labor makes the world go around. Cheers!
Happy Labor Day!
