Hey there — you made it. Another full week of alarms, drop-offs, permission slips, forgotten homework, snack negotiations, and a hundred tiny things nobody's going to give you an award for. But you did them. You showed up every single day, and that matters more than the week might have made it feel.

This weekend doesn't have to be productive. It doesn't have to be Instagram-worthy or full of enriching activities. It just has to be yours. We'll give you a few low-lift ideas to make it feel a little more intentional — and a little less like Sunday night sneaks up on you again.

This one's exactly what it sounds like — and it's genuinely one of the funniest things you can do together as a family with zero prep and zero budget.

Each person comes up with a "talent" that is impressively bad or completely absurd. Think: speed-eating a cracker, doing a backward cartwheel in slow motion, reciting the alphabet while humming, or performing a dramatic reading of a cereal box. The worse, the better.

Take turns performing, and give each act a fake judge score — you can use anything: pillows held up with fingers drawn on them, refrigerator magnets, pieces of paper. Someone can be the "host" with a spoon as a microphone.

There are no winners, no elimination rounds, and no real pressure. The whole point is just to laugh together. Kids who are usually shy often light up in this format because the goal is silliness, not skill. And honestly? Watching a parent completely fail at something on purpose is pure gold to a kid.

If you want to make it special, give out homemade certificates at the end: "Most Committed to Being Terrible," "Best Use of a Kitchen Utensil," "Most Likely to Go Viral for the Wrong Reasons."

Fun fact: kids can lose up to 3 months of learning over summer break. Not-so-fun fact: most parents don't realize it until September.

Camp Homework's free email course makes it easy to get ahead of it — 10 simple strategies, no worksheets, no stress. Takes two minutes to sign up. Do it before that last bell rings. →

Before Sunday slips away, try sitting down with your kids for just 5–10 minutes to talk through what the coming week looks like. Not a lecture, not a check-in — more like a brief family huddle.

Pull up any school apps, planners, or paper folders and ask two simple questions: What's due this week? and Is there anything you're worried about?

This does a few things at once. It moves anxiety from their head onto paper (or a whiteboard, or a shared note on your phone), which makes it feel smaller and more manageable. It also sends a quiet message: We plan ahead in this family. We don't just react. That's a habit that compounds over time.

Bonus: it usually catches the "oh wait, I have a project due Wednesday" moment before 9pm Sunday — instead of during it.

If you've never played Bananagrams, it's a word game that comes in a little yellow banana-shaped pouch and takes about 10 minutes to learn. No board, no turns, no waiting — everyone plays at the same time, building their own personal crossword grid as fast as they can from a shared pile of letter tiles.

When you use all your tiles, you yell "Peel!" and everyone has to grab a new one. The energy is a little frantic and a lot of fun. Younger kids can play with simpler words (and maybe a smaller hand), while older kids and adults play full speed.

It's one of those games that sneaks in some genuinely good language skills — spelling, vocabulary, pattern recognition — without ever feeling like school. It's also compact enough to throw in a bag if you're going somewhere this weekend.

How kids use it: "She is the best player on that team, periodt."

Periodt is just period — but spelled with a T at the end for emphasis. It's used to close out a statement that the speaker considers completely final. No debate. No follow-up questions. The conversation is over and they won.

Think of it as a verbal exclamation point that also dares you to disagree. It originated in Black and LGBTQ+ communities online and spread into mainstream teen vocabulary through social media. The extra T isn't a typo — it's the whole point.

You'll hear it at the end of strong opinions, compliments, or declarations: "That movie was terrible, periodt." "She deserved to win, periodt." "We're getting pizza tonight, periodt."

If your kid drops a periodt on you, the correct response is to simply agree. There is no other move.

Try these at dinner or in the car this weekend. Answers at the bottom!

For the younger crowd: What is the only continent where penguins live in the wild?

For the older crowd: What is the name of the fear of long words — and yes, it's technically a real word?

🔬 Science: The mantis shrimp can punch with the force of a bullet. Its strike moves so fast it briefly creates a flash of light and a cavitation bubble that reaches temperatures close to the surface of the sun — all to crack open a shell. It's arguably the most powerful punch relative to body size of any animal on Earth.

📖 Language Arts: The word "checkmate" in chess comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat," which translates to "the king is dead" — or by some interpretations, "the king is helpless." Chess spread from Persia through the Arab world to Europe, carrying its vocabulary with it. So every time someone says checkmate, they're echoing a thousand-year-old Persian phrase.

If this week was a good one — genuinely smooth, things clicked, everyone showed up — hold onto that. It doesn't always feel like that and it's worth noticing when it does.

If this week was harder — if there were tears, or arguments, or a moment where you weren't sure you were handling it right — that counts too. You're not graded on the good weeks alone. The hard ones, the ones where you stayed in it anyway, are the ones that do a lot of the shaping.

Weekends mean different things in different households. Some of you are running kids to activities all day Saturday. Some of you are in survival mode, keeping things quiet. Some of you are just trying to get through Sunday without it all piling back up again. All of that is a valid weekend. All of that is still a family doing its thing.

Wishing you a weekend where you stumble into at least one moment that felt actually easy.

Younger — What is the only continent where penguins live in the wild? Antarctica — though technically, several species of penguins live in South America, South Africa, and even the Galápagos Islands (near the equator!). But Antarctica is the one people most associate with penguins, and it's the only continent where they exist in massive breeding colonies. The emperor penguin, the largest penguin species, breeds exclusively in Antarctica during the winter — in temperatures that can drop to -40°F.

Older — What is the name of the fear of long words? Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia. Yes, that is a real word — and yes, it is deeply cruel that the clinical term for the fear of long words is one of the longest words in English. It contains 36 letters and is a combination of Greek and Latin roots, cobbled together somewhat satirically. It's not formally recognized in the DSM, but it is referenced in psychology literature as a specific phobia. The more standard clinical term is sesquipedalophobia, which is at least 12 letters shorter.