BOREDOM FOILER
At wit's end over how to keep her sick preschool son, Jeremy, busy, Angela de la Rocha of Sterling, Virginia, found the solution in her kitchen: a roll of aluminum foil. "I had the most wonderfully inspired idea," de la Rocha says. She gave him the roll (sans sharp-edged box), showed him how to make balls and snakes, and he was hooked. "In the beginning it was crunch fun--the sound and the texture," Angela says. Over the years, Jeremy, now 11, advanced to making jewelry, cars and tiny suits of armor. The appeal? "Kids love anything shiny," she says.
SICK-DAY WORD SCRAMBLE
Eleven-year-old Anders Lennergard of Des Plaines, Illinois, has plenty of tricks up his sleeve for keeping busy while sick in bed. One of them is to conduct a little literary voodoo by writing the name of his illness on a sheet of paper, then trying to make as many new words out of it as he can. Over the years, he's taken the sting out of pneumonia, strep throat and a concussion. When he's done, he challenges his family to best his total. Guess who usually wins?
PHOTO OPPORTUNITY
Many families wrote in that they use sick days to reminisce over old photos and home videos. But Ariel Duckler-Levy of Great Neck, New York, took a good idea one step further. When daughter Gali, eight, and son Nadav, six, were laid up with whooping cough last winter, she entertained them and got them to organize "one of the messy corners of my life": drawers and boxes overflowing with years' worth of unsorted photos.Ariel tossed several generous handfuls of photos into a large mixing bowl, gave each child a photo album, a sheet of label stickers and a few colored markers, and invited them to create their own family history. The result was two albums full of hilarious juxtapositions that the kids love to page through. "Pictures from my honeymoon showed up next to a Halloween party," says Ariel. "Somehow my kids seemed to make sense of it all."
THE PARTY SPOT
When the pox descended on their house two years ago, the Clarici family of Hamilton, New Jersey, decided to make the best of a bad situation: They celebrated their natural vaccination with a neighborhood "chicken pox box party." Jennifer, now age seven, Danny, four, and mom Sharon spent their quarantine decorating boxes (for the rhyme value), streamers, balloons and everything else in sight with chickens and pox. "I had to keep them inside, and it was summertime," Sharon explains. "But they were so busy with all the preparations, they forgot to scratch." After all the decorations were in place, the Claricis cooked up some blueberry "pox" pancakes and cupcakes with "pox" sprinkles, then they invited over some fellow chicken pox veterans. The fete was such a hit they threw another a few days later. This time, it even drew some uninvited guests: a family eager to get their kids inoculated. But by that time, Sharon says, the only thing contagious was the fun.
SPLAT BATH
When Rose, four, and John, two, were being driven crazy by the chicken pox itchies, their mom, Hayley Barrett, of New Canaan, Connecticut, dumped a box of cornstarch into a plastic mixing bowl and added just enough water to make a thick but runny paste. Then she plopped it and the kids in an empty bathtub and told them to go to town. "They couldn't believe I really meant they could put it in their hair and on the walls," says Hayley. "They smeared it. They threw it at each other." The kids had a blast. When the mess fest was over, the children soaked for a while in a soothing cornstarch bath, and Hayley rinsed it all down the drain.
MOOD LIGHTING
"If Karis had her way, the Christmas lights would be up from Thanksgiving to Valentine's Day," says Nan Knutsen of Falcon Heights, Minnesota. So when six-year-old Karis is sick in bed, her parents cheer her by draping a set of tiny white lights around her room. With the overhead fixture dimmed, the space is magically transformed; Karis likens the effect to being out under the stars. The glow is especially soothing to kids who are too sick for anything else, reports Nan. "It's very restful," she says. "And the bonus is it's a really easy thing to do. We put them up in a matter of minutes."
POST OFFICE BOX
Instead of tossing their daily ration of junk mail straight into the trash, the Huster family of Lake City, Iowa, squirrels some of it away, unopened, in a shoe box, then brings it all out on sick days to play post office. Their daughter Jennifer, who is nine years old, likes to sort the unopened mail into piles by state. "Depending on how sick she is, we'll look it up on the map and see where it came from," says her mother, Minnie. Shelby, age five, prefers opening up the solicitations and sweepstakes entries, drawing pictures on the inserts, and distributing them to family members using return envelopes and free stickers, labels and stamps. "It sure helps the time go by fast," Minnie says.
MUFFIN-TIN MEALS
"My daughter was a really slender child and would not eat when she was sick," recalls Susan Adamowski of Arlington Heights, Illinois. That always worried Susan, until she discovered she could spark her now-grown daughter Sara's appetite by putting a little bit of food into each compartment of a six-well muffin tin. The offerings (varied at each meal) included finger foods--raisins, toast quarters, cut-up fruit, oyster crackers or dry cereal--in lots of different textures and colors. Susan also threw in a sweet or two, like ice cream, and gave Sara a holiday from the dessert-after-dinner rule. The most powerful ingredient here? Novelty. "A little bit of six different things is more appealing than a regular meal, for sure," says Susan.
GET-WELL TUNES
Whooping cough was the mother of invention for Ariel Duckler-Levy of Great Neck, New York, who nursed her kids through it last winter. To create a restful activity, Ariel turned to the family's coveted Walkman. She gave it to daughter Gali, eight, and son Nadav, six, along with a clipboard, some drawing paper, colored pencils and a selection of soothing music (classical tunes, lullabies or even tame operas). "I encouraged them to listen to the music, without interruptions, and draw along while resting in bed," she says. The children created some beautiful drawings and frequently drifted off to sleep while listening. But best of all, says Ariel, both have now taken up piano. "If I put on the classical music station in the car," she says, "they don't say, 'Turn this off.' They're conducting in the backseat."
FANTASY ISLAND
Sharon Wright of Lansing, Michigan, always dreamed of having her own island, so when her kids all had the chicken pox, she marooned them in the living room. She set up cots for her sons Howard, then eight, and Jerry, seven. Ann, six, was on the couch. "I told the kids they were each on an island," Sharon says, "especially when they got too rowdy: 'You're on this island, and you can't talk to that island.'" The kids cut out paper fish, while Mom cut out sharks, then affixed paper clips and wrote messages on both schools to make a fishing game. The kids tossed out their lines (a magnet and string) and hauled in fish offering treats such as "new crayons" or sharks ordering the angler to have "a half hour of rest." Sharon admits to stacking the deck. "I used lots of sharks," she says.
FEEL-BETTER BOXES
When five-year-old Luke came down with the chicken pox last summer, Debra Mumm-Hill of Shorewood, Wisconsin, realized she'd better think of something fast: Next in line were her two-year-old daughter, Mackenzie, and four-month-old twins, Eli and Tucker. So she threw together a four-star version of what turned out to be our readers' most popular sick-day solution: Feel-Better Boxes. Into the bins went stray Matchbox cars, forgotten Happy Meal toys, old issues of kids' magazines, recorded books, some inexpensive toys stashed away before the twins were born (little dolls, card games, a small Lego set), plus some Life Savers candy and almost unlimited coupons for Popsicles. She also threw in some fancy footwear she dubbed "fever socks," along with colored pencils, crayons and sick journals her kids had started earlier in the summer. ("It helps them remember they have been sick before and have recovered," Debra says.)The reaction? Two thumbs up. The boxes lasted through the family's whole six-week quarantine. For containers, Debra used a couple of big plastic storage boxes. A lid converted each one into a lap desk and encouraged the kids to take out just one thing at a time. But the real key to success, says Debra, is keeping the boxes off-limits except during sickness. "That way, it's not a tired toy," she says.
MAGICAL MIST TENT
As a second grade teacher, Judy Brisbine of Woonsocket, South Dakota, knows kids are pushovers for adventure. So when Tricia, now 20, was a young child with bronchitis, Judy created a secret hideaway for her vaporizer treatments. "I would make a tent using a card table, a quilt and a cool steamer," she says. "My daughter loved to camp out with her books, her dolls, blanket and puzzle, and get well at the same time." Judy filled out the scene with a flashlight, a darkened room and, of course, s'mores.
TASTE TESTERS
Nancy Batanides of Westlake Village, California, has found that kids can never resist a challenge. So she pumps in the fluids by announcing a blindfold taste test whenever her kids are sick. "I use 3-ounce Dixie cups and fill them with liquids such as Gatorade, cold water and juices," she says. Elizabeth, age five, loves guessing between two brands of bottled water--and mixing up the cups so her parents can have a turn. She and Nicholas, two, like the game so much, says Nancy, that they ask to play it again and again, even when they're not sick.
