The long days of summer have such joy to capture in each one. I look forward to the end of school with a great deal of anticipation. Time to get these kiddos under my wing. For a few short weeks they’re mine to mold and breed into what I want them to be. Time to teach life skills, time to look forward to the new school year and buff our skills so we’re ready, time to move our bodies and enjoy each other. Because the school year certainly doesn’t give us much of that.
But summer days stretch out long and hard before us sometimes also. Questions like, “I’m bored, what can we do?” “Why are my friends not in town?” plague me as I try to get the chores of daily life done around our house. In reality, it’s not 24 hours/day that we spend together. No one would likely enjoy that. The lazy mom in me wants to hide in my room with the door shut watching episodes of “House Hunters” on Netflix. But the mom who held that excited anticipation made a plan to balance it all out. Hence, our Family Summer Schedule came into existence. I blogged about it last year, but I wanted to share the changes that I’ve made this year.
I also did a post about summer programs for teens and tweens!
Our family is growing up. Kids are getting older and with years of refining the plan there are a few noteable changes this year:
1. Writing is only done weekly. I literally can’t make my kids write daily. And gosh darn it, I’m a writer! I figured by whittling it down to weekly I might get some better stuff out of them, and I’ve also lured my middle child in by saying if he writes a blog article of worth I will publish it for him WITH a bio. He got excited. Stay tuned. 🙂
2. My oldest is in summer school, thanks to a short school day and seminary he is taking a year full of spanish in 6 weeks. It sounds horrible, doesn’t it?
3. I am anticipating a move. In order to make the move successful I want to go through each room tossing stuff that isn’t useful. That is the extra jobs this summer.
4. Since my husband is now officially unemployed, I am working more. The past few summers I haven’t worked as much because he was in school. He’s not quite a controlling of the kids as I am, so I wanted to keep a bit of leeway.
SO, keeping all of that in mind….
7:30 — Wake-up
Wake up, get rooms clean, get dressed and do your small job. These jobs usually just take a few minutes 5-10 minutes, and they are the jobs they have during the school year. In reality I go in and poke them about 7:15 (since I’m usually up by about 5:30) to get them going. We hit the bus at 7:10’ish in the school year, so this is still sleeping it. {you can also read more here about these jobs help get my kids their allowance}
8:00– Breakfast
This isn’t usually something super fancy. We’re trying to make our way through our cereal food storage in anticipation of a move and I try to make a “nicer” breakfast (smoothies, pancakes or eggs) one or two times a week.
8:30– P.E.
Normally, I think our afternoons would be filled with oustide time, but it’s already well over 100 here in the month of May in the desert. We’ve gotta get it in early. Sad, but true. {again, this is just showing you what WE do and I’d encourage you to not just follow this, but think about what YOU want to do} — this usually includes riding bikes, throwing balls, jumping rope, twisting on our swingset, etc.
9:00 — Lessons.
Ok, now here’s where I’m losing people, but this is truly what we do. I have workbooks that the kids each do. Amazon has a lot of great ones, but I often get mine at Costco. I tend to hunt all year until I find ones that I like and then I pick them up. I really like the summer bridge ones, but those aren’t as appealing to the younger crowd. So, I buy a regular workbook and work out a schedule as to what sections they do on what day. Yes, super anal. Do what works for you. 🙂 I will say that Mr Middle didn’t do all that well in “Language” last year and he has extra emphasis on it this summer, lucky kid! I wrote a post about summer learning loss earlier this year, check it out!
10:00 “Specials”
(our school calls them this, so I’ve just used that as well) This includes Music, art, science, library time, etc. Basically, it’s a hands on learning time. BUT, as I noted in #1 above, writing is done the first day for specials. We rotate between narrative, book reviews, and informational pieces. My kids aren’t fans of doing this — but, life goes on. Drew made some really cool “rainbow in a jar” experiments with the kids just last week. Since he’s often the one home doing these he tries to think of a few ideas ahead of time. Just a handy thing being married to a teacher!
10:30 — Split
My littelest has “table time” (which includes coloring, sometimes playing a game with a parent — last week we played “Pass the Pigs” and she worked on adding in collumns), and Mr Middle has piano practice (keep in mind my oldest has summer school from 7 to 1).
11:00 — Big job
I have given each room a week. For instance, last week was bedrooms, and this week is the playroom. I assign an area to be cleaned each day in that area. In a couple of weeks it’s the kitchen and it’s likely they’ll be doing things like cleaning the fronts of the cabinets, or the grout. It will be awesome.
Big job done-12:30 — Free time.
I do require that they check their job off with me before they switch to free time. I’ve also made it clear that their big job should be taking anywhere from 30-60 minutes, so if they come 10 minutes into it and say it’s done. Well, they just get a big ol’ frowny face from me. This is also a time for me to roll up my sleeves and also work in that area. Working together is a top priority for this family!
12:30 – -Lunch.
We often have a snack sometime during the morning of some fruit, but by this time my kids are ravenous. I try to do something larger. Quesadillas, sandwiches, wraps. I also REALLY don’t want to hear whining about food all day. I do allow an afternoon snack at some point that is a little less healthy. Cookies, a store bought snack (but I try to have a homemade treat more often — these cookies are a tasty, filling treat).
1:00 — Reading Time
I am working to read “The Borrowers” right now with the 2 smaller ones. I read a chapter of this in my room on my bed, and then we split up to read on our own. I am really working on actually reading during this time. I have a few books I am wanting to get through, but the reality is that I’m working a lot and I have this blog and I have a lot on my mind at this point. But, in an ideal world I would read too.
2:00-4:00 — Split computer Time
The 2 littlest, as long as they have done their jobs and haven’t faught and did well on lessons are eligible for an hour of computer time. I try to have them do 10-15 minutes of typing and then move on to educational stuff, but in reality I can’t police it as much as I want as this is my own computer time as well. The one that’s not on the computer needs to just play nicely on their own. I try to make it CLEAR that I am WORKING at this point in the day and they need to be self sufficient. They’re 11 and 6, so that should really be doable.
4:00-5:00 — TV time
They can play wii or watch TV, whatever catches their fancy. I don’t allow the TV on at all until this point in the day. Period.
5:00 — Dinner
Each child has a day that they are in charge of helping to cook the meal with me.
**My oldest is at summer school from 7-1, he is supposed to do his room cleaning time after he has lunch and then he has homework and free time. I feel badly for him. Growing up isn’t always fun. He will still have some weeks of a free summer afterwards though. I do plan on having him starting some ACT/SAT prep tests at that point. There are some good “question of the day” sites that he can go to. He will likely have computer time while the littles are doing lessons.
We follow this schedule 4 days during the week. We have one “free” day that we try to go on an outing or just laze around. Swimming is high priority around here. We don’t always ahere tightly to this schedule, but when we can, it gives the kids a way to structure their day. If kids want playdates, that usually comes during computer/tv time.
Anyway, that’s how it’s going this year. So far, 1 week in and we’re still going strong. Princess P is actually learning some good math skills, we’re working on money and telling time. We need to shove some shoe tying skills in as a special one of these days too.
Do you find that having SOME structure (likely, it’s not as much as this, and that’s obviously A.O.K) helps the summer days go more smoothly? If you found this post interesting, you might like my Family Routines Course.
These other summer posts are super helpful
And you might enjoy one of these other Mom Hacker Posts:
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Eliza says
Thanks for this timely post. I started my own summer schedule yesterday and took a few ideas from what you are doing. Good luck to moms everywhere this summer!
Hilary says
Haha, I’m hopeful my kids will remember the time someday. 😉